MORRISS WAYNE JOHNSON

September 1946

Ms. Joyner, Ms. Glover, Mrs. Coston & Mrs. Bradshaw - 5th Grade - Williamsburg	Mr. Baird - April 1962
Me, Mike, Rudy, Robert, & Bobby	Rudy, Mike, Bobby, Me, & Robert

How did I end up in Texas?

That's a question I'm often asked. When I was discharged from the US Army, I moved to Texas to attend architecture school at The University of Texas at Arlington. One of my good buddies in the service was from Garland (suburb of Dallas) and he was always talking about how great everything is in the metroplex. You know how Texans like to brag.  I met a lady in architecture school, we married, dropped out of college, had two children, went back to school (part time) and have lived here ( except for about a year when we moved to Raleigh) the remainder of time. The Dallas-Fort Worth area is a great place to work and live. We have major-league baseball (Texas Rangers), professional football (Dallas Cowboys), professional basketball (Dallas Mavericks), NASCAR racing at Texas Motor Speedway, and professional hockey (Dallas Stars-Stanley Cup Champions in 1999), Southfork, symphonies in both cities, opera in both cities, ballet between the two cities, Six Flags Over Texas (amusement park), Billy Bob's Texas (world's largest honkey tonk-larger than Gilley's of Houston), Colonial Country Club (home of Ben Hogan), and countless restaurants and clubs.

I must offer a special thanks to Mr. Baird for his patient and dedication to teaching music. Without the musical training he afforded me, I would have gone to Vietnam in 1965. Fortunately, I qualified for and was assigned to the 79th Army Band, Panal Canal Zone. Approximately every 8 to 10 weeks we traveled across the isthmus of Panama to Fort Sherman and played graduation ceremonies for infantry personnel who had completed jungle-survival school. Their next stop was Vietnam. Thank you Mr. Baird.

My most exciting trip, to date, was a two-week business trip to Cairo, Egypt. A close friend and fellow architect invited me to accompany him to Egypt for a programing charette of a new international school campus and an addition to their existing high school. While in country, we traveled to the Pyramids of Giza and Zoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara.

Skyline of Downtown Fort Worth, Texas