Lael Warren Morgan

1936 - 2022

Lael Warren Morgan died July 26, 2022, from chronic illnesses.

Morgan was born May 12, 1936, in Rockland, Maine, the first child of Hazel and Eugene Warren. Her father was a salesman, and her mother an English teacher.

In 1947, the family moved to Augusta, where Morgan graduated from Cony High School. She became a drama major at Emerson College in Boston. In 1957, she transferred to Boston University, School of Public Relations and Communications.

In 1958, she married Dodge Morgan, a former Air Force officer. Graduating cum laude in the summer of 1959, she traveled with her husband to Anchorage, Alaska.

From 1963 to 1965, the Morgans sailed over 25,000 miles from Maine, via the Panama Canal to Hawaii and Juneau, in a schooner. Returning to Alaska, the couple separated but remained married until 1971, when they got a better-than-amicable divorce.

Morgan started her journalist career as a student writing for the Malden Press. In 1965, she worked for the Juneau Empire in Alaska, and one year later moved on to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. In 1968, she moved on to Jessen's Weekly in Fairbanks, and later was hired by the Los Angeles Times in Orange County, California. In 1971, she won that paper's Photographer of the Year award for best photo feature.

In 1971, Morgan resigned from the Los Angeles Times to work for the Tundra Times, an Alaska Native newspaper based in Fairbanks, which was battling to protect Native rights. A year later she won an Alicia Patterson fellowship, backed by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which helped her establish a national reputation as a reporter/photographer.

Morgan subsequently embarked on a freelance career working for Alaska Northwest Publishing, the Washington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and National Geographic Magazine. She graduated from the Nick Harris Detective Agency in Los Angeles and worked for Quest Detective Agency until she acquired her own license in 1983.

Morgan earned her master's at Boston University School of Communication in 1987 with a focus on publishing. In 1988, she and a partner established Epicenter Press. That same year she joined the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she taught writing, photography and multimedia.

In 1999, Morgan spent several months traveling the route Jack London in the South Seas.

She then became publisher of the Casco Bay Weekly, in Portland, Maine.

In 2003, Morgan worked as visiting professor at the University of Texas in Arlington teaching writing, editing and photography. In 2006, she returned to live in Saco, Maine.

In 2012, Morgan moved back to Anchorage, retiring as CEO of Epicenter Press, but staying on as an advisor.

Morgan had over 16 books to her credit, including "Good Time Girls of the Alaska Yukon Gold Rush," which in 1998 placed her seventh on the Los Angeles Times' best nonfiction list and won her the distinction of being named Alaska Historian of the year. "Her Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaska Howard Rock," was named to a list of 67 best nonfiction books of all time by Alaska historians.

She is survived by her brother, Lee Warren (Georgia); nephew, Curt Warren (Tatjana), and their two sons; niece, Kim Warren and her two sons; all of Utah; and her adopted daughter, Diana Campbell (Mack), of Fairbanks, Alaska.

A Zoom memorial will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 3. The link is vimeo.com/event/2332055.

A celebration of life will be held at Pike's Waterfront Lodge, in Fairbanks, on Saturday, Sept. 3, at 6 p.m. in the Binkley Room. Her ashes will be buried at Birch Hill Cemetery on Sunday, Sept. 4 at 2 p.m.