ITD remembers Aero's veteran pilot, Jay Morris

A respected pilot of 48 years and an eight-year Idaho Transportation Department employee, Jay L. Morris died in an airplane crash March 12, 2002, along with Juvenile Correction Officer William J. Mann and a juvenile detainee.

Morris began flying for the transportation department in 1994 after selling the agricultural flying service he owned for 30 years. In nearly five decades of private, commercial and military flying, he logged more than two million miles and 20,000 hours.

The Piper Navajo that Morris was piloting on a state transport mission disappeared from radar at 2:37 p.m., March 12 after leaving Idaho Falls about 90 minutes earlier. An aerial search for the missing plane began that afternoon, but was hampered by low visibility and snow in the southern Sawtooth Range.

After inclement weather abated Wednesday morning, two Idaho Army National Guard helicopters were dispatched to the area where an Emergency Locator Transmitter signal had been detected briefly the day before. The helicopter crew spotted the wreckage in about eight feet of snow on a steep mountain peak.

Morris’s passion for flying began in Kansas as a high school student. He was an air scout as a teenager and earned his private pilot’s license while in high school in Sharon Springs. After graduating from high school in 1954, he moved to Pocatello, where he worked for Rex Lanham Co. He later served as a specialist third class in the Army, stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Morris married Judith Johnson in Tacoma, Washington, and the couple moved to Emmett in 1961, along with an infant daughter, Christine Susan. He resumed work for Rex Latham Co. as a company pilot and power-line construction supervisor. He later became president of Adco West manufacturing, a company that built sawmill machinery.

Never far from a runway, Morris gave flying instruction on evenings and weekends before becoming a crop duster for Davison’s Flying Service of Caldwell. He launched his own aerial application business in 1964. After retiring from the business 30 years later, Morris assumed ownership of a mobile home park and storage company.

Morris was an Idaho state search-and-rescue coordinator, piloted many SAR flights, and was a member of numerous flight-oriented organizations.

Published 02-18-20