OBITUARY

OLIVIA SALAS MORRIS

Teacher was foster parent for numerous children ==================================================

Dallas Morning News, The (TX)-June 9, 2005
Author: JOE SIMNACHER, Staff Writer

Olivia Salas Morris was a longtime Spanish teacher who had been a foster parent for 30 years.

Mrs. Morris, 64, died June 1 of complications of diabetes at Medical Center of Plano.

Services were Wednesday at the Wildwood Chapel of Restland Funeral Home, with burial in Restland Memorial Park.

Mrs. Morris was quick to make and remember friends, said her husband, Willis E. Morris of Plano.

"If she met you and she saw you sometime later, she would ask about you as well as your children, and something specific about your children," he said. "She would know the children by name."

Mr. and Mrs. Morris had been foster parents to about 26 children since 1975, through the Waco-based Methodist Children's Home.

"We've had a child - sometimes only one - in our home every day for 30 years," he said. "Sometimes we had as many as five, but we've never been without one.

Mrs. Morris also adored the children she taught, her husband said.

"She stepped right out of college into teaching," he said.

Born in Dallas, Mrs. Morris was a graduate of North Dallas High School and North Texas State University, now the University of North Texas.

She began her teaching career in 1963 at Samuell High School in Dallas. She married and taught for two years in Ohio before joining the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District in 1967. She taught at R.L. Turner and Newman Smith high schools during her 12 years with Carrollton-Farmers Branch.

During her career, Mrs. Morris taught Spanish, except for an occasional class in beginning French, her husband said.

Mrs. Morris was out of teaching for about 10 years during the 1980s, when she worked with the Texas Department of Health in Dallas, her husband said.

In 1990, she returned to the classroom in Plano, where she was a substitute for two years. She next taught at Princeton High School in Princeton. She took medical retirement in 1996, her husband said.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Morris is survived by four of her long-term foster children, Jennifer Boyd and Samantha Jones of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Stephanie Boyd and Mary Russum of Plano; her brother, Mike Salas of Plano; and a sister, Idali Fontecchio of Hattiesburg, Miss.

Memorials may be made to the Methodist Children's Home, 1111 Herring Ave., Waco, Texas 76708

The Dallas Morning News - June 9, 2005
Submitted by Edward Lynn Williams

MORRIS
OLIVIA S.
NOV. 25, 1940
JUNE 1, 2005

Restland Memorial Park, Dallas, Dallas County, Texas