Sally Morrissey

By Ann Butler, Staff Writer - Durango Herald

Whether it was under the guise of Señora San Juan, Girl About Town or Sally Says, Sally Morrissey was the chronicler of La Plata County's community events for The Durango Herald for more than 35 years. She died Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011, at The Valley Inn in Mancos, just two weeks after her only sibling, Patricia Cavanaugh had died. Morrissey was 91.

"Her only experience was a journalism class in high school," her daughter Mary Thompson said. "She was at a cocktail party with the Ballantines (the newspaper's publishers), and they said Nancy Elliott would be out for several weeks while Mike was at the Olympics. They asked her if she knew anyone who could write. She went home and decided she wanted to do it. When she told my dad, he said, 'You're a nurse - that's the craziest thing I ever heard.' Of course, then she had to do it."

Morrissey put in two stints at the newspaper. The first was from 1964 to 1982. After volunteering with the Peace Corps from 1982 to 1985, she returned as a freelance writer, from 1985 to 2003.

Morrissey wrote about starting at the Herald in her book, Mud Stoves and Strawberry Jam: A Peace Corps Experience.

"I had had no experience writing, but I thought 'I can do anything for two weeks,'" she wrote. "I stayed in the newsroom of the paper for 18 years, advancing from writing the column to becoming the Women's Page and Sunday supplement editor of The Durango Herald."

Don Schlichting, who was the assistant to the publishers of the Herald when Morrissey started in 1964, said that Morrissey had her work cut out for her when she started writing Señora San Juan, as the social column was called at the time.

"Morley (Ballantine) had created Señora San Juan," he said, "and those were big shoes to fill. Sally was friendly and diplomatic, and she enjoyed what she did for sure."

Thompson said there were times her mother wished she had more experience.

"She faked it a lot," Thompson said. "When she came back from the Peace Corps, she was happy to work at home and not with all those 'young kids from journalism school.'"

Morrissey was egalitarian in her coverage.

"Her column included news of Bondad and Marvel and Sunnyside as well as high society," her friend Beverly Darmour said. "She chose to include the McCullochs and Rhodeses as well as the Weidmans and Dudleys."

Through her work, Morrissey came to know many diverse populations in La Plata County.

"Her knowledge of Durango's people probably should have been saved on disks or in a book," Helen Ballantine Healy wrote in an e-mail. "How she knew so much information about people was always a source of incredulity."

Morrissey's newspaper career included thousands of interviews and events before she submitted her final piece in 2003, when she was 83.

The Peace Corps Years

In 1982, at the age of 62, Morrissey joined the Peace Corps. She had been thinking for some time about using her nursing skills in a Third World country.

"I had been in a maternity ward in a hospital in Bogotá, Colombia, once when my husband, John, and I visited in South America," she wrote in her book, "and the stench and filthy conditions combined with the noise level of the babies and mothers both crying were horrible. I thought anything I could offer those poor mothers would be better than what they had there."

Peace Corps placement staff, however, felt that Morrissey had been away from nursing for so long and was having so many difficulties learning Spanish that her skills as a homemaker, particularly cooking and sewing, would be of more value to the Guatemalans in the village of Río Hondo where she would be stationed.

Morrissey's time in the Peace Corps was difficult and stressful, partly because of her lack of language skills and also because of the impoverished and isolated living conditions.

"She told me that when she went to the monthly Peace Corps meetings that she always took her resignation letter with her," her friend Ann Willard said. "By the time she would leave, they would have talked her into staying for another month."

In spite of the challenges, Morrissey made close connections in Río Hondo.

"She really loved the people," Wanda Ellingson, who was in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua, said. "They recognized the good will and had a real heart-to-heart connection."

Morrissey's friends in Durango helped her new friends in Río Hondo when she wrote to ask for money to help improve the nutrition in the village, where people existed primarily on black beans and tortillas.

"A Literary Club I belonged to in Durango sent me money to use as I saw fit," she wrote in Mud Stoves, "generous friends donated money, and the Southwest Colorado Dietetic Association sent a contribution . It was also a great feeling to know that there were caring people in Durango, Colorado, who supported my work and were concerned about the children in another country."

