John Morris died peacefully on August 25, 2027 surrounded by his loved one, Kim, following a courageous lifelong battle against stage-4 boredom. He was 80.
John spent his childhood in a dysfunctional family in the Parkfairfax development of post-World War II Alexandria, Virginia, during which he was known to friends variously as Jack, Jackie (after Jackie Robinson), and Jackson. He graduated from Charles D. Barrett Elementary School, where he was barely an average student, and Francis C. Hammond High School, where he failed to distinguish himself in the classroom, the band room, or on the athletic field. After failed attempts at baseball, basketball, and football, he found a place well down the roster on the Hammond cross-country team.
While his childhood was not to be envied, he was present at the two most famous speeches of the Twentieth Century: John Kennedy’s verb-first “Ask Not” inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 1961, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
But in nearly every respect, John’s life actually began in the mid-1960s when at 18 he hitchhiked to New York City with a brown suitcase holding a few clothes and $10 in his pocket. Two elements of this chapter would echo through John’s life and play an outsized role in making his life one that he cherished and deeply appreciated. One: He was doing something no one else was doing. All of his friends were freshmen in college and living off their parents. He was hitchhiking to New York City to make a different and independent life. And two: He was down to next to nothing. All he had to his name was a suitcase with a few clothes and a ten-dollar bill.
John found a place to live in the East Village, and began his short career in architecture at the Midtown offices of Edward Durrell Stone where he made tiny contributions to the design of the Kennedy Cultural Center which would later be built on the shore of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
With his architecture career cut short by professional jealousy, John enlisted in the U.S. Army just as the army was up to its neck in that mess in Vietnam. As a person to that point showing no promise, John seemed destined to become just another grunt in the army’s badly executed military campaign when he was plucked by some misguided non-com from the ranks of the soon-to-be fodder and sent to Officer Candidate School at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. There, along with his friend and classmate, the future best-selling author, Nelson DeMille, John graduated into the ranks of commissioned officers while still a teenager. While this is evidence of how desperate the army was at the time for combat leaders, in the end, the army showed some good judgement in that it never sent John to Vietnam or into combat. John had previously shown on the football field that he had no tolerance for violence or pain, and had by then developed a strong contempt for authority figures – including those giving him orders and bossing him around in the army. So it was best not to put John in combat situations where these personality traits might work against the army’s overall mission in Vietnam – as flawed and badly executed as it was. Without ever leaving the country, John served three years in the army and was honorably discharged as a first lieutenant.
During the summer of 1970, out of the army and drifting, John recruited his friend, Woody Cummings, to go with him to Europe – their first trips out of the U.S. – and see the world. Here’s that theme again: John’s contemporaries were finishing college, starting marriages, and getting real jobs. John (with Woody) was doing something no one he knew was doing – and doing it with a small amount of cash and what little he could fit in his red backpack.
John and Woody hitchhiked across the U.S. from San Francisco and then up to Gander, Newfoundland from where they flew to London. From there, they hitchhiked across northern Europe, the three Scandinavian countries, and Finland. They saw Jimi Hendrix’ last live performance at a rock festival on the North Sea and crossed into the Communist Bloc at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. Their thumbs took them down through Central Europe, along the length of the Dalmatian Coast in what was then Yugoslavia, and into Athens.
While in Athens, Woody chose to go home, and John continued his odyssey on his own. He reached Istanbul during a cholera outbreak. In Istanbul, John met other travelers — mostly from the United Kingdom. They were all going east to Iran and India, or west back to their homes. With everyone he met going east or west, John did what no one else was doing and went south – through Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. From Beirut, he went to Damascus and then south again to Amann. It was September 1970 – Black September. The fighting between the Jordanian army and the PLO had just stopped. On the road from Damascus to Amann, John saw the shell of the British Airways plane that had been hijacked, flown to the Jordanian desert, and blown up. Once in Amann, he was told more than once that he was the first foreigner to enter Amann since the fighting stopped. He saw some of the extensive damage caused to the city by the fighting, and at one point watched as Yasir Arafat came out of a building, got into a car, and was driven off. He never saw or met another Westerner in Amann. The people he met and stayed with there were almost all Palestinians who had managed to find a way to live in the city outside the sprawling and horrific Palestinian refugee camps that surrounded it.
Still on his own, John crossed North Africa — Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco — before sailing the Straits of Gibraltar and returning to Europe. From Valencia to Paris to London, and from there back to the U.S. to begin the next chapter of his life.
The most important event of John’s life occurred during January 1972 when he met Kim – Kim Christine Kollmann. On his last day working for the post office, he was in a small office building in Millbrae, California trying to deliver a package to Ann Murdoch. But Ann wasn’t in her office, so he walked down the hall to the first open doorway and there met his future. Everything that followed in the life that John loved so much was due entirely to Kim. They were complete opposites in so many respects, yet over time proved to be totally in sync on all of life’s big questions: Marriage (optional), children (never), families (not worth the trouble), religion (we’ll pass), money (spend it), travel and adventure (as much as possible).
Within days of meeting Kim, and with her help and encouragement, John began the greatest academic resurrection in human history. He went from nearly flunking out of high school to graduating from Stanford University at the very top of his class – a degree in political science with both distinction and honors, a 4.0 GPA, and a Phi Beta Kappa key. He completed his academic career at a top law school – what is today called Berkeley Law.
During law school, all of John’s classmates were stepping over each other trying to get jobs at top San Francisco law firms. But while John was able to get parttime jobs at two San Francisco firms while still in law school, he had no intention of following his classmates into careers in San Francisco. On the day after law school graduation, he and Kim drove south to Los Angeles where John took the California bar exam and began a ten-year career in what today is called Big Law. He worked as a commercial litigator in the Los Angeles offices of a New York firm – Skadden Arps – and a Washington firm – Jones Day. He never saw or ran into any of his Berkeley Law classmates in Los Angeles, and always believed that he had had the better opportunities and more interesting work experiences as a result of going where none of his classmates did.
Like nearly all Americans planning to attend the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, John and Kim had bought the required Soviet tour package and games tickets months before the games were to begin. But when President Carter announced that the United States would not be sending a team to the Moscow Olympics, thousands of Americans who had paid to attend wanted out and wanted their money back. But not John and Kim. John initiated a lawsuit in federal district court in New York that in the end insured that he and Kim – and a very small number of other Americans – could attend the games in spite of the U.S.-led boycott. By going against the crowd, John and Kim had a unique VIP experience in Moscow and were among only a handful of Americans who witnessed all 15 days of the Moscow Olympics.
But this extraordinary experience aside, the practice of Big Law was not something that suited John. Although there were three exceptions, John hated the people he worked with, worked against, and met while practicing law, and, although there were a few exceptions, he found the work of litigating soul-crushingly boring. After ten years, he had had enough. When Kim asked him what he wanted to do next, he responded: “Move to South Africa.”
It was 1988. South Africa was ruled by a military dictatorship masquerading as a republic. Apartheid was the law of land, and it was being brutally enforced against the ninety percent of the country that was nonwhite. The consensus among outside observers was that South Africa was on the verge of a civil war. There were 300 million people living in the United States in 1988. Only two of them chose to move to South Africa.
Kim and John sold their two cars, and sold or gave away their furniture and nearly everything else they owned. They put a few things in a couple of suitcases and flew to Cape Town. They didn’t know anyone in South Africa, didn’t have jobs lined up in South Africa, didn’t have any idea what they would do or how they would support themselves in South Africa, and they didn’t have work permits or temporary residence visas which would allow them to remain in South Africa. But once there, they figured things out and made it all work. And boy did it work. Reducing their belongings to next to nothing and going somewhere no one else would go was again the winning formula.
Kim and John lived in Cape Town for twenty years – until 2008. It was the great adventure of their lives. There was, of course, no civil war. Within months of their arrival, P.W. Botha suffered a stroke, F.W. de Klerk became state president, de Klerk let Nelson Mandela out of prison (Kim and John were in the crowd on the Parade when Mandela spoke publicly for the first time in nearly 30 years from the steps in front of Cape Town’s city hall), there was a transition period, and on April 24, 1994, the first democratic election in South Africa’s history made Nelson Mandela state president. South Africa was the most fascinating country in the world in which to live during those times.
In Cape Town, John created a business in financial services – a field in which he had no experience and knew nothing. He began by advising South African individuals on the investment and management of monies they held outside of South Africa. At the time, South Africa had strict exchange controls. South African citizens were required to report to the South African Reserve Bank all assets they held overseas, and the Reserve Bank would require those citizens to bring those assets to South Africa where they were exchanged for rands – South Africa’s currency. A number of South Africans chose not to declare their overseas assets. That made them criminals under South African law, and these criminals were John’s initial clients. He advised them on how to invest these overseas assets.
Following South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, international sanctions against South Africa fell away, and large global financial institutions began looking for ways to invest in South Africa. John saw this as an opportunity to persuade the new South African government to relax exchange controls, give South African financial institutions opportunities to invest overseas, and create attractive investments in South Africa for foreign financial institutions. It was John who went to Chris Stals, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, with the proposal that, once approved by the cabinet, opened South Africa to the world. He arranged the first overseas investment by a South African institution – a transaction between State Street Global Advisors and Eskom Pension Fund. His small business exploded from there. John handled global transactions for South African banks, pension funds, and insurance companies. This work eventually led to him advising South African institutions on the management of their large domestic portfolios as well. He undertook projects in South Africa and Australia for the London office of Fidelity Investments. Each investment and project in which he was involved was something new – a transaction which had never been done before.
