Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Morrison, Mary Ellen May 4, 2019
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Pat Currigan currigan1932@comcast.net August 26, 2020, 9:47 am

Ionia Sentinel Standard-Wed. May 15, 2019

MARY ELLEN MORRISON
This obituary is over forty years overdue. Given the medical treatment at the 
time. Mary Ellen Morrison should have died of breast cancer in the early 
1970's. By the grace of god, she passed into the light on May 4, 2019.

She used that time to become a  mother to far more people than her own 
children. Our family is a story of the family she gathered around her. It 
began with her doing her high school algebra homework with her niece Debbie 
on her lap. By the time of her diagnosis, she and her late husband, John 
Morrison, Jr. had two young children, Johnny (now JoJo) and Suzie. After her 
recovery, she threw herself into working with the resettlement of Vietnamese 
refugees. Among those was a young boy, Thanh, who became our brother and 
later gave her a grandson, Matthew.

With the second wave of Vietnamese Refugees came the Kieu family and 
separately Quy, who gave her a granddaughter Huyen (Lisa) and now a great-
grandson, George. A Tanzanian foreign exchange student, Mark, became like 
another brother, with three more grandchildren. Suzie added to the circle of 
love a granddaughter, Danielle. Upon retirement to Unicoi, TN, there were yet 
more adoptive grandchildren, Janey and Richard, and a whole new bunch of 
children to share her love with through Todos los Ninos de Dios, a ministry 
of the local church.

This list of names could be twice as long and still omit people who called 
her Mom or Grandma, many of us were captured in her prolific art and 
photography, or were the recipients of her knitting, sewing, and crafts. Her 
motto; "I can make that." And she could.

With a family like ours, we cannot begin to list all of those who mourn her 
passing, but there are four in particular to hold in your prayers; Carol and 
Richard Payne, her sister and brother-in-law, Doris McNeeley, her sister-in-
law, and Robert Haynor, her companion on many adventures, including Ireland, 
Russia, Australia and an African safari.

Visitation will begin at Berlin Center UMC. 3042 Peck Lake Rd. Saranac, at 5 
p.m. Tuesday, May 14, with services at 6 p.m., followed by a reception, and 
internment the next morning at 10 a.m. in Saranac Cemetery. This will be a 
celebration of Mary Ellen's life and bonus forty years. In lieu of flowers 
donations may be made to UUMC Hispanic Ministry, 702 Virginia St., Unicoi TN 
37692. Arrangements in care of Lake Funeral Home in Saranac. Online 
condolences may be made at lakefuneralhomes.com

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