Donald Wesley Morse Photograph Album, 1917-1922

Donald Wesley Morse attended Oregon Agricultural College beginning in the 1917-1918 academic year and earned a B.S. degree in Commerce in 1921, completing his coursework at the end of the 1921 Summer Session.  Morse was an active member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and the debate team.

Don Morse was one of the earliest volunteers to the Battalion Engineers after the United States entered World War I, enlisting on June 12, 1917 at the age of 18.  Because he held a Federal Amateur Radio Operators License, he was asked to transfer to the Navy’s radio service. On July 23, 1917, he entered the Navy at Bremerton, Washington and was a radio instructor at the training camp on the University of Washington campus.  Morse was discharged on December 22, 1918.

Donald Wesley Harsh Morse was born in Des Moines, Iowa on October 12, 1898, the only son of Fred and Agnes Morse.  By the time of his enrollment at Oregon Agricultural College, he was a resident of Seattle, Washington.  Morse married Marguerite Volbrecht, also an Oregon Agricultural College alumnus, on September 11, 1921.  Morse was a patient at the U.S. Veterans Hospital in Walla Walla, Washington for more than a year where he received treatment for tuberculosis that he developed during his service in World War I.  Morse moved from the Veterans Hospital to Seattle in early March 1923.  He died at his parents’ home in Seattle on May 23, 1923.