Courtesy of Virginia Morsman
along albany road
Continuity of Character 50-plus Years of Service to a Beloved Institution by Jessica Day “I’m just Jay Morsman. I haven’t done anything,” probably qualifies as the understatement of the year—the year in which Jay and Mimi Morsman will retire from Deerfield. For Jay, it has been a 53-year tenure. Mimi’s time on campus is less by only seven years; she and Jay were married in 1967, and on their wedding day, Mr. Boyden sent a telegram: “We’ll welcome you to Scaife Dormitory!” And so began the work of a couple who, with the exception of the Boydens themselves, has served Deerfield longer and with more loyalty than anyone else. After Yale, Jay was in the National Guard for a year, and then he went looking for a job. “I looked at banks,” he recalls, “Five major banks in New York, and I didn’t think that business was going to be any good for me.” So as many a graduate in need of guidance before him, Jay decided to pay Mr. Boyden a visit. Mr. Boyden, ever solicitous, first inquired about Jay’s uncle, and then thought about what Jay might do at Deerfield; he ticked off a list and told Jay he’d let him know in a week if there was an opening. The rest, as they say, is history.
6
Spring 2013
At first Jay shared dorm duty with Bob Merriam, taught, coached, and gave prospective families tours on Sundays. After he and Mimi married, things were a little different, but not too much. Recalling coming to Deerfield as a young bride, Mimi laughs and says that parents would come to Scaife and ask her if they could meet the dorm mother, “And I would say, ‘How do you do?’” While Mimi raised their three children, Laura, Jenry, and Virginia, in addition to mothering the boys on their corridor, Jay was busy in the classroom teaching American History, “The Power of the Presidency,” and a spring term class about the Supreme Court. He also coached soccer, hockey, and tennis. The memories of those years suggest constant busyness, but as Mimi points out: “It was great raising a family here—it was so safe. Our kids grew up with other faculty kids . . . we did everything together.” “Everything” often included attending games, and as the years passed and the Morsman children grew, so did some now-famous traditions . . . such as the appearance of Jay’s raccoon skin coat every fall when the hills became tinted