Married on November 30, 1968 in St. Louis, Mo
James R. Morgan and Barbara Louise Garegnani
“Let God's Will Be Done”


As number 10 of 11, the only reason I'm here is that mom and dad's idea of birth
control was “Let God's will be done.”  A hell of a burden for me, but as the best
looking of all the Morgans, I always had that in my favor and it’s a good thing,
because education was not.  By the time I arrived at the house on Michigan, the
entire family was there except for Chris, who arrived not long after.  So Michigan is
where I got my start.
As a little boy growing up in the early 1950’s around South Broadway was always an
adventure.  At a time when close parental supervision wasn’t as necessary as it is
today, kids had a lot of freedom to get themselves into trouble.  In my case, the older
siblings already had their own lives to worry about, so that left me to take care of
myself most of the time.  I could leave the house all day with the simple explanation
that I was going to play at a friend’s house as long, as I let mother know if I would be
home for lunch.  I could be gone all day, but I had to follow the golden rule of being
back home before the street lights went on. The first time I wandered off, everyone
panicked and went out looking for me and mother says they found me ten blocks
from home at Bellerive Park. There I was, sitting on a bench next to an old man who
was a complete stranger.  It turned out that he was a harmless character, but the
story shows how independent I was at a young age. The South Broadway
neighborhood provided plenty a lively background for my adventures.  At that time,
work horses were still commonly used to pull wagons and I have a vivid memory of
the nasty blue medicine the men would apply to the horses’ coats.  Street vendors
were typical characters wandering the streets, including the knife sharpener doing
his rounds with his cart, ringing his bell “ding, ding, dong!” to announce his arrival to
potential customers, the vegetable man yelling out the details of the day’s stock,
and the “ragmen”, mainly black men, picking through the trash for hidden
treasures.   Times were tough in the country and St. Louis had its share of men out
of work and homeless, the “hobos”.  All the kids were told not to go near the woods
by St. Mary and Joe’s where they lived.  We were also warned to stay away from the
shanty town where the poor lived down by the Mississippi River near Bellerive Park.
Of course, kids always want to do what they are told not to, so we often headed
down the railroad tracks by the river to observe the men, who were usually drunk. To
a small boy, daily life felt as vibrant as a circus.  
Those early years were also filled with several traumatizing episodes and to this day I am still deeply affected by cruelty to animals (and people)
and cannot stand the sight of blood.  When I was unable to watch scenes in popular horror movies as an adult, my children found it funny, but it
is a direct result of early experiences.  My 6-year-old eyes would have been better off if they were sheltered from the scenes I witnessed.  At the
scrap yards along South Broadway, I watched as a group of men were brutally beating a horse get it in a trailer, only to later see them kill it to put
it out of its misery.  I also remember dad’s particular way of killing the chickens for dinner.  Instead of breaking their necks the way most people
did, dad would line up what seemed to me like 50 chickens, but was in reality probably only three or four, against his tool box in the backyard.  
He swiftly chopped their heads off and we watched the spectacle of their headless bodies running around squirting blood everywhere.  It was
quite a graphic sight and one that doesn’t exactly give you an appetite for dinner.
Everyone has good memories of the big house on Michigan Avenue.  That is the house where I was born, and the one I lived in until I was 7
years old.  The main thing that I remember is all of the repairs that seemed to going on constantly.  I was always tagging along and trying to help
out, but I am sure I just managed to get in the way.  I remember when we built a luxury doghouse for our pet, Duke, and when the white picket
fence was built and Joe was praised for this project which really spruced up the house.  Being around and helping out on all the projects helped
build both my work ethic and the foundation of my carpentry skills, both of which would come in handy years later when I found myself building
luxury dog houses for clients.  The Michigan house used to be a confectionary and had a coal chute that lead down into the basement.  Once I
was trying to help dad move some things down into the basement through the chute and forgot to let go of the load. I fell and managed to break
my collar bone in the process.  It seemed like I was always getting in trouble or getting hurt when I was a little boy.  I remember there was an old
brick well in the back yard on Michigan.  To me as a little boy, it seemed like that well was deeper than the ocean, but it may have only been a
few feet deep in reality.  It was an accident waiting to happen because it was only covered up by a few boards.  I somehow managed to avoid
disaster and injury related to the old well, but I would have plenty of other incidents.  Another attempt to help dad out ended in disaster when I
went with him to the auto mechanics.  His car wasn’t running properly, so he didn’t want to turn it off and risk the motor not starting again.  He
instructed me to sit in the car and keep my foot on the break until he got back, but the attention span of a 5 year old boy is not suitable for tasks
that require much focus, and I eventually took my foot off the break and the car crashed.  I was devastated that I let my father down when what I
wanted to do what help, but he was very understanding about it and reassured me on the way home that he was not angry and it wasn’t a big
deal.  In addition to the broken collar bone, by the time I was eight years old I had also broken my arm when I fell off a wall by the school
grounds at St. Mary and Joe’s.  Ann was working close by at the time, at the Laverne Park Restaurant, and came running over to help me.  She
knew it was not good when my arm bent in more than the usually places.  Normally, we always walked or took public transportation to get where
we needed to go, and the only time we took a taxi was when someone was hurt; so I had my fair share of taxi rides.   Once I was even
transported by the Fire Department because, as amazing as it sounds, I was also hit by a truck in my youth.  Luckily, I didn’t sustain any major
injuries from that accident, but I am sure it looked bad to witnesses as someone ran down the street to get the Fire Department.  The spot
where the accident happened was only 100 feet from my home, but it was still a big show having the Fire Department take me.  I have scars
from stitches on my wrist and chin from other falls when I was a kid that serve as reminders of my childhood around South Broadway.

