Samuel Armstrong Morley

Samuel Armstong Morley passed away peacefully in his sleep on Martin Luther King Day, January 20, 2025, from Parkinsons-related pneumonia. He was surrounded by his loving wife and family in his final hours. Sam was born in Aberdeen Washington, April 7, 1934. He graduated from Putney School, 1952, and from Yale in 1956 with a degree in history. He served his tour in the army and then joined the foreign service as a DC-based Foreign Service officer in 1958. It was at the State Department that he met the love of his life, Monica DaRosa. They were married on December 19, 1959. Ever the romantic adventurers, Sam and Monica decided to leave Washington, DC. They drove across the country to Lone Rock Oregon, to run the family's Lazy M Ranch. They raised cattle and sheep and Sam took on the role of cowboy, rancher, farmer, vet and handyman. After the birth of their first son, Sam Jr in 1960, it was pretty clear that the dream of the cowboy life had some practical drawbacks for a young family. So they moved to Berkeley CA in 1961, where Sam enrolled in the Cal Berkeley PhD program in economics. Their second son, Bill was born in 1962, and Monica's mother Maria Luisa joined the growing household. After receiving his doctorate in 1965, Sam took on a USAID project in Brazil to help implement new economic growth policies and moved the family to Rio de Janeiro and an apartment on Copacabana Beach. In Rio, the family was blessed with a third son Ted… born in the midst of Carnival. After wrapping up their two-year stint in Brazil, the family moved back to Berkeley for a year and then to chillier climes in Madison Wisconsin, where Sam began his tenure as an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin. He undertook a prolific period of writing and research on development economics with a specialty on Brazil and Latin America, as well as on inflation and ultimately, a Macroeconomics text. Sam's work led the family to a sabbatical at Rice University in Houston, back to Madison and then, in 1975, to a World Bank-sponsored year in Brasilia, where he researched and published works on the impacts of the oil embargo on Brazil's miracle growth. The econ department at Vanderbilt University beckoned, and Sam began a nearly 20-year career as a full professor at Vanderbilt. While in Nashville, Sam combined a love of teaching and research, winning two awards as teacher of the year, and established and ran a graduate economics program for international students. Downtime was filled with gardening and weekend camping trips, kayaking adventures and hikes and climbs in rural Tennessee. In the early 1990s, Sam and Monica returned back to Washington, DC, where Sam joined the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). After 5 years, he took on an 18 month research project in Santiago, Chile. He and Monica renewed acquaintances with old friends and family and enjoyed Chilean (and Argentinian) wine, along with hikes and picnics in the Andes. Back in DC in 1999, Sam concluded his professional career at IFBRI, an international economics think tank, where he worked until 2012. Sam was a lifetime purveyor of awful puns. He loved opera and classical music, and was a rabid fan of all things history and political/current events. He was also an inveterate card counter in games of hearts or poker, not to mention a cool hand at cocktails. And he was a gardener whose love of clematis while enthusiastic… was sadly only rarely reciprocated. He instilled in the entire family a love of travel. Annual pilgrimages in the old Plymouth to their beloved cabin in Oregon were an experience. We camped along the way, reading books like Riders of the Purple Sage out loud, charting the way via paper maps, smelling the aroma of dinner cooking on the Coleman, and enduring Sam's "temporary insanity" every time we hit a big city. Whether it was climbing in the Cascades well into his 80s or yet another trip to Canyon Creek Meadows to check out the wildflowers, body surfing at Zippers in San Jose del Cabo at 88, or flying in a float plane for a hike in Katmai Alaska to see the grizzly bears less than a month after his open heart surgery – he truly knew how to live. And he brought the rest of us along in his wake. Sam and Monica were blessed with three sons, Sam, Bill and Ted - (and their wives, Sue, Nan and ex-wife Jennifer), and six granddaughters, Katie, Elizabeth, Samantha, Caroline, and McKinley and Madeline. While the love for his own children was ingrained, the joy and love that he took in getting to know each of his granddaughters, and the pride in watching them grow into talented young women registered on his face every time he spoke of them…which was often. Sam Morley was pre-deceased by his parents, William Ring Morley and Louise Scoville Morley and his siblings Louise Morley Schmidt, William Ring Morley, Jr. and Virginia Morley Morgan. He is survived by his younger sister Ann Morley and his wife Monica DaRosa Morley, as well as his three boys, Samuel Armstrong Morley, Jr., William Jose Morley and Edward Eliseo Morley and his six grandchildren, Katherine Oakes Morley, Elizabeth Armstrong Morley Jones, Samantha Hawthorne Morley, Caroline Alton Morley, McKinley Black Thompson-Morley and Madeleine Beecher Thompson-Morley. The family is planning a memorial service later this Spring in the DC area celebrating Sam's life, with a West Coast service planned in Oregon this summer. Please go to www.murphyfuneralhomes.com for further information.