What you didn't know about theater-loving woman who saved the Morris
SOUTH BEND ― Carmi Murphy laughs at old photos of her late grandmother, Ella L. Morris, showing a side that only a few people had ever seen.
Morris, the woman who saved a historic downtown theater from the wrecking ball, dons a huge peacock feather on her head. There in her own home, she holds a globe and pulls an out-of-this world look on her face in one shot. She holds a stuffed toy in another shot, telling a tale that makes her small audience grin.
She is doing one of her own, small theatrical bits. Always at home on Jefferson Boulevard, where civic leaders often gathered ― and where world-renowned celebrities visited, too. Always in private.
To the rest of South Bend, she was a dignified doer.
The history:100-year timeline of Morris Performing Arts Center's history
Born in Cincinnati in 1885, Morris loved theater and wanted to be part of it. Another photo of her, perhaps in her late teens or early 20s, labels the former Ella Louise Keen in theatrical terms of “reader and impersonator.” Beyond that, her life path wouldn’t place her on stage.
Rather, she went on to marry Ernest M. Morris, founder of the Associates and of First Bank & Trust Co., which is now 1st Source Bank. Together, they became some of South Bend’s most prominent philanthropists as they left their mark ― and their name ― on such landmarks as the Ella L. Morris Conservatory at Potawatomi Park, among others. Not to forget the Morris Performing Arts Center. Yes, the one she saved.
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He minded his business work. For the rest, mostly, Murphy said, “He turned the community over to my grandmother. … They were quite a dynamic couple. He was very, very supportive of her.”
She was a “small but mighty” force, Murphy said, a “feisty little thing.”
Murphy’s husband, Chris, who’s now CEO of 1st Source, added that Morris brimmed with confidence and “did what she had to do.”
She gathered many committee meetings in her home in her countless roles, which spanned from the South Bend school board to local and statewide arts organizations. Known for her spunk and wit, she’d sit in an antique green side chair, next to the fireplace, “and she would reign over the room,” Murphy said. “It was like she was the queen of England.”
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Murphy and her brother got a taste of this on their visits, often when they were in town. They’d spent much of their youths living in New York, Spartanburg, S.C., and Nashville, Tenn., with their mother, Ernestine Raclin.
Much of what Murphy knows about Morris came in tales from her mother. Like the one about the Palace Theater. Built in 1922 in downtown, it hosted vaudeville acts and early movies in its early years, but in 1959, as the entertainment world changed and attendance declined, theater owners voted to demolish it.
“(She) said, ‘We’re going to save the theater,’” Murphy said, noting how Morris saw a need to preserve the “long-term cultural history of South Bend.”
Morris bought the theater for an undisclosed sum and sold it to the city for $1. It reopened after a $15,000 facelift and a new name: Morris Civic Auditorium.
Along with theater, she had a keen interest in music. She formed the committee that created the South Bend Symphony Orchestra and served as its chairwoman.
In fact, the world-renowned pianist Van Cliburn visited Morris’s home many times, Murphy said.
Murphy and her husband now live in that same house, with the same baby grand Steinway piano.
“People say, ‘If that piano could talk,’” Murphy said.
She can only imagine that other dignitaries stopped into the house on their South Bend visits. One time, Murphy said, her mother matter-of-factly said that, when she was 9 or 10 years old, Amelia Earhart ― the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean ― sat next to her at the dinner table.
“She (Morris) loved to bring people to South Bend,” Murphy said. “She was very, very proud of South Bend.”
Love of the arts seems to run in the family. So does giving.
Murphy’s mother, Ernestine Raclin, had served in business as, for example, chairwoman of 1st Source’s board. But she’s also given significantly to the arts in South Bend, earning her name on IU South Bend’s Raclin School of the Arts and the University of Notre Dame’s Raclin Murphy Museum of Art (now under construction). And Phase II of the Morris Performing Arts Center’s renovations would build an addition: the Raclin Murphy Encore Center.
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Morris’s other daughter, the late Mary Lou Leighton, and her husband, Judd, also became key South Bend philanthropists, with their name on buildings and on an endowment that fuels the annual Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence at the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County.
Morris died Feb. 19, 1969, at age 83.
Before then, In 1963, Morris showed off her trademark wit to 550 people who’d gathered for a dinner to honor her, saying, “I have taken so many jobs, I have to look to see what I haven’t taken.”
The University of Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, spoke at the dinner about her hard work: “Despite all the things she has done for the university, I have never had her ask a single thing for herself. She doesn’t take jobs for bows.”
Contact staff writer Joseph Dits at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Ella Morris saved Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend
