Glenn Morris - Later Life

Later Life

Following his release from duty, Morris worked for a dozen years in construction and as a steel rigger for the Atomic Energy Commission. Subsequently he may have worked off and on as a parking lot attendant, and he was rumored to be an alcoholic. He lived out his last years mostly in Menlo Park, California, and as a patient in veterans hospitals. Too ill to attend his induction into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1967, where he was proclaimed "the world's greatest athlete," Morris nevertheless donated his Olympic gold medal to the Hall. The medal was subsequently given, along with Morris's other memorabilia, to Simla High School, which gives an annual Glenn Morris Award for athletic and academic excellence;the school, in turn, donated the medal in April 2011 to Colorado State University, the successor to Morris' college alma mater, where it is displayed in a field house named in his honor.

Morris died of congestive heart failure "and other complications" at the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, California, in 1974 and was buried in Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, California.

He was married from 1937 to 1940 to Charlotte Edwards, whom he had met in college.