Mike Morgan used to laugh when he told friends that on the salary of a mere church organist, he managed to amass one of the world’s best private collections of English language Bibles. But he did. He played the organ at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta for decades, saving his shekels, reading antiquarian book catalogs and figuring out what he could bear to sell and afford to buy.
John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible? He had one, printed in 1382. A Coverdale Bible from the 1500s? Check. And then there was his copy of the King James Bible, printed in 1611, with the title page intact. That one had been a gift from his mentor. It is valued at close to half a million dollars. He even had a very rare Bible created by Julia Smith, a 19th century American polyglot who worked alone on her translation.
“There are people who are Bible collectors, but there’re not a lot of us,” said the Rev. Stephen Ricketts, a Methodist minister in Union Bridge, Maryland. “Calling Mike dedicated is a polite word. His collection was phenomenal.”
With Morgan’s death on Christmas Day, his 6,000-volume book collection of Bibles and religious texts is going to the Pitt Theological Library at Emory University, according to Guy Pujol, his executor. Morgan’s husband, Richard “Dickie” Ezell, died in 2021. Morgan had been struggling with bladder cancer for most of last year, so his many friends knew he wasn’t well.
But for some, like Martin Dotterweich of King University in Bristol, Tennessee, Morgan’s death came as a shock. Morgan had visited the campus three times over the past ten years, bringing his biblical treasures and talking about them to students, university trustees and the community. King University awarded Morgan an honorary doctorate in 2014 based on his extensive biblical scholarship.
“He had an incredibly generous spirit,” said Dotterweich. “He would let people handle the books after his presentation. I think the reason he had the books was to share them.”
Credit: Martin Dotterweich, King University
Credit: Martin Dotterweich, King University
In 1973, Don Robinson was the music director at Central Presbyterian when he hired Morgan as the new church organist. Reared in Pine Mountain, Georgia, Morgan had a degree in music and organ performance from Florida State University, and he had served as an organist in churches in Florida, California and Georgia before landing at Central.
Robinson thought his niece, Linda McCord, a choir member, would enjoy meeting Morgan since they were both in their 20s and shared an interest in music. That friendship flowered and deepened into one of the most important in their lives. With Linda’s daughter and Mike’s husband, they enjoyed Thanksgivings and New Year’s celebrations and supported each other through the deaths of loved ones and with Michael’s own struggle with cancer.
“His talents were huge, but he was the most humble human being I’ve ever met,” said McCord. In addition to playing the organ at Central, Morgan was a staff musician at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur. He also taught worship classes.
Morgan wrote a Psalter and also wrote hymns, McCord said. “If someone was having a wedding anniversary and wanted a hymn, Mike would write it. He was one of the least egotistical musicians I’ve ever known.”
McCord laughed when she described Morgan also as a cut-throat charades player, very fast-witted and sometimes sarcastic in his humor. He was also generously kind.
One year, a homeless man appeared in the congregation at Central Presbyterian. When Morgan and Ezell learned about the man’s circumstances, they found and paid for an apartment where the man lived for “five or six years,” said McCord. When the man had to move, “Mike and Richard invited him into their home, where he has been living as a guest for several years.”
Though Morgan was reared as a Baptist and became a Presbyterian, he treasured and collected copies of the Book of Common Prayer, used by Anglicans around the world. He had at least 150 prayer books. Guy Pujol said Morgan “loved a good liturgical service. The history of the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible are intertwined.”
Morgan was the son of the late John Hopson and Virginia Forsyth Morgan of Pine Mountain. He is survived by first cousins Lynda Morgan Marlowe, Benjamin Forsyth Hubert and Beth Baggett Harati. A memorial service was held on February 11.
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