Carroll Hofeling Morris
and Family

 

I was born in Lovell, Wyoming, east of Yellowstone National Park and west of the Big Horn Mountains. The second of four children born to Dola Harris and William (Bill) Hofeling, I grew up surrounded by Porter and Harris relatives. I have many wonderful memories of time spent at Clearview Farm, which is where my Harris grandparents lived. Music, reading, church activities, horseback riding, going to the mountains and 4-H were among the activities that defined my youth in Wyoming. I had my first experiences as a writer. In the fourth grade, I gave some poems I'd written to my teacher. She promptly lost them! In sixth grade, a poem I wrote was printed in the school paper.

My family left Wyoming when I was 14. I completed 9th grade in Brighton, Colorado and graduated from high school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In Sioux Falls, I discovered I had a knack for acting, performing in high school and community theater. I even won the best actress in the one-act play contest when I was a senior! I also continued writing short stories and poems, which appeared in student publications.

After graduation, I attended BYU, where I received my BA in German. In 1965, I spent spring semester in Salzburg, Austria with the initial BYU Semester Abroad. Living in the picturesque city while studying history and German was an extraordinary experience, the memory of which I cherish.

I met Gary Morris the fall of my senior year at BYU. We were drawn together initially by the fact that we were both German majors and had lived abroad. We received our degrees and were married in1967. That fall, we moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where we were both graduate assistants at the University of Oklahoma. Over the next three years, we had the first two of our four children, John and Lisette, and received our MA degrees! I'm not sure how we did it--I sure wouldn't advise others to do the same.

In 1967, degrees and children in hand, we moved to a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where my parents had resettled. Gary was employed as a German teacher and coach by the Wayzata school district. Our lives over the next decade centered on church and children (Mattie and David joined our family). I taught piano lessons and taught a few Germany classes in Gary's school to bring in extra income.

When I enrolled the younger kids in the school district's Suzuki violin program, my experiences as mother and coach prompted me to write my first published book, A Suzuki Parent's Diary, or How I Survived my First 10,000 Twinkles. It's still in print, each year finding a small but enthusiastic readership among parents of Suzuki string players.