Mike and Cathy Morris met at Camp Ozanam in 1976 under unusual circumstances. Mike was a Detroit police officer who was laid off and thus had some free time. He had affection towards the camping program that started with his seminarian days so he decided to spend that time at Ozanam. Cathy was a former Camp Health Director. She learned that the camp was in dire need of a nurse to supervise the “MASH unit” while the regular Camp Health Director (Mike Krowisz) was at school being certified. Cathy took a week off from her regular job to help at camp. Their romance really took off on those hallowed 34 acres. They met in June and were married December 11, 1976 at a wedding officiated by their friend and former Camp Health Director, Fr. Tim Dombrowski. In Mike’s own words is how he met Cathy…
I started working at Camp Ozanam the summer after my sophomore year of high school and stopped after I left the seminary after my third year of college. I joined the Detroit Police Department in 1972 when I left the seminary. In June of 1976, Detroit laid off a large group of Police Officers, including me. Chuck Piotrowski, a classmate and close friend who was also the Head Counselor at Camp, asked if I would help out at Camp and work during work week and the first trip. I jumped at the chance to work at Camp again.
During the “off season” from Camp, Chuck was a bartender at Pat O’Grady’s on the east side of Detroit. One night, he was explaining to a customer that he was in a pinch for a Camp Health Director for the first week of the first trip because the person who was going to be the Camp Health Director, Mike Krowicz, was going to be in training that week. That customer, Cathy Mann, had worked before as a camp nurse at different camps. He asked if she would be willing to come up for the first week to help out. After checking with her employer, she agreed.
Cathy arrived at Camp in the middle of work week, June 16th, coincidentally, my birthday. We hit it off pretty good. She was unaware that I was a Police Officer partly because it never came up and partly because I was sporting a full beard (Detroit let us grow beards for the bicentennial). She was from Grosse Pointe Woods and I was from the east side of Detroit and we continued seeing/dating each other when our Camp experience was over.
We got engaged in August and married on December 11, 1976. We have been happily married for over 38 years, have two wonderful children, a wonderful daughter-in-law and a wonderful son-in-law, and five delightful grandchildren as of this writing (March 2015).
