Dean Morris

1953 - 2024

Dean Morris
12/11/1953 - 08/09/2024
Dean Russell Morris died peacefully on August 9, 2024, in Fairfield, California, after a long illness.
A native Californian, Dean was born in Los Angeles on December 11, 1953. He was the third of three children of Clarence Ellis Morris and Hazel Faye Logan. He grew up and attended public schools in Hawthorne, California. A gifted natural athlete and avid Little Leaguer, he played baseball in grade school, junior high, high school and college. Equally intense in academics, he earned a 4.0 GPA and graduated as valedictorian of the Hawthorne High School Class of 1972.
Heading to Stanford University on scholarship, he played university baseball for a season before deciding to focus exclusively on his academics. In 1976, he graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Before graduate school, Dean worked for the Veteran's Administration Hospitals in San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. This was the beginning of a professional association that he would maintain all through his career. During this period, he married educator Leslie Nan Richards, and had two children. The couple later divorced.
Graduate studies took him to Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where he received his Master's degree before entering the doctoral program in Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles, earning his DPH in 1989.
He resumed his career as an administrator with the Department of Veterans Affairs and retired in 2016 after 32 years of service. He worked on a wide variety of VA health projects, including the opening of two outpatient clinics, conducting seismic retrofitting studies on VA facilities, and obtaining funding for such projects. He worked principally for the VA San Francisco Health Care System.
After he retired, he volunteered with the VA, demonstrating his lifetime commitment to public service.
Perhaps the most unexpected benefit of his VA career was meeting his wife, Jane Dutton Morris, a fellow VA employee. They married in Hawaii in 2001. Dean made his home with Jane overlooking a hill in the East Bay city of Vallejo, California. There, he relished designing and cultivating his garden, and adopting at Jane's behest a whole lineage of mischievous rescue cats, who eventually won him over with their wiles. He never tired of getting together with his brother to watch his favorite sports teams, the San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers.
Dean is survived by his wife of 23 years, Jane; his sons David and Jacob, and Jacob's partner Henry; his brother Brian Morris and sister-in-law Mare Saarni; his sister Marilyn Chase and brother-in-law Randolph Chase; and an array of nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.
The family will observe a private memorial on September 29 on the San Francisco Bay. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that contributions be made to Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano.