John Christopher Morris, where are you?

In everyone's life there is someone who influenced us in such a way that it helped to guide us to who we have become and the destiny we strive to acheive. When I was thirteen years old such a person came into my life and in fact may have saved my life. I grew up with an extreemly abusive mother. She was having many mental problems and had a tendency to take things wrong in her life out on me. I was adopted when I was an infant and my parents had three of their own children later. I always felt like an outcast and was treated that way by my mother. There are many subjects on teenage suicide but until someone has lived with that option in their own life they may never understand the entire perspective. I had a hobby of searching the AM radio waves and logging radio stations I heard around the world late at night on an old Wards Airline radio. One day an article appeared in our local newspaper that a local disc- jockey was forming a 4H radio club. I attended the meeting and their I met John Christopher Morris the organizer and director of the club. John took me under his wing. My favorite hangout was radio station KODY in North Platte, Ne. where John was employed. Everyone who worked at the station helped me learn about radio, even giving me little bits on the radio. Every evening was spent at the station as was every weekend. I was safe there. My mother couldn't hurt me and I felt wanted. I know I must have been a pain in everyone's butt, but they never let on so. I idolized John Morris. He was everything I wanted to be. He kept me safe and even though I had a real problem with lying and stretching the truth (to make my life appear to be better than it was) he listened and guided me. He was not just a freind but my mentor. Over the past 26 years I have lost track of John and want to thank him. I spent 15 years as a professional truckdriver where Johns influence continued as I helped over 100 runaway kids get home. I worked in radio off and on for 4 years and now own a printing company and mail order advertising company. I have two children of my own and they have never known abuse. Thanks to John the chain was broken. John Christopher Morris is probablly in broadcasting journalism somewhere in the midwest. He would have worked at KODY in North Platte Nebraska in the early 1970's. Today he would be around 50 years old.

John's care, pateince and concern for a 'wayward' teenage boy changed his lifes course to become a mature, repsonsible and successful man. For that I am grateful