INSIDE: LIFE LESSONS / PEOPLE / REMEMBRANCE
BUZZ
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WHAT MATTERS NOW IN THE CITY
LI F E L E SS O N S
DAN MORRILL
At 82, the embodiment of historic preservation in Charlotte aims to build something new
RICK HOVIS
BY GREG LACOUR
THESE DAYS, Dan Morrill works in a quiet first-floor bedroom in the 88-year-old Eastover home where he and his wife, Mary Lynn, have lived since 1967. Surrounded by books and antiques and warmed by a gas log fireplace against the far wall, Morrill leans forward in a gray recliner as he taps away at his laptop on a chilly late January afternoon. “We have three bedrooms upstairs, but it’s always good to have a downstairs bedroom,” he remarks, “especially when you get old.” He’s 82, a lifelong North Carolinian, and his old-school Old North State accent takes that last word, drops it an octave, and draws it out for emphasis: ooooollllllld. Morrill sticks with his commitments over decades. He’s the longest-tenured faculty member ever (51 years) at UNC Charlotte, and for nearly a half-century has been Charlotte’s undisputed expert on and leader in historic preservation, an area that fast-growing Charlotte wouldn’t seem to embrace. But Morrill says there’s more of it in town than people think, and he recently left behind a position he’d held for 46 years— director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, a county agency—to tackle preservation via the nonprofit route. Last year, he and a friend started Preserve Mecklenburg (wepreservemecklenburg.org), a 501(c)(3) organization that raises donations to try to preserve properties like the John and Idella Mayes House at 435 East Morehead Street in Dilworth, a Victorian-era gem that Preserve Mecklenburg may pick up and move if it means saving the house.
Dan Morrill, for decades the director of the CharlotteMecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, has co-founded a new organization that tries to save historic properties like the John and Idella Mayes House at 435 East Morehead Street in Dilworth.
APRIL 2020 // CHARLOTTE
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