Donald Wesley Morse attended Oregon Agricultural College beginning in the 1917-1918 academic year and earned a B.S. degree in Commerce in 1921, completing his coursework at the end of the 1921 Summer Session. Morse was an active member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and the debate team.
Don Morse was one of the earliest volunteers to the Battalion Engineers after the United States entered World War I, enlisting on June 12, 1917 at the age of 18. Because he held a Federal Amateur Radio Operators License, he was asked to transfer to the Navy’s radio service. On July 23, 1917, he entered the Navy at Bremerton, Washington and was a radio instructor at the training camp on the University of Washington campus. Morse was discharged on December 22, 1918.
Donald Wesley Harsh Morse was born in Des Moines, Iowa on October 12, 1898, the only son of Fred and Agnes Morse. By the time of his enrollment at Oregon Agricultural College, he was a resident of Seattle, Washington. Morse married Marguerite Volbrecht, also an Oregon Agricultural College alumnus, on September 11, 1921. Morse was a patient at the U.S. Veterans Hospital in Walla Walla, Washington for more than a year where he received treatment for tuberculosis that he developed during his service in World War I. Morse moved from the Veterans Hospital to Seattle in early March 1923. He died at his parents’ home in Seattle on May 23, 1923.
This photograph album was donated to the former University Archives in 2004 by Barbara J. McKalson of Capitola, California, whose mother was a friend of Don Morse.
Collection is open for research.
Donald Wesley Morse Photograph Album (P 255), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
The Special Collections and Archives Research Center's collections include numerous photograph albums and other collections documenting the experiences of Oregon Agricultural College students during and immediately following World War I. Of particular note are the
The Kappa Sigma Nu Fraternity Records (MSS KappaSigmaNu) document the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity before it was established as a chapter of the national fraternity.
The
The Donald Wesley Morse Photograph Album documents the student life of Don Morse at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC) in 1917-1921 and his convalescence at the U.S. Veterans Hospital in Walla Walla, Washington in 1922-1923. The album includes photographs and images clipped from magazines and other publications. Formal portraits of faculty and students and numerous snapshots are represented in the album, which is well annotated with names and dates. Morse’s student years are reflected in numerous images of other OAC students, the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house (exterior and interior) and other fraternity members, debate team members and contests, baseball and football players, campus buildings and scenes, military cadets, and student activities. Images of outings, parties, the Rook-Sophomore Tug-of-War, and groups of students document Morse’s active student life.
The album includes a few images of his family, his wife, and his birthplace in Des Moines, Iowa.
The last portion of the album (about a quarter of the photographs) documents Morse’s time as a patient at the U.S. Veterans Hospital in Walla Walla. Images of Morse, other patients, the nurses and staff, as well as the facilities are included.
The collection includes a few photographic prints that are not affixed in the album.
Images from this collection have been digitized and are