Feeding 11 children was not an easy task during the time of World War II, but while men all over the country were unemployed, dad always had
one or two jobs.  In a time when not many families were able to buy homes, we owned a big house across the street from Mayor Tucker – I
though we were rich!  Mom and dad were ingenious at making ends meet and trying to make the best of the situation.  Since dad could not
afford to get Frank a piano when he showed an interest in music, he bought him a harmonica instead.  For Christmas, they built the “tradition” of
buying our tree on Christmas Eve, but the real motive behind the tradition was that the trees were cheaper that late in the holiday season. I have
fond memories of mother's home baked coffee cake and the other tasty treats that always filled the house with pleasant smells.  She made the
most of her limited food budget when turning it into delicious meals.  The rest of my life I tried to recreate the memories of her good food, always
coming up short.  I substituted quantity for quality and that has gotten me where I am today, on average I have been 50 pounds overweight for
the past 20 years, and I have only recently learned to manage these eating habits and start shedding pounds.  
Joining the Morgan clan towards the end of the line meant there was a bigger
age difference between me and my closest siblings, unlike the older children
who were all very close in age. Pete was 4 years older than me and Chris was 4
years younger, so we didn’t play together very much. This made life around the
house a little lonely, but there were plenty of friends my age in the neighborhood
and all the brothers and sisters did their best to help each other out.  Having
older brothers and sisters always left a strong impression on me and I thought
my older brothers were the coolest guys in the world.  I was totally impressed by
Joe and his buddies when they showed up at the house on their motor scooters.  
On the other hand, I also remember that Joe was pretty tough on me and never
let me off easy when I did childish things.  Our neighbors donated our first
television set to us when I was still little, but it wasn’t very nice.  Once Ann started
working she managed to buy us a new television set which was quite a luxury
product at the time, and I remember sitting in the confectionary room watching
“Howdy Doody”.  I believe we always had a phone in the house, but I don’t think I
ever used it as a child.  In our neighborhood, instead of calling your friends by
phone, you would run down the street into their back yards and shout out their
names until they came outside. It was an unwritten rule that children always went
around back and never rang the bell or used the front door.
I was only six years old when our father died and I don’t remember much about the actual events.  I do remember that during his wake, Uncle
Francis thought that the younger kids didn’t need to stay the whole time at the funeral parlor, so he took me and Chris down the street and bought
us ice cream, which was a real treat for us and brightened our spirits.  Everyone did their best to try to help out the family and to help me fill the
void that was left in my life by my father’s death.  Joe and Tom did the best they could while still very young by joining the navy so they could send
some money home.  Unfortunately, after they had already joined they found out that the per person allotment is reduced when more than one
member of the same family joins.  The “fire truck story” is a good one to show how big brother Frank did his best to take care of me, his little
brother.  We lived next to a Laverne Park Restaurant in the German area of town (the restaurant was located in the building that formerly housed
the first public kindergarten in all of the United States) and I was friends with the son of the owners, Anthony Pijut, who was around my same age.  
They were wealthier than our family and lived a few blocks away, but we would play together when he was at the restaurant.  One day he showed
up with a new, shiny, expensive toy fire truck.  I got my hands on the truck and for some reason I started pounding on it and smashing it to pieces.  
Frank came upon this scene and realized that I was going to be in big trouble so he came up with a plan to save the day.  In between our house
and the restaurant was a vacant lot and some men were working there cutting weeds.  When they stopped for their break, Frank took the battered
truck over there and laid it in the grass next to the cutting tools to make it seem like the workers had caused the damage.  What a priestly thing to
for Frank to do!  So even though in a big family you often had to look out for yourself, you could always count on a sibling to help you out if you got
into a bind.  

Everyone remembers the “Miracle on Michigan” and some of the details that I remember from the actual day were that I ended up standing in the
front yard in my underwear and Uncle Bob, who was living with us at the time, managed to get out with a lot of belongings and was holding up an
extra pair of his pants like a victory trophy.  The firemen had to force mother to leave the house, but before she did she grabbed the ice cold statue
of Mary from the burning sideboard.  We later joked that someone started the fire to burn Frank's harmonica since everyone was so sick of
hearing him play it!  While it was a miracle that the buyer we had lined up to purchase the house still went through with the sale, I think the real
miracle is that so many people heard about the story and remembered it for so long that it became a part of local history.  When we lived on
Murdoch over ten years later I became friends with the Palazzoas and the Scalizzi boys.  When I met their mothers for the first time they asked me
about my family and where I was from.  When I told them I was Jimmy Morgan and that I used to live over on Michigan, they immediately
remembered our family and the “Miracle on Michigan.”

School was a real drama for me as a young boy.  I ran away from kindergarten on the first day and that proved to be a sign of things to come.  As
an aside, looking back on my education experience it is remarkable to note that St. Mary and Joe’s was the first integrated school in all of St.
Louis, so I was one of a few students of my generation to attend grade school along side black students.  Catholic school adopted this practice
before the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling on public school integration.  After my father’s death, and after failing second grade at Mary and
Joe, we moved to a small house on Grace Street in Resurrection Parish, with all of the boys sharing one room down in the basement.  We had to
leave behind our dog, Duke, which made it an even sadder day for a small boy.  Our new neighborhood was quite a change since my reality on
Michigan exposed me to a real ethnic mix of Germans, Italian, Blacks and Hispanics, among others, but my new school was full of only white
children, which seemed strange to me.  We stayed there for the next three years and things at school did not get any easier for me there.  

Between the ages of eight and eleven I used to go fishing by myself at Carondelet Park, a mile and a half away from where we were living on
Grace.  I used mother’s bread dough as bait because it worked better than worms.  I made friends with the Bauman brothers who lived in our
neighborhood.  They had recently moved to the city from Lemay, on the boarder with St. Louis County, and we used to walk together all the way
back to their old house and even past that to Jefferson Barracks, a round trip of over six miles.  My first and only arrest happened while I was
about nine or ten years old and we were living on Grace.  A friend and I watched the rich kids riding on the mechanical horse in front of the five and
dime about six blocks from our house.  Being the perceptive kid that I was, I noticed the sound that the coins made when parents dropped them
into the slot.  I figured out that the coins fell into a bucket in the pony's stomach through a hollow tube and it was not hard to reach up into that
bucket, so we went back after the store was closed and there were not many people around and I put my hand under the pony's stomach and
pulled out all of the money.  We got away with it the first time and we couldn’t resist the temptation to go back again for more because it was so
easy.  This time we were not so smart and tried to pull our trick when the store was open and of course we got caught.  


