By Casey Jarmes | The News Review
Josephine Morse has been named as the Grand Marshall for the upcoming Delta Days Parade, which will be part of the city’s sesquicentennial celebration taking place on September 5-7.
“When they asked me I said I’d be honored,” said Morse. “Because, you know, this is the first home I owned. Rented when we first married, and then we got this, we bought it. This is all I know…You get married, you leave home, and I ended up right back here. I was born and raised in Sigourney and graduated from there, but that didn’t mean I had to go back to Sigourney. I figured this was close enough.”
Josephine grew up in Sigourney and married Marion Morse. The couple worked on Marion’s parents’ farm in North English, where their five children were born, then moved to Delta in 1968, after Marion’s parents moved to town. The couple raised their five children on a seven, later expanded to ten-acre, property in the small town. Marion passed away in 1993.
“People are friendly,” Morse said about Delta. “I belonged to that Methodist Church up here ever since I’ve been living here…You know, you don’t hear of any murders and that stuff, you know what I mean? Small town living, plain, simple, quiet.”
After moving to Delta, Josephine got a job working as a custodian at the University of Iowa, later being promoted to a supervisor. She retired from the university after 20 years.
“Time back then, the wife could afford to stay at home with the kids as long as the husband had a pretty good job,” said Morse. “It wasn’t very long I went to work. My kids still were well into school though…I first worked over at the overall factory, that didn’t last long. And then I went to Amana, I was there for three years, and they had a strike. They were always having strikes back then., it seemed like, and I thought, well I can’t afford to be off for a month, two months, three months, like they do. I went to work to help make ends meet for family and everything, and so, that’s when I turned around and went to the University of Iowa. My husband was already up there, so I went and put my name into a pot up there and then I retired from there after 20 years…Wasn’t many women in the workforce were custodial. That was always men’s work, seemed like, it was always classified like that.”
“(Since retiring I have) been taking care of my yard, my flowers, grandkids,” said Morse. “Was at first when I retired, because when my husband died, they was very little, the grandkids were…I was always wanting to help, you know, with them. And when they get married and they purchased their homes and painting had to be done, and this and that, and I had the time to do it while they were off working, so I’d just go and maybe spend a night or two with them and do some painting for them, and that kind of stuff. And then pretty soon the grandkids would grow up and don’t need Grandma no more, pretty much.”
The Delta Days parade, which Josephine Morse will be the grand marshal for, will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 6. The motto for the sesquicentennial is “150 years & Counting; Built on Strong Foundation.”
