Doris Deane Morris

March 26, 1926 – September 7, 2020

 
Doris Morris leaves behind an imprint on the many lives she touched in several different locations including Africa, Oregon, Ohio, and Colorado.
Doris was born March 26, 1926, to missionaries Earl and Mamie Deane in Metet, Cameroon, Africa. When Doris was two and a half the family – Earl, Mamie, older brother Wendell and Doris moved to Oregon – first to Scotts Mills, then Salem, followed by Tillamook where she attended grade school and graduated from high school.
In 1945 the Deanes moved to Ohio where four years later Doris graduated from Cleveland Bible College (now Malone University) with a Bachelor of Theology degree. It was at college that Doris met James Morris and they were married August 19, 1948.
The chronology of Doris’s first twenty-two years doesn’t capture all the dynamics of her early years which included the death of her mother. When Doris was a senior in high school her mother was battling cancer. Her father had a government job in New Jersey and her brother, Wendell, was away in the armed services. Doris’s mother died two days after Christmas.
Jim and Doris pastored a couple of Friends churches first in Ohio and then in Indiana while Jim finished his education. They both had a heart for missions and as students at Cleveland Bible College had been deeply affected by a challenge brought by a visiting missionary to Africa. In 1950 they began thirty years of missionary service with Kansas Yearly Meeting (now Evangelical Friends Church—MidAmerica) in Burundi, Africa. Their years in Burundi were occasionally punctuated by ethnic turmoil which caused the death or flight of national leadership. In one instance Jim and Doris gave refuge to a pastor until he could flee across Lake Tanganyika. That pastor was instrumental in establishing the first Friends churches in Congo.
In 1980 they moved to Arvada, Colorado, where Jim assumed leadership of Evangelical Friends Mission. For more than eleven years Doris served First Denver Friends Church as secretary.
After twenty years in Colorado, Jim and Doris moved to Newberg, Oregon, where they became residents of Friendsview Retirement Community. Jim passed away April 1, 2004. People who knew Jim and Doris easily recognized them as “salt of the earth” people.
For years Doris regularly rose early to pray for the ministries of Evangelical Friends Mission around the world. She was a very active volunteer at Newberg Friends Church and within the Friendsview Retirement Community. Much of this service was within organized spiritual care ministries and committee responsibilities. Beyond the more easily identified volunteer work, she was a faithful friend to so many. Her smile and gentle interest in others provided a ray of light to those around her.
With the increase of cognitive decline, in June of this year Doris moved into Friendsview Gardenside Memory Care. Four days before her death she sustained injuries from a fall that required hospitalization for care and tests. Extensive tests during the next few days indicated Doris was ready to return to her room at Friendsview. But unexpectedly she quickly and painlessly passed from this life.
Chuck Orwiler, pastor at First Denver Friends when Doris worked there, applies to Doris the words said of Isaac in Genesis 35:29: “And Doris breathed her last; she died and was gathered to her people, old and full of days.”
Doris had no children, but leaves behind nieces and nephews, a number of cousins, and a multitude of people affected by her prayers and her thoughtfulness toward others. She is remembered as one who embodied the significance and beauty of a servant life.
Gifts of remembrance can be sent to Evangelical Friends Mission, PO Box 771139, Wichita, KS 67277, Barclay College, 607 N Kingman, Haviland, KS 67059, or George Fox University, 414 N Meridian St #6256, Newberg, OR 97132
A Memorial Service will be announced at a later date, when COVID-19 travel and gathering restrictions are lessened.