I managed to move along to fourth grade, but got held back again there.  Catholic schools at that time had a special education office on Lindell
where I was given an I.Q. test and other tests to gauge my reading, math and learning skills.  They found that my intelligence was above average,
and since learning disabilities like dyslexia had not been defined or diagnosed at that time, they concluded that I simply was not making enough
effort in class and that I was basically a juvenile delinquent.  They decided to give me special help with reading a few times a week which meant
that I had to leave my regular school, walk by myself six blocks to Grand Avenue to catch a streetcar, and then transfer to Lindell bus line to arrive
at the special education office.  The trip was over five miles to meet with a woman who had good intentions, but was not even a certified teacher
and was assigned to my case while volunteering at the office.  Her main tactic was to tell me all the reasons why I should love to read.  I
remember asking if she had a car and she said she did and that she lived closer to my school than to the special education office.  It would have
made more sense for us to meet at my school, but that is not the way the system worked, so I continued my pilgrimages across town.
From our house on Grace, Mother used to send me to the Colonial bakery, fourteen blocks
away and across the railroad tracks, where they sold the “day old” bread at a cheaper price
than the price at the regular supermarkets.  She would send me off with fifty cents to buy
ten loaves of bread.  I remember one time I arrived at the bakery only to realize that I had
lost the fifty cent piece somewhere along the way, so I frantically retraced my steps looking
for the money but I couldn't find it.  Mother was very upset when I arrived back home empty
handed because fifty cents was a significant amount of her monthly food budget.  I
remember her saying, “Let's kneel down and say a prayer”, which we did before retracing
my steps again together.  I was scolded the entire time as we walked along, but when we
were nearing the railroad tracks we saw something shining like a mirror a half block away
and naturally it was the fifty cent piece: Let God's will be done.  I befriended another “old
man” while living at the house on Grace.  He was our neighbor, a Dutch immigrant who
spoke only broken English and everyone called him “uncle”.  He took me under his wing,
gave me my own little tool box and would teach me how to build and repair things;
however, he was missing a few fingers, so it taught me to remember that safety comes
first!
When I was 11 years old, I joined the boy scouts along with the rest of my friends and found that I was at a disadvantage because there were a lot
of father-son activities.  We had a campout and somehow mother roped Joe, who was 21 at the time, into acting as my surrogate father, which I am
sure was no fun for him.  He had to hang out with a group of 40 year old parents while a bunch of kids were running around.  Tom took me along
on his squirrel hunting trips, but while his intentions were very good, my strong aversion to killing animals made the outings less than
memorable.  First mother then Frank tried to get me involved with music by signing me up for drum lessons and later for guitar lessons, but I ran
into trouble with both my teachers since they were not very flexible in trying to work with my needs.  The drum teacher insisted I play the way the
Civil War drummers played with one drumstick held straight and the other between my fingers, but the injury on my wrist from falling off the wall
presented problems in holding the drumstick between my fingers so those lessons didn’t last very long.  The guitar teacher insisted that I had to
read sheet music in order to be able to play the guitar.  Since I had enough trouble reading English, much less sheet music, and he refused to just
teach me to strum some cords, we didn’t get very far either.  My inability to fit into the typical student mold, and teachers’ inability to adapt to a
student’s needs was a recurring dynamic in my early life.  

While I was still young, older siblings were already getting married, and I served as the ring bearer in Marge’s wedding. Ann eventually joined a
convent and a bunch of us would head down to the Notre Dame convent to spend time with her on visiting day.   Later when she graduated from
the convent and was placed as a teacher at a school in a town in southern Illinois, “the popcorn capital of the world”, Bernie’s boyfriend Rich
“Spook” Saboka drove us all the way there for visits in his 1957 Ford hot rod.   When she came back home after leaving the sisterhood,  she bought
me my first and only brand new bike; lavish gifts like these were reserved for only the youngest of the siblings.  While I was still in grade school,
Bernie worked at a local movie theatre. I could never afford to pay to go to the show, but she would let me in for free.  One of Kay’s first jobs was
working at a Miss Hulling’s Cafeteria, and she always brought tasty food home from work which were treats compared to our usual fare of bologna
or potatoes.  Later when Bernie had a steady job and was making decent money, she would spoil us by buying each of us our very own pint of ice
cream from Mary’s Confectionary.  Everyone worked hard, chipped in and did what they could to take care of one another.  

Mother always wanted us to live in a nice house in a middle class neighborhood so she made that a priority and one way or another we were able
to move into a big house on Murdoch in St. Mary Magdalene parish when I was 11 years old.  I had to repeat the fourth grade again there, but I
made it through eighth grade by the time I was 15 and eventually moved on to Southwest High School.  The year I arrived at Southwest was also
the year that the first black student attended.  Everyone called him the “Lone Ranger”, and called him many other inappropriate names behind his
back, and he deserved a Medal of Valor for being able to handle that experience.  So I wasn’t the only one that had a tough time that year.  Living on
Murdoch I often felt like the odd man out since most of the kids had money and I didn’t, and I was older than all of the kids in my class so I didn't
really hang around them either.  By the time I got into high school I was already several years older than my classmates, and I never felt
comfortable in the school environment.  I didn’t make it past my freshman year and I dropped out of school as soon as I was legally allowed to at
age 16.  It was around this same time that we made our final move into the house on Walsh Street.  I made one final attempt to go back to high
school a year or so later, but didn’t do much better the second time around, so soon quit for a second time.

