Over the next year Adam Morrell is going to be mighty busy — and he’ll love every minute of it.
Morrell, a 2010 graduate of Iola High School, has accepted a one-year position as an historical archivist for the Parris Island Museum in South Carolina. The one-year assignment is an arrangement between Advanced Global Resources, Dallas, where Morrell works, and the museum.
His responsibility will be archiving nearly 4,000 artifacts and documents from the Marine Corps — Parris Island is a Marine training center — and Native American history.
Already he has catalogued Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s World War II letters and a U.S. flag from the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal during WWII.
The museum is a 10,000-square-foot exhibit facility on the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. The museum’s mission is to exhibit and interpret the original and rich legacy of the Marine Corps and the pivotal and expansive history of the Port Royal region, from first native occupants to early European explorers and settlements.
Morrell was graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in history and business in 2014. He won the Carl Becker Award in May 2014 for Most Outstanding Senior Thesis in a History Seminar, “The Inevitable Downfall of Nazi Germany.” The thesis examined important economic, social and military decisions and events that led to collapse of the Third Reich.
In May 2016 Morrell earned a master’s degree in information science with a focus on archival studies and data management from the University of North Texas.
Previous notable experiences in the history field for Morrell were:
— Visitors services assistant at the Spencer Art Museum in Lawrence while attending KU.
— An internship at the National Archives in Kansas City, where he catalogued Department of Interior letters. A highlight, Morrell said, was reading some of the patent applications letters from Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor, physicist and futurist known for his contributions to the design of modern alternating current electricity. He also archived American Civil War draftee enrollment books.
— An internship at the World War II Museum in New Orleans.
— Volunteer work at the Dentine County, Texas, museum, where he catalogued some of Bonnie Parker’s and Clyde Barrow’s original letters.
Adam is the son of Jack and Cathy Morrell, former Iolans now living in Frisco, Texas.