John had arrived in South Africa with no idea how he would make a living in a country in which he knew no one, and ended up being responsible for billions of dollars in institutional investments even though he had no experience in or knowledge of investment or finance when he arrived in the country.
After twenty amazing years in Cape Town, John and Kim returned to the United States. They bought a home in Alpharetta – north of Atlanta — and from their home ran an ultraluxury travel business for extremely wealthy clients based on the experiences they had had in, and all they had learned about, ultraluxury travel. The business lasted until they concluded that their extremely wealthy clients were assholes and that they couldn’t tolerate working with them any longer.
Retired, bored, and restless, John and Kim realized that if they wanted to avoid aging and atrophying, they would have to find a way to keep moving. So in 2016, they again followed the formula that had worked for them throughout their lives: They sold their house and their second car. They sold or gave away their remaining belongings, and got themselves down to just the few things that would fit in the back of their Lexus RX. Then, while all of their Baby Boom generation contemporaries were clinging to their houses and trying to figure out how to leave their houses to their children when they die, John and Kim embraced homelessness and went permanently on the road. John said often that “homeownership is overrated”, and John’s fictional hero, Ryan Bingham, famously said: “Make no mistake, moving is living.” John and Kim spent their remaining years as nomads — living – not dying.
John often said that being born a white male in the United States shortly after World War II was the equivalent of winning the birth lottery. He knew how lucky he was to have been born when he was and to have lived when and where he did. He was extremely grateful for the timing of his birth and the life it made possible for him.
Here’s a list of some of the things John did in his life that he could not have done had he been born 20 years earlier or 20 years later:
– He witnessed history in South Africa, the Middle East, Washington, and Memorial Stadium.
– He hitchhiked across the United States multiple times.
– He hitchhiked with his friend Woody Cummings through most of Western Europe.
– He hitchhiked on his own through the Middle East and across North Africa.
– He visited Beirut before it was destroyed and when it still was “The Paris of the Middle East”.
– He visited Venice, Rome, Amalfi, and many other places in the world several times before they became overcrowded.
– He visited the Masai Mara, the Serengeti, and the other magnificent wildlife parks in Africa when there were still rhinos and elephants in these parks, and the parks were so uncrowded you could be alone with the animals.
– He visited all seven continents and sailed on each of the seven seas.
– He visited over 100 countries, all fifty U.S. states, and seven Canadian provinces.
– He traveled around the world six times – three in each direction – and each time in first class.
When asked to look back at his life and create a list of the things that meant the most to him, he wrote this:
“I lived the life I wanted to live – not the life others expected me to live or told me to live.
“I never met anyone who had a life like mine – who would dare the things that I’ve done.
“I lived an unconventional life full of things others wouldn’t do or attempt.
“I lived my life in chapters.
“I graduated at the very top of my class from the best university in the country.
“I graduated from a top-five law school.
“I worked at the very top of the legal profession at Big Law firms Skadden Arps and Jones Day.
“I moved to South Africa when everyone I knew told me that doing so was insane.
“I built from nothing a unique and very successful business in a challenging and demanding field about which I knew nothing.
“I designed, built, owned, and lived in the most beautiful and extraordinary house I ever saw.
“I wrote a memoir.
“I lived free, made my own choices, had my own beliefs, and controlled my own destiny.
“I was lucky, brave, reckless, joyful, and happy – I laughed more than anyone I knew.
“I often lived as if there were no rules.
“I committed unpunished crimes.
“I enjoyed the friendship of a few very special people.
“I sat by a campfire in the evening after dinner after a day on safari in the Mara with Kim and Nigel and listened to the echoes across the eons and knew that this was where I came from.
“I fell in love with someone so extraordinary who in turn fell in love with me and who chose to spend her life with me.
“I spent nearly all of my life with someone I once described this way: ‘She’s unlike anyone else. She’s both of this world and of another world even she can’t define. People are drawn to her. She’s a magical presence in our world. She makes you feel she’s leading you somewhere special. She has her own special powers. She has experiences that exist on a plane between what we think is reality and what we think of as dreams. Her spirit has the ability to leave her body and return. She’s holding secrets to happiness in this dimension that she’s not yet ready to share. You can’t imagine such a wonderful person.’
“I am grateful for every bit of it.”
In the words of that great Commodores song from the 80s which John loved so much, he’s now “on the nightshift”. He’s not the Jackie in the song, but he is the Jackie in the song.