There was always music in the house and I was exposed to several generations of sounds from my older brothers.  Tom was a fan of big band
music and Frankie Lane, Mario Lanza and Frank Sinatra, while Frank and Larry loved jazz and show tunes.  I was influenced by Tom, Frank and
Larry’s music, but I was part of a new generation – a generation of Elvis Presley and the rise of rock n’ roll.  St. Louis was an important part of the
rock n’ roll scene because we had acts like Tina Turner and Chuck Berry.  I clearly remember the first time I saw Tina Turner perform.  I was twelve
years old and we were on our way home from the Avalon Theatre on Kingshighway, where we usually spent our Friday nights at that age.  The
Thunderbolt Lounge was down the street and advertised “The Ike and Tina Turner Review” and around 9:00 PM as I was walking home past the
front window I saw Tina standing on top of the bar in a mini-skirt belting out a song to the crowd below, and that experience was something very
special.  Forty years later she is still jumping around and singing with the same passion, and it makes me feel like I am older than she is.  But it
was sometimes hard to listen to your favorite radio station or watch your favorite television program since the biggest of the bunch always won
control of the selection, but that is the way the world works.  My older brothers were not happy with my preference for rock n’ roll, and they made
their best efforts to steer me away from it.  Larry went as far as taking me to see a movie about jazz, or so he thought, called “Newport Jazz
Festival”.  However, it turned out that the movie was actually about the downfall of jazz and the rise of rock n’ roll showing the scene during the
Festival when Chuck Berry and Ray Charles started singing rock n’ roll and the rock fans got in a fight with the jazz fans.  So that actually helped
fuel my interest in rock.  Again, when I was told not to do something I usually wanted to do it even more.  I was not supposed to go to Gaslight
Square, the district in St. Louis with many bars and clubs with live music, so of course I did.  When I was 17 and 18 years old, I would go to the
Whiskey-A-Go-Go and other bars to watch Chuck Berry and others perform, and because many of my friends were in bands we could get in without
having to show identification to prove our age.
I did not always have as much time as my friends for cruising around and dating,
because I was usually working one or two jobs.  I got my first job while living on
Murdoch, helping out a neighbor with his newspaper stand.  When a stand eight
blocks away became available, I took that one over and would go there to work every
day after school.  I learned how to make change at a very young age and I had to be
sure to always have enough change in case someone paid with a five dollar bill.  The
Sunday editions came out on Saturday night so we would pick it up and travel the
streets with our wooden carts selling the papers door-to-door.  The carts had metal
wheels which made a lot of noise against the cobble stone streets and we would add
to the commotion by hollering out “Post and Globe, get your weekend Post and Globe
Paper.”  We ran up to the porch to deliver the paper and if the weather was cold or
rainy, people would usually give us a tip since it was the end of the week and most
people received their paychecks every Friday.  The boss of the paper circulation in my
neighborhood was an eighteen year old boy and in addition to his responsibility of
making sure all the routes and stands were covered, he worked  the  best  post  in  
neighborhood  in  front  of  the        Living Room on Murdoch Street
church after mass on Sundays.   I  remember  that  he was
a tough guy and a scary boss that took care of all the younger paperboys, but also
keep us in line.  While I had my stand they raised the price of the papers from five
cents to seven cents, which was a great deal for us as paperboys because we would
receive three cents in tip on most sales!  Only the little old ladies would ask for their
change back, but most men left it as a tip and we felt like we were earning a small
fortune.  So we were not too happy when the high inflation rate of the time caused
them to quickly raise the price to ten cents and people bought fewer papers and rarely
gave tips.  I was part of the last generation of boys to work in the corner newsstands
because they replaced us with the self-service, coin-deposit newspaper boxes.  So I
moved on to a bigger and better opportunity working at “Kiddy Land” operating the
boat rides for $16 a week, and I thought I was rich with that salary! I worked five nights
a week after school and Saturdays from 12:00 noon to 10:00 P.M., turning the ride on
and off, setting the timer, and loading and unloading kids twice my size.  That did not
leave much time to do my homework.  The supervisor at Kiddy Land did not register
us with the authorities, so he got in trouble with the Social Security office and almost
went to jail, and it was time for me to move on to my next job.  
Each of my jobs was better paid than the last, and this time I found myself working as a pin setter at the bowling alley at Mary Magdalen.  Father
Mullaly was an entrepreneurial man and built Mary Magdalen church, school and facilities, including a very nice gymnasium and the state-of-the-art
Mallaly field where Pele, the world-famous soccer player, stopped by for a personal appearance when he was in St. Louis.   Father Mullaly set up
several businesses on the facilities and used the profits to maintain the gym and the field.  One of his money-making operations was a bowling
alley in the basement of the gym.  I earned ten cents a game hidden behind the lanes, setting up the pins and returning the bowling balls.  Each kid
was responsible for two lanes; setting one lane while people bowled on the other one. Obviously this was before child labor laws were strictly
enforced and it was not easy for a little kid to roll a big sixteen pound bowling ball down a long chute, not to mention that we were often hit by the
flying pins.  But we were happy to slide out from behind the scenes at the end of the night, take a bow and receive the tips that were thrown down
the lane for us.  We especially liked it when the men would drink more than they should because the drunks gave the best tips.  While still in grade
school, I left the bowling alley to peddle drugs…..no, I was not an illegal drug dealer!  I was the delivery boy for the local pharmacy bringing
prescriptions to patients on a bike with a big basket hooked on the handle bars.  I was still so little that I could almost fit in the basket myself, but I
never would tell anyone that I couldn’t handle something, so I did my best to ride that bike up and down the hills of South St. Louis making my
deliveries.  Many of my deliveries of “medicine” were actually deliveries of alcohol to women who were alcoholics but were too embarrassed to go
to the store to buy alcohol because their neighbors would find out about their problem.  Of course, this was completely illegal since I was a minor
and it made quite an impression on me when the women would stumble out of their house in their bathrobes to receive their whiskey from me.  
While formal schooling was not very conducive to my acquiring knowledge, I did learn many important lessons in life through my many jobs
growing up.  I have always been fascinated by observing what is going on around me and listening to people.

By the time I quit high school, I was a troubled youth.  I got a full time job downtown at a stationary store as a delivery boy earning $1.25 per hour,
which was the minimum wage at the time, and at the end of the week I had to turn half over to my mother.  I spent most of the other half on the hour
long bus ride to and from work each day and to buy myself lunch.  In the 1960s, downtown St. Louis was very different than it is today.  It was the
center of most business activities, full of stores and offices, and the streets were always bustling with people.  The store where I worked was right
in front of the grounds where the Gateway Arch was under construction so I saw that happen up close.  While making my rounds to the different
office buildings, I made friends with the elevator boys who were typically black men between 20 to 40 years of age.  Many of them were highly
educated, but were unable to get better jobs.  I remember one in particular who had a French last name, Dupree, so he was able to get job
interviews when he sent his resume since they could not immediately recognize that he was black based on his name, but he never would get past
the first round of interviews.  There must be something about my face that gives people the idea that I am a good listener, because for as long as I
can remember people are always telling me their stories or confiding in me about their problems.  Most Americans my age can remember exactly
where they were and what they were doing the moment they found out that President Kennedy was assassinated.  In my case, I was on my way
back from a delivery and I immediately sensed something strange was happening since the busy streets became silent within a matter of minutes;
it was as if a storm was coming.  When I arrived back at the store, the news of the assassination was confirmed.

During the time I was working at the stationary store, I got in a bad car accident with my friends and had to quit my job while I was recovering.  I
went out to a fishing club house in Pacific, Missouri, with a group of friends and we were all drinking.  At that time, Pacific was a rural area, not part
of the greater St. Louis area as it is today.  When we ran out of booze, all six of us piled into my friend’s 1950 Chevy to get more and we drove 70
miles per hour down a windy gravel road with no seat belts on.  Drunk driving is never a good idea and this time it ended badly when the car
swerved and rolled over and I flew out of the window.  Somehow I landed up against a post on the side of the road and I would have been
completely crushed if the car would have rolled over one more time.  I had blood running out of my nose and my friends thought I was dead and
called the highway patrol, but not before taking all of the cash out of my wallet to actually buy the booze and later return to the cabin and drink it!  It
turned out, luckily, that I survived with only a broken nose and broken breast bone. Poor Joe had to come out and get me.  I had to wear a brace and
bandages for a while, so I lost some of my good looks (but not too much!), and my job as a delivery boy as a result, but it could have been much
worse under the circumstances.  Once I recovered, I started working at St. Anthony’s Hospital at Grand Avenue and Chippewa (before they moved
out to the county where they are today), and then took the bus down Grand to work at St. Louis University Hospital going room to room renting
televisions to patients.  Each room was set up with a television stand and a fake television when the patient arrived, but they could rent a real,
working television from me for $2.00 per day.  It was important to always promptly collect the money, otherwise you could arrive to the room and the
patient may have been discharged or even died, so you might miss a whole day’s fee.

As I said, my good looks always helped me get by a little easier and while most of my friends had a hard time finding a date; it never seemed to be
a problem for me.  Even as early as sixth grade, while living at the house on Murdoch, the girls from the eighth grade class came to sing at our
doorstep, proclaiming their love of little Jimmy Morgan.  I think my sisters were more concerned than entertained by this episode.  As we got older,
my friends were always worrying about having the coolest car possible to help them attract the girls’ attention.  Of course I could never afford a car,
but I would always manage to find a girl that would take me our in her car.  The life of a teenage boy in the early 1960’s was a lot like it is portrayed
in the move “American Graffiti”; cars played an important role.  My friend Rich Diffly, who was later the best man in my wedding, had a 1957 Chevy
which was a cool and fast car.  Another friend would borrow his dad’s 1958 limited edition Cadillac El Dorado convertible, a huge boat of a car, for
everyone to pile into on date night.  So I always managed to cruise around in style and we would drive from one Steak n’ Shake to another, and
there was always someone racing in the street.  I actually never took the driving test because I had a childhood friend, Jamie Gilmartin, who was
also later in my wedding, take it for me using my name and birth certificate since I was not sure I could read well enough to pass the test.  I was
never violent as a teenager and I never got into fights, even though there were plenty going on around me.  Illegal drugs also became a common
part of the teenage scene, but I never smoked a single joint or took a single drug in my entire life, so I guess someone was hearing my mother’s
prayers.  I had seen other guys overdose on harsh drugs and knew the terrible effects it could have, so while I might not have been the smartest kid
on the block, I was smart enough to realize I should stay away from drugs. Cigarettes and alcohol were the hardest substances I ever got involved
with.  I always managed to have a good time with my friends and we stayed out of trouble for the most part and I made it through my teenage years
relatively healthy and happy.
When I was still 17, I was lucky enough to stumble into a good decision that would help
positively shape the next few years of my life.  I was bumming around with my friend Bruce
Funke, whose father was a Sergeant Major in the National Guard.  Around this time events
were taking place in the world that would eventually lead to the Vietnam War.  I was oblivious
to this, but Sergeant Major Funke could see the writing on the wall and forced his son to join
the National Guard.  I tagged along with Bruce to the meeting and listened to the pitch the
Officer gave and thought that it sounded like a pretty good deal.  I got paid pretty well for a six
year commitment.  After an initial period of basic training, I had to report for six months of
active duty and then for the next five and a half years, I had to participate one weekend a
month and attend summer camp for two weeks each year.  I had heard something about the
draft already at that point, but was not registered yet.  I asked the Officer if I could also join the
National Guard, even though I was only 17.  Today I would not even qualify since I didn’t have
a high school education, but he was more than happy to sign two young men up in a single
meeting, so I became a part of the 220 Combat Engineer Company and I was off to basic
training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, otherwise know as “Fort Lost in the Woods,
Misery”.  A few months later all hell broke loose in Vietnam and the draft was put into full
effect, but I never left U.S. soil during my time in the service.  
The National Guard was not taken very seriously by American society and was a disappointment to the government as they planned for the war
since the Guard was not qualified or trained enough to be sent over to fight.  Our company was seen as the equivalent to “Animal House” of the
Army.  Members of the Guard were at the bottom of the list (and literally last in the lunch line) as far as the Army was concerned.  The regular
enlisted men came first, followed by the drafted men, then the Army Reserve men and finally the National Guard, but I managed to make the best
of it.  The first eight weeks of basic training were intense and the second eight weeks were less intense and more specialized.  During the first
days at camp, a buddy of mine told me to remember that “they can kick you and bite you, but they can’t eat you.” There are a lot of horror stories
about basic training and I found that many were true, and some guys ended up having nervous breakdowns or went AWOL and got arrested.  I
always kept my sense of humor and took things more lightly than most of the other guys since I was already used to being kicked around from my
experiences growing up.  Music crept back into my life during my time in the National Guard.  As part of the questionnaire they asked if you play any
musical instruments, so I marked down that I could play the drums.  When no one volunteered to play the drums during basic training, they pulled
out everyone’s file and found that note in mine and I became the one to beat out the “left, right, left, right, left” rhythm on the bass drum. So I
marched along with my pack, my rifle and my drum.  That experience dampened my musical inspiration on the drums, but even today I still own a
guitar and work on teaching myself to play.  

For my second eight weeks of training I was assigned to a mechanical training facility in Aberdeen, Maryland.  My profile evidently showed that I
was a mechanical genius, so my skills in that area landing me with an extra 5 weeks of training because I was sent to the elite mechanical school
for a full training course.  At the time I saw this as complete torture instead of as a reward, since I was afraid of anything that had to do with school.  
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the instructors at this school were focused on results, and didn’t care much about the method that I used to
get them.  With a basic description of the problem, I could always deliver results since no one was hovering over me telling me how I was
supposed to be doing things.  They didn't care if I could spell mechanic, just that I are one.  I thrived in this environment, finished at the top of my
class, and realized for the first time that I was not stupid; I had just been at the wrong kinds of schools growing up.  The Army facility at Aberdeen
was very large and brought soldiers from around the country as well as some Vietnamese soldiers who were being trained.  Because the War
was underway, there was a serious shortage of manpower so local civilians were called in to work on kitchen duty, and we only had to serve “KP”
duty on the weekends.  The mess hall was open 24 hours a day and while most of the rich kids didn’t like the food, those of us that grew up less
fortunate couldn’t get enough.  Overall, I had fond memories of my time there and it helped me form the foundation for my working life and create a
new found appreciation for education.

