John D. Morrison, son of Noble Clement Morrison and Margaret Mary Dyer, and born in Chicago, Illinois on August 24, 1923, passed peacefully on January 14, 2017 in Indianapolis, Indiana, departing this world’s adventures for the next at the age of 93.

He graduated from Marshall High School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1937, and worked at a variety of jobs- from bowling alley pin setter (in the days when they were set by hand), to more challenging trade work as a pressurized valve drill press operator and live wire electrician before joining the U.S. Army in 1943.

In the Army he was given an IQ test that revealed an IQ exceeding 180. After training in an anti-aircraft officer battalion at Camp Callan, California, the Army sent him to college where he studied engineering before switching to pre-med. He served the Army as a Medical Technician at Barnes General Hospital in Vancouver, Washington, then attended the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland (1945) and worked as a Surgical Technician. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Army in 1946, he returned to Chicago, where he enrolled at the Illinois Institute of Technology to study mathematics.

Still a student, he met Marie Skicewicz, the love of his life; they were married in the Catholic Church on July 26, 1947, a union that would produce four beautiful children.

While studying for his mathematics degree, he worked a number of jobs, including night watchman, ditch-digger, balancing machine operator, and candy table cleaner for the Mars Candy Company. After receiving his B.S. in Mathematics in 1949, he passed a series of exams to become an actuary.

His first actuarial job was Actuarial Assistant for Central Life Insurance Company of Illinois, 1949-1954, and in a successful career that lasted over four decades, he retired in 1990 at age 67 as the Corporate and Staff Actuary for American  United  Life Insurance Company.

John was a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and a Fellow of the Life Management Institute. He served as Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Actuaries Club of the Southwest; he was a member of the Actuaries Club of Indianapolis, as well as that of Indiana Ohio and Kentucky. He was a member of the Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Amnesty International  , and (his favorite) a judge of wine entries at the Indiana State Fair.

Through the years there were numerous family vacations (mostly camping) to many of our national parks, as well as Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and later trips to Italy and France with daughter Patricia. In his later years, he engaged in spirited, instructional chess games with his granddaughters Hannah and Olivia.

He was a man possessed of great curiosity, an inveterate puzzle solver, Sudoko master. A man who when his children asked him how to spell a word, said ‘look it up in the dictionary!’

A naturalist who foraged wild mushrooms and then conducted spore tests to assure edibility. An astronomer who created a reliable sundial in his own living room. A poet and philosopher. A fan of Carl Jung . And, at the dinner table, for as long as any of us can remember, a spirited and insightful conversationalist. Good company.

He now joins his beloved Marie (deceased 2002) and leaves behind his four deeply loved children, Pam, Jim, Pat, and Penny; four grandchildren, Ben, Brendhan, Hannah and Olivia; two great grandchildren, Adam and Megan, plus a great-grandson on the way for Brendhan and his wife Anhtu.

A legacy appreciated and worth working towards by all of us who have known and loved him.

God speed, John Morrison