News

By Ron Hayes

    DELRAY BEACH — As chairman of the Boca Raton Resort & Club and director of Discover Palm Beach County, R. Scott Morrison helped pass a penny bed tax to benefit local cultural organizations.
    In 1982, its first year, $1,251,000 was collected.
    This past year the tax, now at 5 cents, raised $42,700,000 to support the arts, sports and tourism in the county.
     Mr. Morrison, a South County resident since 1980, died Nov. 16 in Boca Raton, surrounded by his family and friends. He was 76.
“Though it’s been a while since his association with the Palm Beach County destination marketing organization, those who knew him only had words of praise as a very good man who contributed greatly to our destination’s tourism development,” said Jorge Pesquera, Discover The Palm Beaches’ current president and CEO.
    Mr. Morrison’s involvement with the fabled Boca Raton resort and the county’s tourism development were only part of his work to promote the area.
    During 35 years as a resident of Boca Raton, Gulf Stream and Delray Beach, he served as a director of the Florida Hotel and Motel Association, chairman of the American Hotel and Motel Association and president of the Palm Beach County Hotel-Motel Association.
    He also served as an adviser and board member with the Junior League of Boca Raton, the St. Andrew’s School, the former Caldwell Theatre and former College of Boca Raton.
    Born Sept. 15, 1939, Mr. Morrison was a fifth-generation San Franciscan.
    A graduate of Michigan State University’s Hotel, Restaurant and Management School, he began his career with the ITT Sheraton Corporation.
    As an assistant manager at the New Orleans Sheraton, Mr. Morrison met his future wife, Norma.
    “It was a blind date and we were married nine months later at the Catholic church on Tulane Avenue,” Mrs. Morrison recalled. “It’s lasted 52 years.”
    As the wife of a hotel manager, she learned to move — from New Orleans to Boston, back to New Orleans, then Key Biscayne, the Ozarks, South Carolina and in 1980 to Boca Raton.
    After leaving the Boca Raton Resort & Club in 1986, Mr. Morrison built three hotels in Japan, Europe and the United States.
    He was also a founding stockholder of Extended Stay America and a frequent lecturer at Florida Atlantic University and Palm Beach State College.
    Locally, he was a member of the Boca Raton Resort & Club, the Gulf Stream Bath & Tennis Club and the Seagate Club in Delray Beach.
    In his leisure hours, Mr. Morrison was an avid sport fisherman and hunter at his second home in Santa Fe, N.M.
    “He could play golf, but he preferred to fish and hunt,” Mrs. Morrison said. “He was a gentleman, a sportsman, a family man, and everyone would say he had a booming laugh. Everyone mentions his laugh.”
    A Mass of the Christian Burial was held Nov. 21 at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach.
    “At the reception after the service we had 187 people who just came,” Mrs. Morrison said. “We didn’t send out invitations, but the church was packed.”
    In addition to his wife, Mr. Morrison is survived by a son, Robert Morrison III, three daughters, Kelly Husack, Kim Lessard and Kristin Guttroff, and seven grandchildren.
    Donations in Mr. Morrison’s memory may be made to Covenant House, St. Vincent Ferrer Care Ministries or New Hope Charities.