Back at home in St. Louis after basic training, my brother Tom got me my first professional job at a local machine shop called Shelton Machine.  
My boss was a neurotic, but I learned a lot from him.  Having gotten past my fear of education, I went to school again at O’Fallon Technical School
four nights a week to study machine shop and welding and it was then that I realized how important it is to always be learning.  This is an
obsession I have had for the rest of my life and the major focus of efforts as a parent.  While working at the machine shop, I accidentally cut off the
tips of two of my fingers in one of the machines, so I took that as a sign to move on.  While I appreciated Tom’s favor in getting me the job, I saw
that the company was shrinking instead of growing under the direction of my crazy boss, so I quit and looked for my next opportunity which turned
out to be a manufacturing job at H&H Machine shop in North St. Louis, working the production line to re-build automobile motors for Sears catalog
customers.  I quickly learned that manufacturing jobs are no fun and I focused on getting out of there as quickly as possible.  I immediately seized
an opportunity to replace a man who did not work on the line who got sick and could not come back to work.  I asked my boss if he would give me
a chance and told him I was studying machine shop at night.  He gave me a shot and I picked it up quickly, making my co-workers pretty jealous,
since the new position provided more freedom.  I was 18 or 19 years old at the time, making around $3.00 per hour at H&H, and I managed to
save up enough to buy my first car – a used 1957 Chevy.

I was toward the end of my time at H&H when I won the lottery and met my wife Barb.  My brother Pete and his wife Judy were recently married and I
was one of the groomsmen in their wedding.  I was paired up with Judy’s friend Judy Zeller, who was already engaged to be married, but I realized
that Judy had a lot of nice friends and I asked her to fix me up with someone.  She told me to get lost and that she wouldn’t take the responsibility
for setting up one of her friends with a bum like me, but I managed to convince her that I was changing and becoming a real stand-up guy.  She
was working at Union Electric and set me up on a blind date with one of her friends from work, Barb Garegnani, a cute little Italian girl from the Hill
who drove a 1968 Mustang.  Our first date was a double date with Pete and Judy, but they went home early and we headed to the Arch grounds
downtown.  The arch was still pretty new at the time and the neighborhood was relatively safe.  Barb was shocked when I kissed her on our first
date, but behind her distress I could sense she also kind-of enjoyed it.  We dated for several weeks and I was somehow able to avoid meeting her
parents, but I couldn’t put it off forever.  Barb invited me out to Maple Leaf Lodge, a picnic grounds that her father owned with his investment group
out in the county with a swimming pool (with water that smelled like sulfur!).  We had to stop by her house to get her bathing suit so I reluctantly
went in to meet her parents.  She told me not to worry because her dad never said anything about the guys she dated.  The next day Barb told me
that he did say something this time; he told her that he thought “that boy looks a little too fast for you, Barb.”  I am sure they were even more
concerned when one of our early dates was to the James Brown concert, at a time when he was not a crossover act and played to mainly black
audiences.  Barb’s neighbor worked at the Keil Center and got us free tickets.  I am sure I was a sight to behold to her parents when I showed up
with long hair, a royal blue Nehru jacket, and a gold chain and medallion around my neck.  Nevertheless, we were engaged after dating for six
weeks, I am sure to her father’s dismay.  I quickly got the idea that my future mother-in-law was not a huge fan of me either.  Half way through our
engagement, I showed up one day at Barb’s house to find that her mother had invited her ex-boyfriend over to the house to see if she could get
them back together, but luckily Barb was not interested.
My friend Rich Diffly was working at Marlo Coil Company on South Grand and was able to
get me a job.  Although my new position at H&H was an improvement, it was still not ideal,
so after exactly one year there I was happy to leave for a better position building one-of-a-
kind custom air conditioners.  It was still a manufacturing job, but it was much more
flexible.  I worked along side the older men and they delegated the tasks they didn’t want
to me.  I watched them closely to learn as much as possible.  I also watched everyone
else with better jobs to learn what they were doing in case one of them would fall over
dead and I would have the opportunity to pick up where they left off for an instant
promotion.  One of the older men gave me some advice that the “big money” was in
heating and cooling contracting.  The mere mention of the term “big money” was enough
to send me searching for heating and cooling programs and I soon started studying again
two nights a week at Ranken Technical School.  While still studying at night at Ranken, I
heard about the G.E.D high school equivalency test so started going to school to study for
that at the same time. It was an additional night each week and Barb helped me study,
otherwise I would have never passed.  So I spent most of our engagement working hard
and going to school and Barb would call me in the mornings to wake me up and make
sure I got to work on time.  Even though I dropped out of high school, I managed to stay in
school on and off for the rest of my life!  
When we did have time for going out, I remember taking her to the Morgan-
Ferenbach family reunions over in Jerseyville, Illinois.  My Aunt Toots worked at the
glass factory that had a large picnic area there for their employees. Barb was from a
small family with only one brother and a few cousins, so she was amazed to be a
part of my huge family gatherings.  Everyone would bring lots of food and spread it
out over a long table under a pavilion.  Most of the woman had their very own famous
recipes, so we always had six different chicken preparations, a bunch of different
potato and vegetable dishes, and a large assortment of pies and desserts.  Some of
the relatives I remember from those reunions, besides my Aunt “Toots” were my
cousin Norbert and his parents, our Uncle Leonard, whom we called “Uncle Shorty”  
and our Aunt Theresa, one of our mother’s sisters. I also remember Uncle Joe and
Aunt Mary, another of our mother’s sisters, and their children and our cousins Junior
and “Happy” Beil. These were just a few of over 100 people that would show up for
these reunions.  
]
After a year long engagement, and while I was still working at Marlo Coil, Barb and I
were married on November 30, 1968 at St. Ambrose Church on the Hill by my brother
Frank, who was still a priest at the time. Frank arranged the wedding with guitar
music, which was a very “in” thing at the time and Ray Repp was the musician who
played a folk rock mass.  I guess I was goofing off during the ceremony and we were
all enjoying ourselves a little too much because one old Monsignor, a friend of Barb’s
father, was upset enough to write a letter to the archdiocese complaining that the
mass was out of hand.  Our wedding was a day-long affair and I don’t think I fully
realized what I was getting into because an Italian wedding was really something
else.  After the mass, we headed over to the reception at Czech Hall on South
Kingshighway and Devonshire, across the street from the Thunderbolt Lounge, and
only one block away from our old house on Murdoch.  My father-in-law pulled out all
the stops for the wedding of his only daughter, and held a party that would really
impress his friends and neighbors.  Most of my friends and family had never been to
a reception with a sit-down dinner, and ours lasted for many courses.  I invited my
Hispanic barber, the one responsible for all my cool hair styles when I was younger
(he was a performer that would show off his hairstyles while singing and dancing, he
was quite a character), and he couldn’t understand what was going on.  He was
already full after the salami and cheese, but told me that he somehow managed to
eat the chicken and ravioli from later courses because everything was so good.  
My buddies were happy to get to the reception to have a few Budweisers, but by this time we
were already getting tired because we were out late the night before for my bachelor party.  It
was innocent enough compared to today’s standards, but we had a good time at the Playboy
Club downtown and my friends even got matches labeled “Jim’s Last Stand”.   So by 9:00 P.
M.I was ready to leave and managed to pull Barb away from the party.  Ironically, the hotel
where we spent our wedding night, on Lindell Boulevard, was the same place were both my
mother and Barb’s grandmother would later live when it was eventually turned into a
retirement home.

