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President Robert L. Carothers and Eleanor Milner Morris |
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Alumna establishes scholarship endowment for single moms
North Kingstown’s Eleanor Milner Morris will tell you that her idea for an endowed scholarship for single mothers attending URI came out of the clear blue sky. But if you have the chance to chat with her for a few minutes, you’ll learn that she once took in babies from the Sophia Little Home for Unwed Mothers.
“I don’t know, maybe that experience played a role,” said Morris, 88, who grew up and lived much of her life in Warwick.
Wade Wilks, URI’s director of planned giving said Morris is “a delightful lady who has been a caregiver for a good part of her life. A very independent woman, she clearly recognizes how difficult it is for single mothers to continue or complete their education.”
Wilks said the endowment will benefit single mothers at the Feinstein College of Continuing Education.
“It just dawned on me out of a clear blue sky this is what I could do to help the University and people who need it most,” Morris said. “Sometimes these women have to drop out of school, and then they need help getting back to school. Sometimes the world can be a little hard on these women, and so I thought the moms and their children could use a little assistance.”
Morris, who worked with Sophia Little for five years when she was between jobs, is used to caring for people. She also can relate to people’s suffering because of her own experiences. She lost her first husband, Ralph Armstrong, after 18 years of marriage, and her second husband, George N. Morris, died after they had been married 36 years. For 20 years she cared for her late sister, who became paralyzed after suffering a brain aneurysm, as well as for her late brother-in-law and her late mother, Waity Milner, who lived to 103.
“I guess I have always been busy,” said Morris, who also traveled extensively to China, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, South America, Spain, Portugal, the Rhine River and Denmark.
A graduate of the home economics program at URI, she started her career as a cookery demonstrator at Narragansett Electric and later worked at General Electric for 30 years.
Through the years she volunteered in other areas as well, from president of the Mothers’ Club at Norwood Baptist Church to founding East Greenwich Leisure Learning.
But what’s most on her mind is a little baby she treasured and nurtured many years ago from the Sophia Little Home. “Through the efforts of a friend, I am going to have a chance to see her again. That little baby is now 55 years old. Can you imagine?” she said with a sense of awe.
By Dave Lavallee
