Morin’s community contributions live on at Art Center

Ellen Robertson
Media General News Service
Published: April 3, 2008

Robert Luther Morin had served as president of the Orange and Virginia retail merchants associations.
When he thought of giving back to his community in the town of Orange, merchant Robert Luther Morin had something very literal in mind.
In the early 1980s, when he had closed down his Orange Furniture Co. and retired after 30 years, he gave the building that housed it to become The Arts Center in Orange.
That probably surprised few people in Orange, where Morin had served as mayor most of his 14 years on town council during the 1960s and 1970s. He also had served as junior warden, senior warden and church treasurer at St. Thomas Episcopal Church and as a Lions Club member who was honored in January for 60 years of service.
The 96-year-old Hagerstown, Md., native, who also had served as president of the Orange and Virginia retail merchants associations, died last Tuesday at his home in Orange.
He was remembered at a funeral Saturday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Orange. A private burial was held Sunday in Woodland Cemetery in Ashland.
“The Arts Center has meant a lot to the community,” said Edward Harvey of Somerset, president of the center. “A group of artists in the area had started a building center that had lived in a number of temporary places. He offered a home for it.”
The center features an exhibit gallery, offers classes from knitting to pottery to painting, and houses a gift shop where artists can sell their work, Harvey said. Its Orange jam music group for teenagers gives youth a chance to play music and form bands.
The center’s outreach program goes to Boys & Girls Club, Head Start and nursing home residents who cannot travel to the center. It offers home-school classes in topics from drawing to art history.
“It’s a pretty strong part of the community,” Harvey said. “He certainly honored the community with this.”
Morin had not planned on a career in furniture. His road to becoming a civil engineer began in a two-room schoolhouse in Maryland that had two teachers. It ended at the University of Maryland, where he dropped out of school to help support his family. He worked until 1940 with J. J. Newberry Co. in Front Royal.
He served in the Army during World War II, graduating from Army Medical Administrative Officer Candidate School as a second lieutenant. Staying on, he processed 44 classes through the school as commander of troops.
Toward war’s end, he was put in charge of all non-medical affairs at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. His duties included interacting with parents of wounded soldiers, especially amputees. He also had greeted VIP visitors, including Helen Keller, who he said was perhaps the most memorable person he ever met.
After the war, he returned to work at J. J. Newberry in Fredericksburg. When Newberry wanted him to move to New York, friends helped his family move to small-town Orange and open a furniture store.
His wife of 57 years, Betty Page Hunter Morin, died in 1999.
Survivors include a son, Robert Hunter Morin of Fredericksburg, and five grandchildren.