About Morris
In Brief

The convention in website bios is to make them brief and unrevealing. Yet, Dawn and I tell our readers and students to take their time when writing life stories—to expand key scenes, to provide historical context, to open up their feelings and emotions. How can any of that be done in 600 words?

I’ve opted for an unsatisfactory compromise—a succinct sketch with a link to a longer and more illuminating story. Neither does the job that a proper life story should, but here is the quick and dirty:

I’ve lived in Southern California most of my life. A long time ago I married a young coed who had just finished her freshman year of college. Dawn was beautiful then and still is. She has been an enormous inspiration throughout my life.

After my marriage I went on to obtain a BA from Brigham Young University and a JD from Harvard Law School. Dawn, who was only twenty when we arrived in Cambridge, put her schooling on hold to support us while I earned my law degree. Our first child was born during these years.

I returned to Southern California in 1970 to accept a position with Latham & Watkins, then a mid-sized local firm of 50 lawyers. Dawn resumed her schooling at UCLA, graduating cum laude four years and two children later. In all we’ve had six children, but, sadly, two of them died as infants.

I spent 34 years at Latham, retiring in 2004 as a senior partner specializing in trademark and copyright litigation. In that time the firm grew to become a global force, with over 1,600 lawyers in twenty offices, ten of them abroad. Dawn, who became a full-time mother after graduating from UCLA, returned to get an MA from Cal State Fullerton when our children were mostly grown. She has been teaching life story writing for the last eleven years. She is a superb teacher and has developed a devoted following. (See her website at MemoirMentor.com for more details about Dawn and her activities.)

While practicing law full time, I began to research the history of my Norwegian ancestor, Thore Torstensen, who changed his name to Tora Thurston after he immigrated to America in 1838. The project happily occupied my nights, weekends and vacations for ten years, and in 1996 I published Tora Thurston: The History of a Norwegian Pioneer. Four years later, after a rewarding collaboration with my father, we published his personal history, called Long Trail Winding.

Dawn and I have been lecturing on life story writing for many years. Since our students often requested written material to take home with them, we decided to put the things we were teaching into a book. The result is Breathe Life into Your Life Story, published in 2007. We hope this book, along with our recently-launched podcast series, will help many people reach the goal of preserving their life stories, a subject about which we are passionate.

My current interests extend to other matters besides life story writing. I am a legal editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project and an adjunct professor at BYU Law School, part of a team teaching a course on Joseph Smith and the Law.

Finally, I hope to continue to research and publish family histories. Currently I am working on projects involving the families of Edson Barney, one of the early converts to the Mormon Church in 1831, and William Griffiths Reese, who emigrated from Wales to Utah with his family in 1862. If you are a descendant of either of these men, or are interested in their stories, please use my contact page to let me know your relationship to them.

When we are not busy on writing and teaching projects, Dawn and I enjoy travel, literature, movies, and following the lives of our four children and three grandchildren. In addition, Dawn’s a gardener and cook and I’m a basketball fan and player. Somehow, despite both of us being intensely strong-willed and highly competitive, our marriage works. I expect the collaboration will continue.