Jack Morris

Jack Morris, a business and civic leader since his arrival in Plainview in 1962, was born in 1921 as Minter Irving Morris in Maypearl, near Dallas. After graduating from Maypearl High in 1939, he attended North Texas Agricultural College in Arlington, then joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. Commissioned as a naval aviator in 1944, he flew patrol bombers in the Caribbean until 1945. After the war, he lived in Dallas, where he worked for the Veteran’s Administration and then Pacific Finance Corporation. He married Scottie Swafford in Dallas in 1949. They had been married 50 years when Scottie died in 1999. The couple had two daughters.

When Morris started selling cars in Amarillo in 1952, he became “Jack” because it was an easy name to remember. He purchased Muleshoe Motor Company in 1956 and Winn Motor Company, the Ford dealership in Plainview, in 1962. He changed its name to Jack Morris Ford in 1968; today, his business is Jack Morris Ford, Lincoln-Mercury, Toyota, Inc.

Jack helped organize and served as president of the Plainview Area United Way and the Plainview–Hale County Industrial Foundation. He was also president of the Plainview Chamber of Commerce and the Plainview Lions Club, and he was active in many other civic and fundraising projects, including a recent drive for the YMCA, youth organizations, and boards and committees at the local, county, and state levels. He is a longtime member of the First United Methodist Church and former president of its Board of Stewards. He was named Plainview’s 1988 Man of the Year.