Neither Chris nor Pam Morris graduated from UD, but they always knew there was a good chance their first son, Colin, HNS 2005, would choose the University of Delaware.

Chris, the oldest in a family of 11, already claims five Blue Hen relatives--two sisters and three brothers-in-law.

Sarah Morris Schutsky, now a doctor, graduated in 1985, and Barbara Morris Mattone was a member of the Class of 1986. Barbara is married to Bob Mattone (1986), while two other Morris sisters who did not attend UD brought additional Delaware connections into the family: Clare Morris married Chris Broderick (1986), and Jeannie Morris married John Fried (1982).

Keeping things in the family is not at all unusual for the Morrises. Chris is now president of an engineering firm--Morris, Johnson & Associates--started by his father in the 1950s. His sister, Clare, also an engineer, works in the business as well.

And, Pam didn't go far when she married and moved out of the home where she grew up in central New Jersey. Only several hundreds yards away from Pam's parents, George and Helen Richdale, the Morrises live in a 19th-century home previously owned by one of George's cousins, Annie Vernell.

"My best friend and I were always stopping in to visit Annie when we were kids," Pam recalls. "She was already quite elderly by then, but she always had time to talk to us, and she always had candy for us and biscuits for our dogs in her pantry. Her house seemed really neat to us because it was kind of dark and almost spooky. It was also very old-fashioned--she still had a working wood-burning stove in her kitchen in the 1960s."

After Annie's death in 1982, the house was put on the market, and Pam and Chris jumped at the chance to own a piece of local and personal history. "We must have been crazy," Chris says, thinking back on the many months the pair spent living in a tiny two-room rental cottage on the property while the house underwent extensive modernization and expansion.

"When we tore the walls out, we discovered that newspapers had been used as insulation," Pam says. "One of the sheets we found featured a story about the 'Black Sox' scandal of 1919, when the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds." The Morrises also learned that at one point in its history, the home's attic had been rented to a German doctor, who had left behind his little black case and his German medical books.

Although they have been unable to precisely date the house, a further search of the attic turned up a watercolor of the house itself, dated 1847, as well as a deed from 1851. Both now hang framed in the Morrises' family room. The other artifacts have been given to friends and family members for preservation.

Pam says she feels privileged to live in the same area where she grew up and spent endless hours riding horses. She received her first pony for her eighth birthday and had amassed hundreds of ribbons, silver cups, plaques and trophies by the time she was forced to quit riding a few years ago due to chronic rheumatoid arthritis. However, she has stayed active in the horse world by teaching riding to the disabled through the SPUR (Special People United to Ride) program in Lincroft, N.J., and she is currently a SPUR board member. She also helps her father run his horse show management business.

Not surprisingly, most UD Homecoming weekends are a family affair as well. This past fall, the Mattones and the Brodericks attended Homecoming, while Pam, Chris and their younger son, 14-year-old Brian, came down for Parents' Weekend. Not content to stay with his parents in their nearby hotel room, Brian bunked in Rodney Hall A with his brother, wanting to experience for himself campus life.

"He loved it," Pam says. "He really got into the whole atmosphere of college life, from the football game to sleeping in the dorm. Of course, it didn't hurt that some of the people he met thought he was the one who was a University of Delaware student."

Based on Brian's reaction to his first stay at UD, the Morrises could very well be moving another freshman into a dorm in Newark three years from now. But, even if Brian chooses not to attend UD, it is highly unlikely that Colin will be the last Morris to graduate from Delaware. As the oldest of 22 grandchildren on the Morris side, Colin should have plenty of family company at future UD alumni events.