Edgar L. Morphet

Edgar L. Morphet "died of natural causes on September 21, 1990. He was born in Grass Creek, Indiana, in 1895. He earned the A.B. degree from Indiana State Teachers College in 1918 and an A.M. (1924) and Ph.D. (1927) from Teachers College, Columbia University...

"His first university appointment was at the University of Alabama.

"He then became director of administration and finance in the Alabama State Department of Education. He next held the same position in Florida. In 1945-47 he served as Executive Secretary of the Florida Citizens Committee on Education. In 1947-48 he was with the Council of State Governments as associate research director, producing the volume titled The Forty-Eight State School Systems. In 1949 he was appointed Chief, School Finance, United States Office of Education. In that same year he was appointed Professor of Education at the University of California at Berkeley, where he served until retiring in 1962.

"In retirement he continued the pace suggested by the above record. For several years he directed a federally financed eight-state study from Denver, Colorado, designed to facilitate educational planning. He also served in São Paulo, Brazil, for two years, directing a USAID educational program...

"Morphet was active in efforts to improve programs for the preparation of educational administrators. He was the group leader in the first week-long meeting of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration and continued to play a leading role in that organization for more than 30 years...

"He was much interested in agriculture and horticulture--continuing to direct his farm in Indiana for many years while at Berkeley and to care for the flowers he loved in that section of Rossmoor in which he lived in later years. He and his wife, Camilla Matthews Morphet, had two children, a son “Bud” and a daughter Betsy."