My father-in-law lent us his brand new 1968 Pontiac for our honeymoon, and we drove down
to New Orleans, which turned out to quite an eye-opening experience for Barb.  She had
been talking about the trip non-stop for weeks, and some of her friends from work told her
she needed to check out a famous show of female impersonators once she got down there.  
We drove around for hours trying to find the nightclub that her friends told her about and
when we finally arrive it turns out that it was a gay club.  The first thing we saw was two men
kissing on the curb nearby and Barb nearly had a heart attack and refused to get out of the
car, so we never made it to that show.  Later we went to dinner at one of the most famous
local restaurants in town and Barb decided to be adventurous and ordered the house
specialty of frog legs.  She didn’t feel quite as adventurous when the plate they brought out
was piled high with full frog bodies!  I had to send back the poor little “Kermit the Frogs”, and
we soon received a personal visit from the chef who was insulted that his world famous frog
legs were returned by the out-of-towners.  On our way home, I tried to be a good son-in-law
and buy my father-in-law a nice present to thank him for lending us his car.  He was a wine
drinker, so I thought he would enjoy some of the strawberry wine that they sold on the side of
the highway throughout Mississippi, so I picked up a few bottles for him and a few for Barb’s
grandfather.  It turns out that the wine was made by Pioneer Liquor Company of Missouri, so
of course I never heard the end of that one.
Back in St. Louis, as newlyweds, we lived in an apartment on the second floor of Barb’s Aunt’s house on the Hill.  Barb continued working at Union
Electric and by that time I had been promoted to warehouse manager of Marlo Coil and worked right down the street on Shaw.  The owners gave
me the key and I pretty much ran things on my own.  I must have seemed like a trustworthy guy because I was always given the keys to the building
at every place I worked.  Halfway through my second year of school to become a certified heating and cooling technician, Marlo Coil wanted to
switch me to the night shift.  I explained that I couldn’t switch because I went to school at night, but I didn’t have much seniority so I didn’t have
much say in the matter.  So I decided to leave and find another job instead of switching shifts and quitting school.  I applied for a heating and
cooling position at a vending machine company, but they were looking for someone who had finished school and had more experience.  I
convinced them that I was a hard worker so they hired me for an entry-level position doing rounds in one of their trucks and said it could lead to a
technician position down the line.  The job paid more than Marlo Coil, and my goal was always to make more money than at my last job, so I
became a truck driver for a while until I finished school.  However, I never ended up working in the heating and cooling field because shortly after I
got out of school Barb’s Uncle Turk stopped working at my father-in-law’s contracting business, and so Barb’s dad offered to take me on as his
new apprentice carpenter.  It seemed like a pretty good deal because carpenters made as much as heating and cooling technicians, so it was
back to school for me again, working and studying carpentry, and this became my occupation for the next forty years.

