IN MEMORIAM

Frederic P. Morrissey

Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus

 Berkeley

1920—2003

Frederic Patric Morrissey, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, and former member of the California Public Utilities Commission, died on February 27, 2003, in John Muir Hospital of a brain aneurysm. He was 82 years old.

Professor Morrissey, a longtime resident of El Cerrito, California, was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada on November 23, 1920, and attended the University of Toronto, graduating in 1943 with First Class Honors and the Gold Medal for scholarship. He entered the Canadian Royal Army Medical Corps upon graduation and was discharged in 1945 with the rank of captain. He was the first nonmedical officer commissioned in the Medical Corps.

Fred later demonstrated that he had retained one of the skills acquired in the military when, in his fifties, he roared up to a friend's house on a large motorcycle his college-age son had recently acquired.

After the war Fred returned to the University of Toronto where he taught as an instructor and lecturer in the Department of Political Economy while completing the degree of master of commerce. He was awarded the Garth Fellowship and entered graduate school at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in economics.

He joined the faculty of the Haas School of Business in 1949, teaching economics, public utilities and corporate finance. His research was focused in the fields of public utility finance and public regulation in general. He published 10 articles in the major journal of the utility industry, the Public Utilities Fortnightly, several of them on subjects still relevant to current issues. He also published in the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of the American College of Hospital Administrators.

He contributed to two published collections of papers, one on the problems of financing independent businesses and the other on the postwar allocation of funds by the California banking industry. With two colleagues, he coauthored a book on the taxation of the life insurance industry.

He spent the 1959-60 academic year as a Ford Foundation Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School.

Professor Morrissey had an active career in administration on the Berkeley campus. He served as the acting dean of the business school for two quarters in 1977, and as associate dean for academic affairs for two separate terms. He was chair of the Finance Group and of the committee charged with the original planning for the new building for the business school. He served as director of Summer Sessions for eight years and brought financial stability to that program. He chaired the committee charged with the complicated task of implementing the change from the semester to the quarter system.

In 1967, he took leave from the University when he was appointed as a commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission by Governor Ronald Reagan and served until 1969. He was amused when, after his confirmation hearing, one of the members of the Senate committee commented that, since he had been on the committee, Fred was the first person appointed to the Commission who was really qualified.

His involvement in the area of hospital administration came during a period when there was an active discussion of establishing state regulation of hospital charges.

After returning to the University, he served as a consultant to the California Hospital Association and the American Hospital Association. He testified on public utility issues before committees of the U.S. Congress and the California Legislature and served as an expert witness in a number of public utility rate cases in Idaho and Utah. He made a point of not participating in utility cases before the California Public Utility Commission.

Illustrating the persistence of utility issues, in a presentation to alumni in the 1970s, Professor Morrissey warned that California was not adding enough power generation capacity to meet anticipated future demand.

On his retirement he was awarded the Berkeley Citation for distinguished achievement and notable service to the University.

He is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Eileen MacMillan; two children, Patricia Cahill of Oakville, Ontario, Canada, and John Morrissey of Ridgefield, Connecticut; his sister, Margaret Bourassa of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario; and four grandchildren, Jonathan and Anne Sealey, and Kelly and Robert Morrissey.

A memorial service was held at Oakville, Ontario, where the Morrisseys maintained a home for the past several years.

 

Joseph Garbarino