On the night of Friday, 17 May 2002, while returning from dinner with her husband, step-daughter, and a friend, Surry County Genealogical Association's web-master and designer, Julia Morrison, was killed in a traffic accident in her hometown of Greeneville, TN. She was 48 years of age.

When I received word of Julie's death from her first cousin and SCGA president Judy Cardwell I was both saddened and dumbstruck. As we are wont to do I thought back to when she and I met, which was a Monday evening in the spring of 1994. Julie was in Dobson to meet with her biological father, and had come to the Genealogical and Local History collection in the Media Center of Surry Cornunity College in an attempt to learn more about her biological ancestors. Never being shy, Julie struck up a conversation with me, asking if I knew anything about her ancestral families, the Gilleys or Stanleys. Realizing how particularly delicate her situation was I suggested that she write a letter, put it into a sealed envelope and mail to me, and I in turn would forward it on to her first cousin who was one of my best friends. Thus was the beginning of a close personal friendship for all of us.

Julie was born 27 January 1954, in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, NC, to Helen Virginia Gilley, and named Mitzi. In time she was adopted by Sam and Grace Kellam, of Biscoe, NC, and renamed Julia Anne. She attended the local schools and received a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. During her career she would eventually work for several newspapers including ones in Salisbury, NC, and Charlotte, NC. In due course Julie was a co-founder and publisher of the monthly magazine "Running Journal," which is widely known among runners and race-walkers throughout the southeastern United States.

Julie has left us to remember her as a charming, vivacious, and inquisitive lady. Her laughter was so infectious as to make even the most hardened of individuals smile and be comfortable and at ease around her. Her heart and soul were quick to understand the problems and troubles of others, and these quickly became hers in a most unintrusive way. That same heart and soul were gentle, kind, loving, and compassionate. Her passions were writing and literature, art and science, history and family, and animals. I was fortunate to be able to assist her in her own genealogical research into her ancestral lines which included Briggs, Banner, Vest, Poore, Ford, Harris, and others.

She is survived by her husband Bruce George Morrison, whom she married 21 November 1983 in York, SC, and her adoptive parents Sam and Grace Kellam of Biscoe, NC. Other survivors include her birth mother, Helen Collins, of Newport News, VA; step-daughter Cheryl of Statesville, NC; step-son Anthony of Columbia, SC; two step-grandchildren Joy Duncan and Anthony Morrison, Jr.; and her first cousin, SCGA president Judy Cardwell, of Winston-Salem, NC. Julie was laid to rest in GreeneLawn Memory Gardens in Greeneville, TN.

A copy of the book Our Colonial Ancestors by Bruce A. Howard, which is a history of the Pace family which were early settlers in Surry County, NC, is to be purchased by the SCGA in memory of Julie. Individual memorial contributions can be made to SCGA through its book purchasing fund or to the Greeneville, TN, Humane Society. - - - A Friend