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Jim Morrison
Timing is a curious thing. When I first started this series in May of 2008,
the fact that Jim Morrison’s father had served as the commander of the ships
involved in the Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ had gone virtually unreported for some
four-and-a-half decades. Readers were shocked – shocked, I tell you! – when I
began this series by trotting out that revelation. Some even accused me of
making it up, or of somehow twisting the facts.
But as fate would have it, as December of 2008 rolled around, the mainstream
media was suddenly awash with reports of the unusual Morrison family connection.
On December 8, for example, the Los Angeles Times carried a report on Admiral
George Stephen Morrison, described therein as “a retired Navy rear admiral and
the father of the late rock icon Jim Morrison.” According to the Times report,
“Morrison had a long career that included serving as operations officer aboard
the aircraft carrier Midway and commanding the fleet during the 1964 Gulf of
Tonkin incident, which led to an escalation of American involvement in Vietnam.”
(emphasis added)
The very next day, on December 9, the New York Times followed suit with a report
by William Grimes: “George S. Morrison, who commanded the fleet during the Gulf
of Tonkin incident that led to an escalation of the Vietnam War and whose son
Jim was the lead singer of the Doors … Aboard the flagship carrier Bon Homme
Richard, Mr. Morrison commanded American naval forces in the gulf when the
destroyer Maddox engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats on Aug. 2, 1964. A
skirmish and confused reports of a second engagement two days later led
President Lyndon B. Johnson to order airstrikes against North Vietnam and to
request from Congress what became known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing
him to carry out further military operations without declaring war.” (emphasis
again added) Part XIII
Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story
of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation