Remembering the son of Press Pros friend, and associate, Julie McMaken Wright…a young man who has passed, but not before making his life and presence a good thing for a lot of people.
I’m going to Kentucky this weekend to say goodbye to a friend.
More accurately, I’m going to say goodbye to a young friend, Morgan Wright, the son of Press Pros associate, and a friend to a lot of you – Julie McMaken Wright.
By now many have read about Morgan’s sudden passing on July 21 in Key West, Florida. You have reached out to the website with your kind words and condolences for Julie and her family.
This is a hard write. Because while Billy Joel can lyricize about it…in stark reality, the passing of someone so young – or the child of a friend who’s that young – is simply too personal to think about with any comfort. And I know I speak for many that knew Morgan.
I met him when he was very young, when Julie first came to Press Pros, and while he lived in Kentucky with his father. Years later, when he was an adult, I was impressed by how much he liked coming back to Covington to be with his mom and her family. It says a lot about a young man who would drive 8 hours from a work site to get home, spend 24 hours, then drive 8 hours to get back to work on time for Monday morning.
Morgan was a good kid. He grew on people and was easy to like. He was kind to people and a little precocious – curious about a lot of things.
He grew up for a short time in the Marion Local community – current athletic director Dan Koenig was his 6th grade teacher – and later played high school football in Kentucky, where he graduated from Southwestern High School, near Lake Cumberland. I think he was probably a really good athlete, naturally, but he told me once that football was really more fun to watch others play.
He learned very quickly, obviously, joining his dad early in the electrical trade. But there was always a boyishness about Morgan that made you believe that his favorite thing was being around the people he loved.
Grantland Rice once said this about the attributes of boyhood, speaking on the subject of lost youth.
“The personality of boys is like the warmth of the sun, or a gentle breeze on a spring day. It endears. Here for a minute, and then gone, leaving you to wish it had lasted a bit longer.”
That’s how many of us will remember Morgan, I’m sure.
Not our way, of course, but His. Still, it would have meant so much to have had him a little longer.
And I’m sure whenever people feel that warmth, or the breeze, sometime in the future…they’re going to think of Morgan.