In Sunday’s (10/23) Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas), Michael Granberry writes about Lonnie Morris, who realized a 60th-birthday wish to conduct an orchestra after a near-death experience on a cruise to Alaska in 2007. “Since age 13, he had weathered a condition known as ulcerative colitis. Stranded on a ship, his insides gave out. Lifeless and limp, he flew home from Anchorage, his future bleak. He languished in the hospital until April 2008, returning home for a few days at Thanksgiving. Twice his doctor told him that he should say goodbye to his minister and wife because, in the doctor’s words, ‘I don’t think you’re coming back.’ So, what happened here on a recent Sunday night is, as Morris and his family say, nothing less than a miracle. The man who twice hovered at the doorstep of death realized a lifelong dream of conducting a symphony orchestra. … The lanky Morris powered the Plano Symphony Orchestra through Procession of the Nobles by Rimsky-Korsakov, Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (The Organ Symphony) by Saint-Saëns; and Marche Slave by Tchaikovsky.”
Posted October 24, 2011
