Clarry
and Joe Morton
Clarry and Joe Morton were High
School sweethearts, who married shortly after they graduated
from Maine Township High School, #207, in Park Ridge,
Illinois. Clarry Richardson was the middle child of three, a
good student, but a woman who sincerely wanted ‘only’ to be
a wife and mother of a large family. That’s not to say she
wasn’t well read, and intelligent, but she was truly, a
mother, long before she had her family. She and Joe met as
Freshmen, and while they initially dated others, they were
continually drawn to one another, and began dating each
other exclusively when they were in their Junior year.
Joe was a football and baseball
player, somewhere in the middle of six boys and three girls,
who lettered in both sports, and took over his family’s farm
when he graduated High School. He went to a local college
nights to get his AA in Farm Management, and after many
years of marriage to Clarry, still called her his ‘bride’.
They married in the fall, after they graduated high school,
and their eldest child, Charles, was born some eighteen
months after they married. They had four daughters, Tess,
Missy, Sami and Suzi, after ‘Chip’ was born, and they
decided that a family of seven was enough for the farm, as
prosperous as it was, to support. He and Clarry took over
the farm after their marriage, and his brothers and sisters
wanted nothing to do with a ‘farmer’s life.’ Their marriage
is a good and solid one, based on mutual love and affection,
as well as shared interests. When they do get away from farm
and family, they love to travel, and Chip’s Naval career
gave them good reason to. They have become fond of the Santa
Barbara area of California, and have talked of retiring
there, but neither one of them want to give up ‘Midwestern
Winters’.
Joe and Clarry are very proud of
their son Chip, and his ‘brother’ Lee Crane, whom they
‘adopted’ at first meeting, parent’s day at the end of Plebe
summer. Both look at Crane as Chip’s brother, in every way,
save that he wasn’t born to them. Clarry calls them ‘her
boys’ and there isn’t a family event that Lee isn’t invited
to be part on of. Chip’s sisters look on Lee as ‘just
another big brother’, and he has several godchildren among
the Morton girls families. Uncle Lee is just as popular with
the little ones as Uncle Chip. |