Thomas Lee Morris

Thomas Lee Morris, 78, of Laurel, Maryland, passed away August 26, 2026. Tom Morris was born June 23, 1948, in Seattle, Washington. He lived through the hardest years of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, and, as far as anyone remembers, never raised his voice once. One can imagine him nodding quietly while a drill instructor screams in his face. We could have told him that would never work. Tom brought a sense of reasonableness, tolerance and empathy to every situation. He is sorely missed. Tom grew up on a small blueberry farm with orchard and farm animals outside Seattle, Washington, the adopted son of Lee and Fannie Morris, along with his younger brother, twin sisters, and cousins. He worked the farm as a child, and that was enough agriculture for him; he never planted a vegetable garden or a fruit tree for the rest of his life. As a child, he witnessed the test pilot “Tex” Johnson’s famously unauthorized barrel roll of a prototype 707 passenger jet in 1957, and Tom later worked at the Boeing factory. He was part of the first integrated class of Puyallup High School, the class of 1966. He was drafted from the Boeing factory for the Viet Nam war, where he ran telephone wires as a communications technician. He was wounded in service when someone shot up a bar that he happened to be in, but since that bar was on the “prohibited” list for soldiers, his wound was the least of his concerns. When Tom came back from Viet Nam, after a stint at the Pentagon he left the army and took a job as a security guard at Computer Sciences Corporation. When a position in the copy room became available, quietly competent and professional Tom Morris was the natural choice. Over his 37 year career he rose to positions of increasing responsibility until he was head of publications. If your I.T. person asked you “Have you tried reading the manual?” anytime in the 1970s or 1980s, there is a real chance that Tom printed that manual. Tom is also informally credited with preventing several acts of violence among his coworkers. If two people were having a conflict, the best thing you could hope for is that one of them was in Tom’s office getting de-escalated. Tom was married briefly in 1975, but he and Connie parted amicably after a year. Tom and Margaret’s first date was to her high-school daughter's concert, so he should have known what he was getting himself into. They married in 1996 and they spent the next thirty years living close enough to love each other but not close enough that his TV watching or her piano and violin playing got too annoying. In the first four years of their marriage, her elderly mother moved in for a long convalescence following an injury and then her father for the last few years of his life, so Tom and Margaret started out with whatever the exact opposite of a nice quiet time to get used to each other is. Later, his father lived with them for the last years of his life and Margaret didn't have a leg to stand on, complaint-wise. Tom was Margaret's rock through many challenges, some of whom will be at the ceremony on Tuesday. Late in life, Tom reconnected with his extended birth family, and knowing them and visiting with them brought him great joy. Tom brought empathy and a willingness to help to every situation. He never brought drama, or neediness, or problems. In the unlikely event that you got crosswise with Tom, he was immediately ready to repair and move on. If you knew Tom, you knew he loved fishing, NFL football, a good steak, a comfy chair, and you. He leaves behind a loving wife, a basement full of stuff nobody knows why he saved, and a legacy we could all take a page from.

Tom is survived by his wife, Margaret Knox Morris, her children who he considered his own, Mariam d’Eustachio and Gregory Hunanian, and his five grandchildren, Grace, Samuel, Nicholas, Regina and Olivia.

Prayers of Visitation will be held at Saint Cosmas of Aitolia Orthodox Church 6315 Princess Garden Pkwy, Seabrook, MD 20706 on Tuesday, September 1,2026 from 9 am until 10am with a funeral service starting at 10 am. Interment to follow at Holy Trinity Orthodox Cemetery in Elkridge, Md.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Thomas L. Morris’s memory may be made to the Vietnam Veterans of America (vva.org) or to K9s for Warriors (donate.k9sforwarriors.org).

If you’d like to leave comments or memories of Tom online, condolences may be made at www.donaldonfuneralhome.com.