ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ELLISTON
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
The missing Roanoke man whose body was found Sunday night on the bank of the Roanoke River was fulfilling a decades-old goal to fast for 40 days, his pastor said.
Clarence R. Morgan's sister said her brother had been mentally ill ever since he was discharged from the Army during the Korean War. But Morgan's pastor, the Rev. Roger L. Graves, disputes that. "He was not mentally ill. ... We know better at the church," Graves said. "He was just a quiet guy who loved the Lord."
Morgan, 66, was last seen May 22, boarding a Valley Metro bus across from his Patterson Avenue Southwest home.
Sunday evening, two canoeists found Morgan's body, face down on the bank of the Roanoke River near the Montgomery County-Roanoke County line. A small Bible lay beside Morgan's body, and $4 of the $10 he left home with remained in his wallet, according to Lt. Bill Tolley of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
Dr. David Oxley, deputy chief medical examiner for Western Virginia, said early indications are that Morgan probably drowned, but some tests remain to be completed.
Tolley said it appeared Morgan had been staying under the U.S. 11/460 bridge, but he couldn't say for how long.
Why Morgan left the home he shared with Freddy and Lena Wells, who run a community care house at 1730 Patterson Ave. S.W., also is a mystery. But the pastor of the church Morgan attended speculated that Morgan might have been trying to fulfill what he termed "a lifelong goal" to fast for 40 days.
Graves, of the Maranatha Fellowship Church at 2715 Green Ridge Road in Roanoke, said people often confuse religious dedication, such as Morgan's, with mental illness.
Morgan's sister, Josephine Wilson of Norton, said she knows her brother loved the Lord, but she said he was not very religious until he came back from the war. She said he had not been in his right mind since he witnessed the killings of several friends and fellow soldiers during the Korean War.
When the Wellses told The Roanoke Times that Morgan suffered from mental illness, Graves said it disturbed him.
"When someone wants to pray and fast and read the Bible, people equate that with being a religious fanatic; nothing could be further from the truth," Graves said.
In 1960, Morgan disappeared - one of several such episodes - and when he was found, his sister said she took him to a veterans' hospital, where doctors diagnosed the mental illness. He also was fasting that time. Doctors eventually limited Morgan's fasting to one day at a stretch, she said.
Morgan spent nine years in a mental hospital and the last 19 living with the Wellses in Roanoke, she said.
"Lena had a hard time getting him to take his medicine; he would say, 'The Lord healed me of [my illness],''' Wilson said.
Wilson said her brother was taking medicine for high blood pressure and a "nervous condition" he came home from the war with, which sometimes caused him to hallucinate.
Graves said Morgan attended church two to three times a week and missed just one service in the last eight years. Graves thought Morgan probably left home to fast because he was afraid of being committed again.
"He had mentioned before, if he left, they would lock him up again," Graves said.
He said Morgan believed fasting was what God wanted him to do. "If you had a goal for something so strong, that would be the most important thing," Graves said. "I think he thought everything was going to be OK."
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB