Abigail Rose Morris

Abigail Rose Faber was born on January 10th, 1926, to Ida Lillian and Samuel Charles Faber in Hagerstown, Maryland. As a youngster, Abby was privileged to study all aspects of dance, deportment, elocution, and the required social graces of the time, from the finest teachers available.

At age 4 and a half, she began studying piano with Clara Bollinger Stouffer, a noted composer of piano literature.  Abby’s fifteen minutes of fame began in 1930, at age 5, when she was entered into a statewide contest in Baltimore. Abby came away with all three prizes offered: most talented child, most beautiful, and healthiest. The event was featured in the Pathe News in movie theaters across the country.  She and her parents received gifts of gold pieces, sets of china, dolls of many lands, and photography sittings.

At age 9 Abby played a piano composition called, “Majesty of The Deep,” which won her a piano scholarship to Peabody Conservatory of Music.  Her summers included several weeks at Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskill Mountains. The hotel ran a day cap for young children, which Abby attended. The famous entertainers who appeared there in the nightclub were required to give classes to the children campers, so Abby learned from the best comics, instrumentalists, actors, and singers.

From then on, Abby’s entire life was immersed in the arts. In high school, she was introduced to Shakespeare. She fell in love with his sonnets, many of which she committed to memory. Her favorite writers were Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Noel Coward. She adored Broadway musical theater, ballet, and symphony orchestras, which she felt were miraculous creations.

She was a graduate of York Junior College and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Radiography, where she earned the third year internship.  Upon completion, she moved to New York City. There she held several positions before spending most of her career at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. While there, she raised funds for the nursery’s bassinets and one of the first-ever portable X-ray machines. She also organized and directed the nurse’s chorus, played organ for them to sing at daily morning chapel services, and single-handedly wrote the monthly House Organ, the hospital’s newsletter.

While in New York City, she continued studying music and dance, and attended chemistry, literature, and music classes at Brooklyn College and Columbia University.  She became co-director of The Ford Foundation’s “Drama for Discussion.”

In 1951 she married Morton M. Morris, then a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. Morton died in 2010 after establishing the Special Education and Clinical Services Department at I.U.P.

Two daughters survive them: Susan Claire Morris, Claudia Morris Lawrey and husband, Bruce.  Abby leaves a sister, Gytelle Bloom, two nephews: Steven Bloom and wife, Regina; Richard Bloom and wife, Susan; grand-niece, Celeste, and grand-nephew Alexander.

Abby loved Indiana, and will long be remembered by the hundreds of citizens who participated in her many musical revues that raised money for various local community organizations. She moved to Indiana in 1964, and in 1965, at the Indiana County Fairgrounds, presented her first production. It was for the Indiana Tourist Bureau.

In 1990, following a performance of her 1990 production, “Showcase Indiana,” Mayor J.D. Varner took the stage and read a proclamation naming April 27th Abby Morris Day in Indiana.

Her final production was in 1993, for the Downtown Businessmen’s Association. Between those years, she wrote and staged eleven more productions, each with “casts of hundreds” of local folks. She was also a beloved piano teacher for 42 years.

For 27 years she tried to establish a School for The Performing and Fine Arts, but the local arts council decreed that the town could not support such an undertaking. Until her last days, she continued to hold out hope that some day such an arts school would come to be in Indiana.

One of her proudest accomplishments locally is co-founding The Indiana Players.

Abby wrote two songs for her beloved Indiana: “An Anthem for Indiana,” and “Downtown Indiana,” a jazzy up-beat celebration of the business district. Her hope was that these songs would be learned and sung by local citizens at many community events.

There will be no funeral visitation. The Bowser-Minich Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. If anyone chooses to make a donation in Abby’s memory, please consider The Indiana Players and The American Lung Association.