Inspiring memorials will help friends and family remember the late Jeff Morgan.
Tracie Vickerson, Morgan’s neighbor for two years, said she is trying to get a compact disc made with Morgan’s songs on it and then to sell it to anyone who would like it. The money will go to Morgan’s mother, Joy, to help pay for some expenses from Morgan.
“I wanted to do it out before the end of the semester,” Vickerson said. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Vickerson said she knew Morgan in a way some people didn’t. One was his love for children. She said he would spend hours playing Xbox with her son, or talking with her daughter, or anyone in his neighborhood, and also the children with cancer at the hospital he was treated at. She said he loved kids.
“Every kid in our neighborhood – there were six single moms over there that lived in the duplexes on Washington Street, and every one of us had at least two kids,” Vickerson said. “He would walk out there and it was like ‘Jeff!’ He was so generous, and he was so loving and so tender with every child he came into contact with. And you could never tell his favorite one.”
Morgan’s roommate senior McCoy Nelson said these memorials are something that would help the family in one of its greatest times of need.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Nelson said. “Anytime someone dies, especially an unexpected death, the family is in a financial bind.”
Baker alumnus Joshua White, member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, is working to establish a scholarship named the Jeff Morgan Scholarship, which will be $1,000 a year. It will go to a student in good standing, most likely a sophomore Kappa Sigma, who is very involved in the house and Baker’s extracurricular activities. White said he wants someone who exemplifies what a Baker student should be. The money is being donated by anyone who would like to give money. The money will go toward either education or house bills.
“One thing that I thought was neat about Baker when I went there, was that you know you can be involved in a lot of different things. We’d like to keep that idea going of being a Kappa Sig, but also being involved in Baker’s community events and stuff like that,” White said. “I know Jeff was really involved in Kappa Sigma.”
Those who would like to donate money to the Jeff Morgan Scholarship Fund, can contact Joshua White or the president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, junior Chris Woolery.
Joe Watson, assistant professor of communication, said the students who worked with Morgan in the radio station have remembered him together. When the Baker radio station met Tuesday night, they decided to talk about Morgan and share memories of him.
Another memorable thing the staff did that night was pay a special tribute to Morgan on air with the existing radio staff, Nelson and a former disc jockey on KNBU. They had a two-hour show about Morgan.
“They talked about Jeff, played his favorite music,” Watson said. “Jeff always used to get a lot of grief because he was a country music fan, and he was about the only country music fan on the radio staff, but you know they played country music and they talked about Jeff’s favorite songs … to play tribute to him.”
They also talked about how he did so many things that no one knew he did. Each year the station has awards given to its staff. It was decided this year that Morgan would be given the Best DJ of the Year. Also, the staff agreed that it wanted to make a permanent memory of Morgan. To do this, it decided on an award named the Jeffrey A. Morgan Collegiality Award to keep Morgan’s memory alive.
“This award is going to become the big award for radio students,” Watson said. “It’s going to be voted on by his or her peers and it’s going to go to the student who, like Jeff did, go above and beyond the call of duty to help out their fellow radio staff students.”