05/26/2026
To commemorate Memorial Day, here is the second profile of a St. Peter’s parishioner who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country, “Red” Morrison. Six names on the Cathedral’s Rolls of Service are preceded by a Gold Star. The link to last year’s profile of Harrell Harris Hibbard is in the comments.
===================
On Christmas Eve, 1942, Elizabeth Burke Morrison and her three young children were no doubt occupied with the usual holiday traditions in their comfortable shingled home at 902 Madison Avenue in Helena. But at some point, perhaps in the early afternoon, she received word from MacDill Field near Tampa, Florida that her husband 42-year-old Ralph “Red” Morrison, had been killed that morning in an airplane crash.
A Montana Senator, Civilian Pilot Training instructor at Carroll College, and promoter of all things aviation throughout the state at the time of his death, the red-haired Lt. Morrison arrived in Helena in April 1931 to check out the manager position the new Helena airport had offered him. Flying “the Boeing route” for eleven hours from San Francisco where he had worked for the Curtiss-Wright Company that designed and manufactured aircraft, William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon Ranch, and founding his own aviation business, Red determined to stay, finding “Helena’s hospitality ‘irresistible’.
Within a week, local newspapers were reporting his every move: a trip with Fred Sheriff (Ambassador Max Baucus’ grandfather) to photograph the Sieben Ranch and Gates of the Mountains from Red’s Lockheed-Vega powered with a Wright J-5 motor. An article noting that he would be “at the Placer Hotel Saturday evening and will meet there with anyone desiring information…Sunday he will be at the airport all day and hopes to have Helena’s air enthusiasts see him there.” And predicting to his new fellow Kiwanians that within a decade long distance passenger rail would be obsolete and first-class mail would be ferried by airplanes.
In July 1933, he married Helena native Elizabeth “Bitty” Burke in a Presbyterian ceremony. A youth leader at St. Peter’s, Bitty must have been a devout Episcopalian but given Red was a divorced man, they could not marry in the Church at that time. Fittingly, the newlyweds honeymooned at Lindbergh Lake newly named after the “Lone Eagle” in the several weeks following his Trans-Atlantic solo flight. Adoring mobs dogged Lindbergh nearly everywhere he appeared. Desperate for some quietude and relaxation he stayed at a remote fishing lodge near Elbow Lake which was renamed in his honor.
Morrison continued operating his charter flight service and running his very successful flying school, affiliating it with Carroll College’s Civilian Pilot Training Course in 1939. Red trained nearly 200 aviators, including brothers Connie and Art Harrell who were members of a prominent Catholic African-American Helena family. In the four weeks following the Pearl Harbor attack, Red, Dr. Thomas L. Hawkins and others finalized the organization of the Montana Civil Air Patrol. Praised as one of the “best of its kind in the nation, having a staff of 10 pilots and 10 mechanics and owning 23 airplanes…” the CAP undertook mapping, firefighting, first aid, and parachute training in the mountains.
In May 1942, Red, who had served as a reserve officer since World War I, entered the Army-Air Corps as a First Lieutenant with 8,500 hours of flying time amassed in his 17 years as a pilot. Morrison first reported to Salt Lake City, then was ordered to Mather Field near Sacramento, then to Victorville in the Mojave Desert where a bombardier school was to be established and finally transferred to MacDill Field in September 1942.
Although Morrison was an Arkansas native and had lived in a hot and humid climate, excerpts from a letter from MacDill Field detailed his complaints and possible homesickness: “…terrific humidity, heat, stinging flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches which he says are practically animals. He says he has flown over the entire state and observed all the camps…He has also flown over the Gulf of Mexico, infested he says, with sharks and barracudas while the inland waters are populated by alligators, poisonous snakes and insects. Lately he has been flying Martins B-36 [sic], the fastest bombers in the world, which he said, ‘land faster than my planes at Helena…at full throttle.’”
Newspaper reports do not specify the designation of the medium bomber that Morrison was piloting that Christmas Eve morning, returning in foul weather from a “specially-ordered hazardous mission.“ And the newspaper typo above mislabeled the airplane, which was likely a Martin B-26 Marauder, darkly named “the widow maker” due to its high crash rate on takeoffs and landings. Reaching a top speed of 285 MPH, a B-26 required the speed on a final runway approach to be precisely 150 MPH to prevent a stall and crash. The soldier-passenger traveling with Red, Private Ralph E. Thomas of Booker, Florida, was also killed in the crash near the Avon Park field.
As rumors of Red’s death flew about Helena on that Christmas Day, the Independent Record newspaper’s switchboard was “besieged” with hundreds of calls, seeking to confirm or refute the tragic news. The funeral was held at St. Peter’s Pro-Cathedral with Morrison Flying Service pilots serving as pallbearers, Red’s American Legion post members providing an honor guard with full military honors, and dozens and dozens of his former students, fellow aviation enthusiasts, and fellow Kiwanians, Masons and Elks filling the pews.
The widowed Bitty stepped up to run the Morrison Flying Service for the next 35 years. Although she was not a pilot, she served as the secretary for the Montana Aviation Trades Association, Montana Pilot’s Association, and was active in the International Northwest Aviation Council. Red and Bitty’s son, Jeff, succeeded his mother in running the flying service for 47 years until it was sold in 1998, ending over 60 years of service as the longest-lived family-owned aviation business in the Northwest. Morrison Park, at the first curve on Old Airport Road, was dedicated in October 2000 in honor of Red, Bitty, and Jeff Morrison’s contributions to Montana aviation.
