Janet McClanahan Morris

Janet McClanahan Morris passed away peacefully on March 20, 2022, at the age of 99 years. Janet was born on July 10, 1922, in Sacramento, California. She spent her early childhood in Honolulu and Seattle. After her family moved to Hillsborough, Janet attended Burlingame High School and Stanford University; she was the first student body president at both the high school and the university. After graduating from Stanford in 1943, she worked briefly for the federal government in Washington DC and, in 1944, married Walter K. Morris, whom she met at Burlingame High, and who was an officer in the US Army Air Corps. Janet and Walter lived at several air bases in the South before returning to San Mateo, after the war, and began to raise a family. In the early 1960s, they and their sons, Randy and Scott, moved to New York and later to London where Walt, then a Standard Oil of California executive, was assigned to positions in those cities. The family returned to Hillsborough in 1967.

Janet was an indefatigable traveler. She circumnavigated the globe numerous times and visited more than 100 countries on trips spanning seven decades. She enjoyed visiting her oceanside condominium in Kauai annually. She loved to fly as well. She began aviation lessons when she was 16 at Mills Field (now San Francisco International Airport). During college, she flew for the Civil Air Patrol to spot Japanese submarines along the Pacific Coast. Later in life, she became a licensed balloonist. Her name appears on the Wall of Honor at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles, Virginia.