SIU's Morris

Betty Mitchell. Delyte Morris of SIU. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Pp. 236 with index. $19.95 (cloth). Foreword by Dick Gregory.

Photo by Rip Stokes

Across the street from Memorial Medical Center in Springfield is the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, a lasting testament not merely to the vision but also to the political acumen of Delyte Wesley Morris, SIU's president from 1948 to 1970.

Morris turned a sleepy little teachers' college in Carbondale into a multifaceted, multicampus institution, the "second jewel" of the state university system. He is also generally regarded as the first if not the foremost state education lobbyist, the man who wrote the book on how to compete with the University of Illinois for higher education dollars.

Unfortunately, this new biography, Delyte Morris of SIU, by longtime SIU English professor Betty Mitchell, provides few insights into how Morris accomplished what he did. Nor does it add much to our knowledge of the private side of Delyte Morris, save for a few interesting anec­dotes from personal acquaintances.

What Mitchell's book does provide is a stultifying chronology of just about every meeting or event Morris attended during his 22 years at SIU, giving equal emphasis — for example — to an interstate development commission meeting and a visit with President Kennedy: "Morris spent the summer of 1961 in Carbondale, although he attended meetings such as the Wabash Valley Interstate Commission in Terre Haute, went to Iowa City and to Springfield and Urbana — repeatedly —and on 19 June to see President Kennedy in Washington."

With access to Morris's private letters, papers and calendars, as well as news clippings and copious SIU Board of Trustees minutes, Mitchell uses them as an end in themselves, rather than as a springboard to telling what went on when the tape recorder wasn't running. The list of his achievements — creation of a separate board of trustees, a medical school, a dental school, a law school, a vocational school, a rehabilitation center, a television station and the Edwardsville campus — parades by in a dizzying procession, with little explanation of how they came about or elaboration of their significance.

One notable exception to this pattern is Mitchell's account of the creation of the engineering school in 1961. She quotes a Chicago Tribune article stating, "Passage of the legislation resulted from a deal under which supporters of the University of Illinois at Urbana traded votes with S.I.U. backers in return for pledges to defeat a bill setting up a new state board of education to regulate competition among the state's six universities."

The names of Morris's associates and political cronies are all here — Charles Tenney, John Rendleman, Buckminster Fuller, Dick Gregory, John Gilbert, Clyde Choate and Paul Powell — but how those relationships developed, what schemes these men hatched and how they carried them out receives short shrift.

Like all empire builders, Morris had political enemies, and some criticized his often dictatorial style. And like many leaders of his time, he was unable to cope with the "student power" movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were stormy protests in Carbondale between 1968 and 1972, and riots caused the campus to shut down before the end of the term in May 1970.

Weakened by student unrest, Morris's presidency was brought down in the fall of 1970 by a political scandal over financing of the new $1 million president's house. On April 10, 1982, Morris died of Alzheimer's disease at an Anna nursing home where he had been a patient for some years.

Mitchell's book recounts the basic events, but leaves unanswered many important questions. Was a separate governing board for SIU in the works before Morris arrived in 1948, or was he responsible for the crucial reorganization from which all his other accomplishments sprang? What was his motive for bringing a "Vietnamese Studies Center" to SIU during the Vietnam War? Whose idea was it to site the medical school in Springfield, and what effect did this have on overcoming opposition from the University of Illinois? What was Morris's role in planning the president's home and guest center, and did his enemies use the "scandal" to destroy him? What effect, if any, did Morris's encroaching senility have on his final years as president? These issues go unexamined.

Yet, through the daunting list of people, places and occurrences emerges a picture of a highly energetic, resourceful and direct man, a rare combination of dreamer and engineer, a hands-on administrator who spent as much time visiting with students and walking around campus as he did planning capital development projects and making political deals.

As a compendium of references for future Morris scholars, or as a gentle biography sprinkled with references that southern Illinoisans will recall with fondness, Delyte Morris of SIU is a worthwhile read. But for those who want to know how Morris built SIU, the definitive work is yet to be written. □

H.B. Koplowitz received a Delta Award from the Friends of Morris Library for his book Carbondale After Dark (1982) and other writings about southern Illinois. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from SIU-Carbondale and a master's degree in public affairs reporting from Sangamon State University. He is currently a writer for the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services.

December 1988 | Illinois Issues | 28