When Frank Morris was diagnosed with polio as a track athlete for University of Oregon in 1954, he thought his life was over. He remembered lying in the hospital, either dreaming or hallucinating that the grim reaper was standing at the foot of his bed. But it wasn’t his time. Just a fork in the road. 71 years later, Morris died Wednesday at 92 after an 18-month fight with stage four melanoma, his family said. And so ended a full life that included coaching achievements in high school, collegiate and Olympic track and field, personal athletic feats throughout the state of Oregon, and special memories shared with family and friends. “He maintained a very active life, golfing, hiking, and bicycling as well as dancing with his beautiful wife of 43 years, my stepmom Joan,” daughter Valerie Morris said. “They taught dance lessons here at their retirement community in Oro Valley (Arizona) for over 20 years.” Morris was always teaching. And inventing, renovating, hiking, biking and exploring. His daughter recalls that he summited every mountain in Oregon over 10,000 feet; rafted multiple Class 5 rivers, the most challenging in whitewater rafting; and rode his bike from Portland to Boston in the summer of 1995. He did all that and more over several decades of athletic pursuits, all while missing the calf muscle in his right leg, a result of polio. Born in White City, Kansas, but raised in the Rogue River Valley, Morris was an all-sport athlete at Medford High School (now South Medford) before earning a scholarship to University of Washington in 1951. Morris transferred to Oregon after one year and, after his career was cut short due to polio, he eventually got a master’s degree and turned his eye to coaching. His first job was at Powers High School in tiny Powers, Oregon, tucked in the mountains near the state’s southern coast. The school didn’t have a track, so he borrowed a tractor from the father of one of his students and built one himself with plywood and elbow grease. Morris did the same thing at his second job, Rogue River High School, literally building the program from the ground up over the years. He forayed his experience at the high school level into a graduate assistant job under legendary Oregon track and field coach Bill Bowerman, who brought Morris on in 1968. As Morris recounted in an interview with one of his legendary athletes, Olympic champion Mac Wilkins, Bowerman told Morris to “follow me around until I tell you what to do.” And the gruff old coach ended up putting him in charge of the shot put and discus athletes because Bowerman “didn’t like either one of them all that much,” Morris said with a laugh. Morris would coach numerous All-Americans, including Wilkins as he set the world record in the discus and took home the gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Just four years earlier, Morris remembers being at the 1972 Olympics and telling coaches there about Wilkins’ potential. “Frank always said to his athletes, ‘If you will give me one year where you do everything I tell you to do and trust that I’m putting you in the right direction, if you do that for one year, then in the second year we can work together,‘” Wilkins recounted. “‘And the third year and beyond, you’ll know more than I do, and I can help you but you’ll be in charge of your direction. You’ll know the event better than I.” Bowerman would retire from UO in 1973, and the up-and-comer Morris thought he should seek out collegiate head coaching opportunities of his own elsewhere. He got the job right up the road in Corvallis at Oregon State, where he spent three years before budget cuts put the track and field program in peril. Morris ended up as an assistant at Arizona State, but the head coach was fired after one year. And after one year of his own as head coach at ASU, Morris was fired as well. He returned to Oregon and continued coaching individual athletes before eventually retiring (as much as someone in constant motion could) in Arizona with Joan. “We have been receiving the most wonderful tributes from his former athletes, thank him for not only coaching them, but for showing them how to live a good life,” Valerie Morris said. “It has been so heartwarming.” -- Ryan Clarke covers college sports for The Oregonian. Reach him at RClarke@Oregonian.com or on Twitter/X: @RyanTClarke. Find him on Bluesky: @ryantclarke.bsky.social.