Clancy Morrison; Food Director at Occidental

Clancy Morrison, whose name became synonymous with dining, socializing and motherly love at Occidental College, is dead at 82.

Ms. Morrison served as food service director for 44 years at the Eagle Rock campus, where the cafeteria is known as “Clancy’s” and a plushly furnished wing of the student union building is “Morrison Lounge.”

She had worked until March, when she suffered the first of several strokes, college officials said. She died Wednesday at an Eagle Rock nursing home.

Despite her mandatory retirement in 1975, Morrison was called back 15 months later by college officials.

“Clancy Morrison had a love affair with Occidental,” said President John B. Slaughter. “For nearly a half-century, Clancy served students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors with a warmth and graciousness that sprang from her Southern heritage and her love of people.”

Born in Alabama, Ms. Morrison studied nutrition at Alabama College and served an internship at California Hospital in Los Angeles.

At Occidental, she planned picnics and barbecues to vary the dining routine and packed sack lunches for students on excursions away from campus. Meals commemorating holidays and the annual madrigal dinners were sumptuous productions.

She was instrumental in the expansion of the student union building in 1956. When a second dining hall was built, the kitchen was expanded and a bakery added.

Ms. Morrison is survived by a brother and sister-in-law, Lem and Beatrice Morrison of Greensboro, Ala., several nieces and nephews, and a godchild, Rachel Levy of La Crescenta.