There’s More Than Enough

WITH ASCPA MEMBER GAREY MORRISON

Records were lost; clients had legal, financial, or banking colleagues whose offices were now gone. I know I had a huge knot in my stomach the first time I went back.

He should have been there. In lower Manhattan. On September 11, 2001. But the staff at the Cap Gemini/E&Y Resource and Design Center had not progressed as far as Morrison had expected on his project. They were working with him to improve a new service line he helped create to assist hospitals improve their clinical documentation and coding. The documents, however, were not ready and Morrison adjusted his schedule to make client visits elsewhere, instead of remaining in New York City into the second week of September.

He and a colleague from Chicago met at a client’s office in West Virginia and that’s where he was when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

“It was instant chaos, with airline travel at a standstill. We had people from our consulting firm all over the country and our number one concern was getting those folks back home. There were no rental cars available and we had to be creative to get everyone home safely.”

The good news, of course, was that no one in the offices where he regularly visited were injured or killed in the destruction. The bad news was that no one in lower Manhattan, or the entire world for that matter, will ever forget or remain unaffected by the events of that day. He learned from project team members that survivor’s guilt is a very real and very tough emotion to experience.

“Because I worked alongside healthcare providers, I saw what an enormous effect the catastrophe had on them. In the aftermath, it was hard for businesses, even those not in the twin towers, to pick up and restart. Records were lost; clients had legal, financial, or banking colleagues whose offices were now gone. I know I had a huge knot in my stomach the first time I went back.”

Garey Morrison is an Alabama guy, born and bred, from the tiny town of Bynum, outside Anniston. He went to Walter Welborn High School, worked in grocery stores and in trucking as a teenager (his family operated grocery stores and a trucking company) and was advised by a guidance counselor NOT to go into pre-med at the University of Alabama, but that’s where he started his college career.

“Honestly, I wasn’t feeling the love in the liberal arts division, where I had a lot of my classes. I discovered the amazing camaraderie in UA’s School of Business and decided to test the waters over there. During registration for my second semester, I convinced my business school advisor to let me take a sophomore level accounting class, to see if making a change was going to work. I immediately felt at home, changed my major and never looked back.”

Morrison was recruited by Ernst and stayed there from June 1977 through June 2009. He spent two years in the healthcare consulting group at Cap Gemini/Ernst & Young, returning to EY in August 2002.

“I was on the audit side and enjoyed the chance to look into someone’s business; I had audit clients who became friends. After three years or so I was looking for another challenge and found an opening in the healthcare consulting group at Ernst. At that time, consulting was not considered to be on the same level with tax and audit. But it offered me a chance to connect the dots at a medical practice or hospital and go beyond where an audit would go. For example, we were asked by a hospital to get their linen costs under control. Theirs were running a full 30% above other hospitals of a similar size. What we found was that the housekeeping staff was not in the communication loop. Patients might be out of the room for a procedure, or even checking out that day, but the beds were being completely stripped and remade. With a few changes, labor and higher laundry costs were brought back into line.”

In January of 2009 the healthcare consulting group learned that their division was closing. Morrison retired from EY on June 30. After six months he started his own firm, working with non-profit health systems to fill interim management roles. The challenges of being a hands-on executive were very different than consulting, but very rewarding.

“I found myself enveloped in technology more than I wanted to be and had to learn whole billing systems to complete some of my contracts. On one occasion, I was acting as the interface manager for the install, complete with technical advisors in another state doing a NASA type countdown to launch. I was VERY motivated to finish since I didn’t want to miss seeing the University of Alabama compete in the national championship game!”

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Morrison was on a plane headed back to New York. He knew of several services of remembrance; he threw his bag down in his hotel room and rushed to Christ Church NYC for their service. He was invited to go to an interfaith service later that day but did not write down the address and did not know where to go. He decided to go to Ground Zero. The church at Ground Zero, St. Paul’s Chapel, was conducting a service that afternoon. When he arrived, he was greeted by someone from the religious order and offered a ribbon that said, “There is more than enough”. The church was filled with families of first responders, and it was a very moving experience. When he asked for a couple of extra ribbons to take back to his home church, they gave him a whole roll of them. The stewardship theme for Trussville First United Methodist Church that year, with Morrison as campaign chair, was “There is more than enough”. “

I’m sure that there are many other ASCPA members who have personal stories of clients, friends and family who were in New York City on that terrible day. I’ll certainly never forget how close I came to being one of them.”