Editorial | Remembering a lioness: Lucy Morgan spent a half-century exposing the truth

Lucy Morgan knew, better than most, how deceptive appearances can be. How the humdrum facade of a South Florida mortgage company could be a front for massive fraud and corruption. How a seemingly casual dinner at a

Tallahassee restaurant could signal a seismic shift in the state’s political landscape. How the public persona of a respected lawman could cloak a vicious predator from view.

Lucy Morgan, Pulitzer-winning force of Florida journalism, dies at 82

She devoted her adult life to stripping away those illusions, with nary a warning to those who mistakenly took Morgan herself at face value. Early in her career, when women were rare in journalism’s ranks and mostly confined to society pages and arts news, she fearlessly tackled stories that many of her male colleagues passed by — and stuck with them even when she was attacked or threatened. Decades later, after she’d amassed a deserved reputation as a giant of Florida journalism and even announced her retirement, she could still beguile public officials and savvy businessmen into spilling their guts with a wide smile and a well-timed joke — and then dismantle their lies with dogged determination.

Along the way, she befriended governors and scoundrels; claimed every journalism prize worth winning including a Pulitzer; and mentored dozens of young reporters who followed in her footsteps at some of the nation’s most well-known publications. Philadelphia Inquirer editor Charlotte Sutton recalled eating dinner with Morgan at a Tallahassee restaurant. Morgan spotted people she recognized, went to talk with them and came back with another scoop: Lawton Chiles was planning a run for Florida governor.

And now she is gone. Morgan, who spent most of her career at the Tampa Bay Times, died last week at the age of 82.

“She had the total respect of her fellow journalists for sure, but I think she had the respect of the politicians that she interacted with,” former Gov. Jeb Bush told Tallahassee radio station WFSU. “Because they knew that she had incredible tenacity and high integrity and that’s it — she was fierce. If you got into her line of sight, her line of fire, it wouldn’t be a pretty ending.”

Bush speaks from experience. More than once, he’d see her in one of his press conferences with a pile of innocuous-looking knitting on her lap — and then be pierced by one sharply worded needle of a question. Yet he counts her as a friend. That’s how it was with Morgan; many of the politicians she deflated on a regular basis still held her in high esteem.

A few, of course, did not.

Among them:

Two sheriffs, one in Pasco County who became the target of her 1995 Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into widespread corruption and another who ended up in federal prison after Morgan investigated rumors he was forcing employees and jail inmates into sexual favors.

A North Carolina businessman whose activity, in 2007, seemed suspicious to Morgan. Even though she was on her first attempt at retirement, she couldn’t help but follow up. In 2014, he and his associates were sentenced to long prison terms after being convicted of nearly $50 million in mortgage fraud.

The judges and politicians caught lavishing tens of millions of dollars on a judicial “Taj Mahal” of an appellate courthouse in Tallahassee

And so many more.

But it is a far greater tribute that many of the politicians she’d skewered on a regular basis spoke with genuine affection and a sense of loss after hearing of her death.

Earlier this year, after the death of former Daytona Beach lawmaker Sam Bell, Morgan wrote a column for the Phoenix lamenting that Florida was “losing its lions.” Bush continued that theme this week, dubbing her a lioness whose legacy would live on.

It’s right and fitting that she will be publicly mourned Friday in one of her favorite hunting grounds, the floor of the Florida House.

But her dedication should also be remembered in a renewed quest for decency, transparency and honesty at all levels of government. It would be the most fitting legacy for a woman whose boundless curiosity and passion for justice made this state a better place for half a century.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com