When Morrow retired from the paper in 1993, he wrote, “I’m proud of the accomplishments of the writers, page designers and copy editors with whom I worked. I’m proud that they were able to win awards. My theory was I wanted to let the writers write and the copy editors edit, and I didn’t want one confused with the other.”
Former Dayton Daily News Publisher Brad Tillson stayed in touch with Morrow over the years. They texted each other after every Dayton Flyers basketball and Ohio State football game last season. Tillson visited Morrow in Florida, and Morrow visited Tillson in North Carolina.
“I came to the newspaper in 1971,” Tillson said, “and Ralph was already there. It was an unusual setup in the sports department at that point because Si Burick was the sports editor, and he mainly covered events. He did everything, basically, including the Olympics. Ralph was the executive sports editor and basically ran the department and, in many ways, built the department to what it was in terms of hiring and retaining people.”
I'm writing today about former Dayton Daily News sports editor Ralph Morrow, who died Monday at 87 in Key West, Fla. He ran the department when the Flyers played in the national championship game in 1967, throughout the entire run of the Big Red Machine and into the early '90s. pic.twitter.com/hO94nsvBr2
— David Jablonski (@DavidPJablonski) August 1, 2023
Ludwig, who cover the Cincinnati Bengals and Wright State among other teams in a long career at the Dayton Daily News, paid tribute to Morrow on his Facebook page Monday.
“Ralph Morrow is, was and always will be ‘My Mentor,’” Ludwig wrote. “He hired me at the Dayton Daily News in June 1979, guided me and molded me into a competent and, hopefully, decent sports writer.”
In an interview Tuesday, Ludwig described Morrow as his “second dad” and expanded on what Morrow brought to the sports department.
“Ralph would come in at night and lay out the sports section like a master chef,” Ludwig said. “He built the best sports department in the state and one of the best in the country. He let the writers write. He gave us direction, but he let us do our thing.”
Morrow always knew what was going on in the days before the Internet, Katz said, when it wasn’t as easy to keep track of sporting events.
“He was the best executive sports editor the Dayton Daily News ever had,” Katz wrote Tuesday in a story he sent to the Dayton Daily News, “and not because the ones who came after him weren’t very good. They were. It’s just that Ralph Morrow was a giant in his profession. He seemed to know more about sports, about how to justify a story for his pages and knew who to hire to do the jobs he had available.”
Morrow was a native of Cambridge, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1958 and landed his first newspaper job at the Rochester Times Union in New York. He worked as the sports editor in Rochester for six years.
During his time at the Dayton Daily News, he spent five years (1982-87) as editor of a Sunday supplement, The Magazine. He then returned to his sports editor role.
“I enjoyed a big event and planning what we were going to do,” Morrow said in 1993. “I always felt that was when I was at my best.”
Morrow continued to write, as well as edit, throughout his DDN career. Here’s what he typed after the Flyers earned a NCAA tournament berth in 1990.
“Bring on the best the Big 10 can offer. And the Big East. The Big West, too. And all those other basketball conferences that spell their names with letters.
“University of Dayton basketball is back.
After three straight losing seasons, UD is Back to Life, in the words of the song that has become the team’s theme song, and they’re in the Big Show — the NCAA tournament, which opens Thursday.
The Flyers won the Midwestern Collegiate Conference championship and the automatic NCAA berth that goes with it in a dramatic, ear-shattering 98-89 victory over Xavier before a capacity crowd of 13,202 at UD Arena.”
Morrow’s journalism career didn’t end when he retired from the Dayton Daily News. He moved to Key West, Fla., and worked at the Key West Citizen, serving primarily as sports editor. In all, he spent 64 years in journalism, working into this year.
According to his obituary, which Morrow wrote himself, he also worked as: Editor of Island News and Managing Editor of Konk Life, both in Key West; Government Writer at the Marco Island Eagle; Editorial Page Editor at the Charlotte Sun and Assistant Lifestyle Editor at the Fort Myers News-Press.
Morrow was married three times, he wrote in his obituary, ”the first to the former Lynne Thurlby, who survives and is the mother of their daughter, Lisa Dunn (Bruce). Lisa is the mother of his grandsons Christopher and Ian Dunn and grandmother to his great grandsons Isaac and Oliver Dunn, all of Rochester, N.Y.
“Morrow and his second wife, the late Patricia Powderly, were parents to Molly (J.D.) McMahon of San Diego, California, and the late Joshua Morrow (Julie Newhall) of Columbus, Ohio.
“His third wife, Patsy O’Neal to whom he was married for 36 happy years before her death in 2014, added the late Christopher Winfield, his daughter Sharon; Scott Winfield (Sheila) and their children Ryan (Shannan), Amanda, Savannnah and Noah Winfield.”
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