TCU athletic department supporting coach who lost father to coronavirus
Lisa Morgan-Richman is a relative newcomer to the TCU family, having just become the university’s cross country coach in January. And while she has settled in, she had hoped that in the coming months she would be able to show her new office to her father, the man who introduced her to the sport.
However, instead of looking forward to a visit to the Fort Worth campus, Morgan is mourning the loss of the family patriarch, John Morgan, to the coronavirus earlier this month.
It’s been a difficult time for Morgan as her father is the man who introduced her to track and field. He was in good health for a 90-year-old, but he battled COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and passed away shortly after being diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month.
But one of the silver linings for Mogan has been the support she’s received from her athletes and the TCU athletic department.
“It’s been amazing,” Morgan said from her family’s home in Newark, New Jersey. “I love my TCU family. The silver lining is God put me in the right place at the right time. The messages from my athletes, just the outreach from the staff to get flowers and messages … those help.
“You like when a nice message shows up in your phone. When it hit, I couldn’t talk about it. I went off the grid for three days, but just to have those messages uplifts you. It’s OK and it’s going to be all right.”
Morgan enjoyed being part of an Easter video that TCU sent out where a number of student athletes and coaches sang Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.”
Morgan joined TCU’s staff in January.
“In her brief time at TCU, she has had an immediate impact on all of us with her unbelievably positive attitude,” athletic director Jeremiah Donati said. “She has shown tremendous strength in a really difficult time.”
Morgan recalled stories of her father and how he introduced her and her siblings to track and field. That’s where her passion for the sport began.
She ran at the University of Kentucky and has been coaching for 30 years, including a five-time Team USA Track & Field coach from 2011 to 2016.
Morgan hoped her father would have been able to see her new office and school in the fall, and celebrate that success with him on campus.
“He would’ve been 91 in November,” Morgan said. “For most of his life, my dad was never ill. He was a smoker in his younger years, so during this time he did suffer from COPD but that was pretty much it. He was very active, very athletic and just a real cool guy. He never let anything bother him.
“My brothers and sisters and I were sharing stories the other day and we remembered my dad went to court one day and lost the case. Afterward he said, ‘Well, let’s go get something to eat. No sense in losing and being hungry.’”
For Morgan, her message to the TCU community and beyond is to adhere to every protocol being put in place from social distancing to washing hands to wearing masks. She described the devastating reality that the entire family couldn’t be with her father as he passed away, or the fact that the family couldn’t hold a proper funeral.
“The only thing that I can say is that it was quick, he didn’t suffer, I’m praying,” Morgan said. “But you just don’t know. I never got to see him, never got to talk to him or anything. He was alone and that was disheartening. He has the six of us and more and no one could be there to say, ‘Hey, you can get through this.’ It was nothing. It just took him.
“This pandemic is real. It’s serious,” Morgan said. “People need to take it seriously and adhere to every protocol.”