After a few years of living above her Aunt’s house, Barb wanted a house of her own.  By that time, I had my share of living so close to her parents, so
we started looking for houses in Webster Groves, where Barb wanted to live.  Our main business as contractors was remodeling, so it made
perfect sense to buy an older place in Webster and remodel it, but my father-in-law got the idea into his head that we should build a new house, so
we started looking for lots out in the county so we could have a big yard.  On our visits out to Maple Leaf Lodge, we passed a new subdivision that
was being built off of Telegraph Road that already had a few large two-story and ranch houses that looked very nice, so we picked out our lot,
saving $500 by picking one that was on a slight incline.  We started building the house on weekends and were prepared for it to take a long time to
get finished.  We planned on moving in and living on the second floor once it was ready while the first floor was still under construction, but we
received so much help and support that the entire house was finished in no time and we were able to move in right as Barb was pregnant with our
first child, in Spring of 1972.
We were a young couple, doing our best and working hard.  We had a nice house
and nice cars and although there may have been things we wanted, we always had
everything we needed, but we soon suffered our first tragedy together.  In her fifth
month of pregnancy with our first child, Barb went into labor early. I rushed to
Lutheran Hospital to sit outside her room helplessly as doctors went in and out.  
Eventually around 5:30 in the morning, they told me that we had to rush the baby
downtown to Children’s Hospital because of the complications from the premature
birth as the baby weighted only one pound three ounces.  I had to call the ambulance
myself and then they wouldn’t even let me ride in it and I had to take my own car.  In
my panic to get to the hospital I left my headlights on and when I jumped in to follow
the ambulance, the battery was dead and I had to call a taxi.  There was little they
could do for our son, James, when he arrived at Children’s Hospital and he died a
few hours after arrival.  Those were hard times for us and it was tough for Barb to go
back to work and tell everyone what happened.  But a few months later, Barb was
pregnant again and this time she carried the baby to nearly full term.  She went into
labor the second time a few weeks early and we went into a nervous panic thinking
of our recent experience, but the delivery went well and our son Steve was born as a
healthy baby on June 30, 1973.  However, he only weighted four pounds three
ounces and the doctors required us to keep him at the hospital until he reached five
pounds, so we were camped out there with him for the first two months
After a few years working with my father-in-law, I ventured out on my own and continued to
do remodeling, building custom homes and handling all phases of construction.  With the
value of honestly ingrained in me by my mother, it was sometimes hard for me to compete
in the cut-throat business of construction.  It is not necessarily a good business tactic to
trust everyone as much as I did, so owning my own business had its ups and downs, but
all in all a very good living.  When I went out on my own, my mother told me a story that she
had been keeping to herself for many years.  When I was in grade school, Sister Mary
Emma, the principal of St. Mary Magdalen, often took me out of class and brought me to the
convent to help with repairs and other projects.  She told my mother that I while I wasn’t very
good at school work; I was very good with my hands.  She told my mother her prediction
that I would probably grow up to work with my hands and marry someone to take care of the
paperwork.  “Let God’s will be done”.  After Steve was born, Barb did not go back to work at
Union Electric and stayed home to help me with my business.  
We wanted to have more children, but since we never could figure out what “caused” kids,
we didn’t have much luck.  We consulted specialists to no avail and finally were
considering the idea of adoption.  A woman from the adoption agency came to visit us on a
house call and mentioned that adoption would cost several thousand dollars.  Being as
cheap as we were, I think those words were enough to help Barb get pregnant right away!  
Our daughter Jayne was born a big, healthy baby on March 17, 1978 and our daughter Beth
followed soon after with a smooth delivery on November 27, 1979.  So we quickly went from
a family of three to a family of five, which took some getting used to.  
Two parents can easily handle two children, but three became a balancing act,
especially since I was always very busy working.  I made my children’s education
a priority in my life.  My good friend George Giudici told me, “If you want your kids
to do well in school, you need to go to all the parent-teacher conferences.  If you
want your kids to do really well in school, both parents need to go to all the parent-
teacher conferences.”  So Barb was always helping out at school and I made
sure to get involved.  Steve was a very bight kid and started out doing very well in
school, which made me happy since I had such a tough time, but at his parent-
teacher conference in Second Grade his teacher suddenly announced that he
would have to be held back.  This would have been the start of the same pattern I
followed, and I absolutely would not stand for this so I began my campaign
against teachers and their cooker-cuter education methods and took Steve to a
private school where he got the attention he needed with teachers that would be
flexible to his needs.  Despite his learning disability, dyslexia, and a genetic eye
disorder that I found I also had, he was able to return to public school with
reading skills above average compared to the rest of his class.  We soon found
that the public school system was always going to let us down, but I made it my
personal campaign to make sure he always received the attention he needed
and he made it through high school without ever being held back; but, like me, he
was better with his hands than with books.  

My daughters were lucky that learning disorders tend to be hereditary in males,
but usually not in females, so they had an easy time in school.  They both played
sports, and I always made time to get involved with their soccer teams.  The other
soccer parents used to call me “The Reverend” because I would give them
“sermons” during the out of town trips to tournaments.  My famous line was: “I
want to see my kids on the front of the Wheaties box, not on the back of the milk
carton”, so I would spend my time worrying about the kids and planning activities
for them, instead of hanging out at the bar drinking with the other parents while
their kids ran wild through the halls of the hotel.  I seemed to get a reaction from
other parents quite a lot about my parenting methods.  My philosophy was that I
expected my kids to get in trouble, because if they weren’t getting in trouble that
meant they weren’t being kids.  I thought it was my job as a parent to get them out
of trouble so it was my goal that they would always call me first if they ran into any
kind of problems instead of trying to figure out what to do on their own or take the
advice of their friends.  I think my strategy worked because there were plenty of
times when I found my self driving off in the middle of the night to pick one of them
up.  
We have been supportive of everything that our kids decided they wanted to do with their lives as long as they were always covered by health
insurance and it meant that they would be able to take care of themselves.  We did the best that we could and we must have  done  a  pretty  good
 job since all of my kids turned out to  be  incredible,  independent people.  Now that they have all moved on, Barb and I are back to living by
ourselves and after 38 years we are still best friends.  Steve has two boys, Austin and Sammy, so I am already a grandfather.  They both have the
Morgan good looks which should serve them well.  Barb took revenge on me and went back to school to become a teacher.  Now that she has
her Masters Degree in education, she has joined the ranks of my enemies, but hopefully she can help change the system from the inside.  The
house that we built together felt too big for only the two of us, so once I retired we sold it and I started my latest project completely remodeling the
house we bought in Crystal City, Missouri, which should keep me busy for a few years to come.  

To bring my chapter to an end, I thought it would be appropriate to let my wife and children say a few words about what being a Morgan has
meant to them and have a chance to give their point of view on my life.
According to Barb Morgan:  Being married to a Morgan for
so long I have learned that you can always tell one of the
Morgan boys, but you can’t tell them much.  I see in Jim the
traits that he learned from his mother; to be honest and
trustworthy and always do the right thing, and he has truly
lived by that. Although you would never guess it when you
first meet him, he is a very sensitive guy, and cries at sad
movies and even when he hears the national anthem.
According to Jayne Morgan:  Being a Morgan means
being “nice to the nerds”, advice he gave me when I
was young and I am glad that I followed, basically, to
be nice to everyone.  It also means that I was the envy
of all the kids on the block, all my friends in school
and all my colleagues at work because my dad would
always build me cool, one-of-a-kind things.  As a kid it
was a deluxe playhouse complete with a fireman’s
pole and tire swing and our pool with a custom-built
deck; in grade school it was the best science project
display; college it was a bar, complete with overhead
glass holders; at my office he showed up with a
beautiful wooden clock that shows the time at our
other offices around the world.
According to Beth Morgan:  Being a Morgan
means that you are always right, which can
be difficult when you are surrounded by other
Morgans.  It means being creative both with
your mind and your hands:  building homes,
writing books, carving your name in a dying
tree in your front yard or designing costumes.
 It also means being adventurous: moving to
a new city, starting your own business or a
joy ride on a fast motorcycle.
According to Steve Morgan:  Being a male
Morgan means that you are not good at
coming up with or writing these kinds of
things!  So I leave the task to my mom and
sisters for now.  
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Let God's will be done.  Jim