Margaret E. Morris

Margaret Elizabeth (Jones) Morris, beloved wife, mother, sister, aunt, and friend, passed away on November 6, 2024 at the age of 82. She died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Elizabethtown, PA.

Born September 20, 1942 in Jacksonville, Florida, Margie grew up in Paris, Tennessee with her mother Pattie White Jones, father Isaac Hooper Jones, and sister Kathy Jones Williams. From an early age Margie demonstrated an insatiable curiosity about the world. She was eager to explore it in every way possible - through travel, literature, and relationships with people from diverse cultures and communities. She was also deeply committed to service and to providing generous support to friends and family.

After graduating from E. W. Grove High School she received an Associate of Arts degree at Stephens College and became interested in nutrition and dietetics. She completed a Bachelors of Science at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, then moved to Boston for a Dietetic Internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, from which she began an impactful career as a clinical dietician.

In 1968, after moving to Colorado for work, Margie met her husband James Olin Morris in Denver, where he was serving at a city church as its Minister of Education. Margie and Jim married in 1970 then lived together in Salisbury, North Carolina and Boston, Massachusetts before settling long-term in Pennsylvania – first in Harrisburg (where she gave birth to daughter Alison Louise Morris in 1976), later in Camp Hill and Mechanicsburg.

Throughout these moves Margie continued her work as a dietician, working primarily in hospitals and nursing homes, including 19 years as a Rehabilitation Dietitian Specialist in the rehab. center at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. While in that role she ran the Pediatric Feeding Clinic – partnering with clinicians from other disciplines to evaluate and treat children with feeding difficulties, many of whom had critical injuries or disabilities that impacted their ability to eat and speak. She also ran the facility’s Spina Bifida Clinic and helped found the Prader-Willi Association of Pennsylvania - evidence of her compassionate support and advocacy for families of kids with special needs. For her extensive volunteer work she was awarded an “Outstanding Service Award” in 1988 by the American Dietetic Association.

When she wasn’t working, Margie organized and ran her household, cared for her husband and daughter, made plans for their futures, cooked them balanced meals, managed the family’s finances, organized periodic family reunions, and somehow still found time to explore the world around her. She never tired of traveling to new places (be they in her town or on another continent), making new discoveries, learning new things, and sharing those discoveries with others. She loved meeting new people, learning about them, learning from them, and finding ways to be of help or service to them.

Margie also found joy and made new discoveries through reading. She devoured books - both fiction and nonfiction - on a broad array of topics. In later years when her vision began to fail, she read audiobooks by the dozen (and kept a log of them), thanks to a free device available from the Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians – a service she found invaluable.

These combined experiences made Margie a well-read, widely informed defender of the planet and its people. She was uncompromising in her support for marginalized families and communities. She believed passionately in the value of living in a diverse society and of the social and personal benefits of treating others as you would have them treat you.

In 2013 Margie and Jim moved to the retirement community at Masonic Village in Elizabethtown. Though she struggled with increasing fatigue from Sjogrens Disease and declining vision (slowed considerably by cornea transplants), she spent the last decade of her life doing the things she did best - making new discoveries, reading books, and providing kind and generous support to her family, friends, and neighbors. They will forever remember her keen intellect, sincere kindness, fierce compassion, and abundant love.

Margie is survived by her husband Jim, sister Kathy, daughter Alison, son-in-law Gareth Hinds, her daughter-by-foreign-exchange Eriko Best, Eriko’s family (husband Brian and children Ayumi, Alan, and Matthew), and several beloved cousins, nieces, and nephews. She was preceded in death by her mother and father.

A service of love and remembrance for Margie is planned for Saturday, April 5th in the Assembly Room at the Masonic Village Health Center - 600 Freemason Drive, Elizabethtown, PA. The service will start at 2:00pm, and it will be followed by a reception in the same space, to which everyone is welcome. . In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to any of these organizations in Margie’s name: WITF, The Sjogrens Foundation, Gift of Life Transplant Foundation, The Southern Poverty Law Center.