Walter J. Morris

(Wladyslaw Mroczek)

1916-2016

Walter J. Morris, a gifted athlete who excelled at several careers before becoming a beloved teacher in San Francisco public schools, died August 13. He missed his 100th birthday by eight weeks. Death was attributed to the infirmities of age, something of a surprise to fellow retirees accustomed not so long ago to seeing him running at Ocean Beach, playing golf on the Cliff Course of the Olympic Club and volunteering at Laguna Honda Home.

With a master's degree from San Francisco State University and further study at USF, Walter joined the SFUSD in 1956 and served as a teacher or administrator in Visitation Valley and Ben Franklin middle schools, and in six elementary schools, including Columbus, Grattan, Sanchez, Stevenson, Commodore Sloat and a long stint at Jose Ortega. He retired from the school district in 1982.

Wladyslaw Mroczek was born at home in Detroit on Oct. 12, 1916, to Kazimierz and Marianna (Kozlowska) Mroczek, immigrants from Poland. From age 7 he lived at Detroit's St. Francis Home for Boys after the death of his mother during the Great Depression of the 1920s. He later attended Greusel Intermediate, North Eastern High School, St. Mary's of Orchard Lake and Wayne State University. He Americanized his Polish name in 1942 because of his experience with anti-Polish sentiment.

An All-City high school baseball player in his native Detroit and a sports scholarship graduate of Wayne State University, Walter worked for Dodge Motor and Briggs Manufacturing before he was named managing director of the Boys Club of Northwest Detroit.

He arrived in San Francisco in 1941. He worked as a hospital attendant, then as a guard at Alcatraz before he enlisted in the Army in World War II, where in served in Hawaii, having been reassigned from General MacArthur's Pacific Theater.

Walter was Boy's Director at Edgewood Protestant Orphanage (now the Edgewood Center for Children and Families) when he met and courted Rosemary Gantner, a graduate of Lowell High School and Stanford University. With Peggy Hutchins and George McKeon as attendants, they were married Aug. 24, 1946, in St. Cecilia Church (where her parents, Fred and Rose Gantner, donated the Rose Window).

Walter worked for the Veterans' Administration, then as a San Francisco probation officer and later as an agent with Educators Insurance.

Following the death of his father-in-law, Walter became vice president from 1952-1954 at Gantner-Felder-Kenny Funeral Parlor (Duboce and Market).

One year after Rosemary's death in 1992, Walter took his children on a tour of his native Detroit and the following year to his parents' homeland, Poland. As a child of immigrants, Walter's first language was Polish. It was important to him that his children celebrate their Polish heritage along with their mother's San Francisco Irish and Austrian (Swiss-German) and Alsatian roots.

Walter attended St. Brendan's and St. Cecilia's churches. He liked to contribute to Church of the Nativity on Fell Street and other Polish charities. He was extraordinarily generous to his family, and he adopted the Gantner family as his own. He donated to a wide variety of charities because he remembered the Great Depression and standing in bread lines and participating in pro-Union sit-ins in Detroit. He volunteered regularly at Laguna Honda Hospital after he retired from the SFUSD. He swam and played tennis and golf at the Olympic Club, where for a time he was tennis historian. For that service he received an award from the History and Archives Committee.

Walter and Rosemary had six children: Kathleen Leahy (Tim, deceased) [Carmichael, CA], Kevin Frederick Morris (Renee) [Maui, HI], Maureen Mroczek Morris [SF], Brian Gantner Morris (deceased), Gregory Keith Morris [WY] and Brendan Christopher Morris [Sacramento, CA]. All four of Walter's sons were Eagle Scouts and Walter was very active in the scouting movement (receiving an award from the SF Bay Area Council, Boy Scouts of America: "Century Member"). He was a board member of the Diabetic Youth Foundation and an activer supporter of Bearskin Meadow Camp for children with diabetes. Walter was proud of his four grandchildren (Kevin, Meghan, Brandan and Shaelynn), his five great grandchildren and several nieces and nephews in New York and Michigan. His three sisters predeceased him: Virginia Matuszak, Wanda Skotnicki, and Irene Phillips.

Walter greeted each day as a gift and remarked "it's a beautiful day" no matter the weather. He was good natured and devoted to his family. Walter died in his Forest Hill Extension home under the care of his daughter Maureen with loving assistance from caregivers Riolito Tampol, Lorna Abongan, Rolina Naguinlin, Melody Celedio, Eduardo Bunag, Suzanne Kate Acaso, Veronica Diaz, Elizabeth Nguyen and Susan Laxa, nurse Kathleen O'Connor from the Bay Area Care Team, Hospice by the Bay, and the long-time devotion of family friends Pauline Scholten and Juana Flores, Kazik Kozlowski and Jack Dietzen. Special thanks to Drs. Aaron Barry, Remo Morelli and Carolyn Welty.

Funeral Mass to be celebrated on Friday, August 19 at 10 a.m. at St. Cecilia Catholic Church, 2555 17th Ave., San Francisco with visitation at 9:30 a.m. prior to Mass. Interment will follow at Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno. A reception will follow. Memorial donations are welcomed by the Diabetic Youth Foundation (5167 Clayton Rd. #F, Concord, CA 94521) and, in San Francisco, St. Mary's Medical Center Foundation, St. Anthony's Dining Room, Laguna Honda Hospital, the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, the Polish Club of San Francisco – or your favorite charity.