Rock star’s father, rear admiral

George Morrison, 89, a retired Navy rear admiral and the father of the late rock icon Jim Morrison, died in a Coronado, Calif., hospital Nov. 17 after a fall.

Once the youngest admiral in the Navy, Morrison had a long career that included serving as operations officer aboard the aircraft carrier Midway and commanding the fleet during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to an escalation of American involvement in Vietnam.

The father of three children, Morrison had a falling out with Jim after his son launched his music career with the Doors in the mid-’60s. But in 1970, the year before Jim died in Paris at age 27, Morrison acknowledged viewing Jim’s “success with pride.”

Morrison was born in rural Georgia on Jan. 7, 1919, and grew up in Leesburg, Fla.

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he was aboard the mine-layer Pruitt in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it Dec. 7, 1941.

He later received flight training and flew combat missions during the final year of World War II and during the Korean War.

Morrison was commanding U.S. forces in the South Pacific from Guam in 1975 when he established a tent city for at least 140,000 South Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon.

When he retired later that year, he and his wife, Clara, moved to Chula Vista, Calif.