In last year’s catalog, we remembered the late Orval Gillett—a man well-known in California and across the country for his coaching, teaching and sportsmanship—in a special dedication page.

This year, we turn to the memory of another sporting great—one who very few of you who read this will have ever met or of whom you have even heard. He was my father, Lawrence “Bill” Morris.

What, you may ask, puts Bill Morris on a par with someone who has held national records, won medals and coached international champions to victory? He did none of these things himself. Without fanfare, this unassuming man got his start in Ogden, Utah, where he attended high school, his sporting pursuits amounted to no more than playing on the high school basketball team, hunting and fishing. Soon after graduation, he buckled down, pursuing a career in the newspaper business as a printer and department foreman. Like most men of his day, he married young and headed to Southern California where there was a job and a future waiting. He and his wife, Thora, raised four children in their Burbank home, all the while working long hours to provide for their needs.

Surely, there could be some better reason than a personal relationship with me, the owner of this business, to feature such a man in the front of the On Track catalog. After all, Bill Morris was a contributor to our success here, providing the skills of an experienced machinist and craftsman to produce such products as our On Track hurdles. His inventive nature was often put to work helping creatively maintain and repair equipment valuable to our business. I say there is no better reason to acknowledge this man than the awesome support I received from him as steadfast parent, and what that meant to me as his child, as well as a successful athlete.