Tricia Zuber, Morrissey's granddaughter, followed her grandmother's example and joined the Peace Corps, serving on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Morrissey visited her several times.

Morrissey was always proud to have been a Peace Corps volunteer.

"When Peace Corps recruiters would come to town and ask if any Peace Corps people were there who'd like to talk about the experience, she'd be there," Ellingson said.

Amigos in Ecuador

In the 1960s, the Morrisseys invited Hernan Ribadaneira, a high school exchange student from Ecuador, to live with them. After graduating from high school, he stayed and graduated from Fort Lewis College as well. It became a lifelong relationship that included two generations of the Ribadaneira family coming to Durango, and Morrissey's son Frank going to Ecuador to learn Spanish. Morrissey herself traveled to Ecuador several times to visit the Ribadaneira clan.

Hernan Ribadaneira remembers her inviting him, his brother Francis and another Ecuadoran student on Sundays for hamburgers, French fries and iced tea and always having a gift under the tree for him at Christmas, when he was homesick.

"I was a scared 15-year-old Ecuadorian, traveling for the first time, with no English," Hernan Ribadaneira wrote in an e-mail from his country. "For me, the opportunity to have a great American family, to share and learn for eight years, was very unique. I can say from the bottom of my heart that I really know what the great American family is: generous, kind, sharing, strict, religious and a good example for us the kids."

In the community and with friends

After her return to Durango from Guatemala, Morrissey, with her new understanding of hunger and malnutrition, spent numerous volunteer hours at the Manna Soup Kitchen.

"She and I loved the fledgling soup kitchen at the Spanish Assembly of God Church," Darmour said. "where we prided ourselves at stretching 2 pounds of hamburger and some tired celery into gourmet soup - well, we thought it was gourmet. Sally was the chauffeur for those diners without rides, such as Mary, who always wore a black coat with lots of pockets to take leftovers home."

Morrissey was a member of the Durango Choral Society, the Reading Club of Durango, the Tuesday Literary Club and the Durango Fine Arts Association. She served on the advisory boards of Mercy Medical Center, including one year as secretary, and Head Start, as a board member for Meals on Wheels and on the St. Columba Catholic Church Parish Council.

She will be most remembered for her commitment to covering the news of La Plata County residents.

"She was feisty within the organization of the Herald," Schlichting said, "but also feisty within the community. And don't we appreciate it."

Service information

Cremation will occur. Visitation will be held from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 8, 2011, at Hood Mortuary, 1261 East Third Ave. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011, at St. Columba Catholic Church, 1801 East Second Ave. Burial of her ashes will take place afterward at Greenmount Cemetery.

Sally Lillian Tucker Morrissey was born to Frank and Ruth Martin Tucker on March 24, 1920, in Sunnyside, Utah. Her father was a coal miner and boxer.

"When she was 4," her daughter Mary Thompson said, "her mom cooked for the miners, and she danced on the miners' dining tables for dimes until her mother found out and made her stop."

Thompson said Morrissey was close to her father.

"She was his 'son,'" she said. "She was very much like him with a dry sense of humor."
Morrissey graduated from Grand Junction High School and the St. Joseph Hospital of Nursing in Denver in 1941.

On Oct. 6, 1941, she married John Morrissey in Denver. While in Denver, she was a member of the Colorado Nursing Association and served on St. Joseph's advisory board.

The Morrissey family moved to Durango in 1954.

Mrs. Morrissey was preceded in death by her husband of 32 years, John Morrissey.

She is survived by her daughters Cecilia O'Morrissey and Mary Thompson, both of Durango; sons John J. "Jeff" Morrissey III of Durango and Frank Morrissey of Castle Rock; 12 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren.

Memorial contributions may be sent to Manna Soup Kitchen, P.O. Box 1196, Durango, CO 81302; or Hospice of Montezuma, P.O. Box 440, Cortez, CO 81321.