GERALDA MILLER • RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
1/10/2011
Reno High School sweethearts were among those shot in Tucson by a gunman who went on the rampage that killed six people and wounded 14.
Dorothy Morris — “Dot” to her friends — was one of the five people killed Saturday in the Safeway parking lot on the north side of Tucson, Pima County sheriff’s officials said. Her husband, George, was in serious condition Sunday afternoon at the University Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Jo Gellerman said.
The Morris’ were at a town hall meeting held by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Nev., whom Jared Loughner, 22, is accused of attempting to assassinate in the attack that killed six other people.
Doctors Sunday were optimistic about Giffords’ chances for survival.
Friends say the Morrises were inseparable.
“Everything they did was together,” said Bill Royle, who lived several blocks from the Morrises in Oro Valley, Ariz. “So this is going to be very devastating for George.”
Marilyn Melton, a Reno resident who is Bill Royle’s sister, said she knew George and Dorothy Morris from their high school years. Both came from families with strong ties to Reno, she said.
Dorothy Morris’ father, William Burns, retired from Keystone Fuel and mother was a retired medical assistant.
“We always had our block parties in the Burns’ front yard,” Melton remembered.
She also remembered being with the Morrises about 10 years ago at the cowboy poetry event in Elko.
“Dot was just a sweet, quiet, lovely person,” she said. “I think what you’d call her is just nice, a nice lady, a nice human being.”
After about 54 years together, Bonnie Royle said, they still acted like newlyweds.
“He always called her his girlfriend or his bride,” she said. “They were so much in love.
They just loved being together and doing little things.”
The Morrises moved around 1995 just blocks away from the Royles in Oro Valley, a town just six miles north of Tucson.
Bill Royle said George Morris had called him, asking how they liked living in Arizona.
“Then they moved here,” he said.
The couples spent two weeks in England several years ago, Bonnie Royle said.
“They were more intellectual,” she said. “They read a lot, explored. Oxford was one of our favorite spots.”
Other neighbors, Don and JoAnn Newland, told the Arizona Republic that George Morris, a staunch Republican, loved talking politics and probably attended the “Congress on the Corner” event, where the shootings occurred, to hash out issues.
“Maybe he wanted to ask her a question,” he told the Arizona newspaper. “George is the kind of guy who would do that.”
JoAnn Newland said the Morrises’ daughter told them that George Morris, a retired Marine, tried shielding his wife from the gunshots.
“George heard the pop-pop and tried to throw Dot to the ground and get on top of her, but it was too late,” she told the newspaper.
George Morris suffered two gunshot wounds, JoAnn Newland said.
George Morris, who graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1956, became a Marine pilot, then took a job as an airline pilot, flying for Pan American and United airlines.
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