 | VAUGHAN INGE MORRISSETTE |
Vaughan Inge Morrissette has spent a lifetime
expanding the dimensions of volunteerism and civic leadership.
She is a goodwill ambassador
for her city and state.
Born in 1933 in Mobile, she graduated
from Murphy High School
and Sweet Briar College. She then
married the late H. Taylor Morrissette
and immediately went to work
building both her family and her
community.
Four decades and scores of boards
and committees later, she is still one
of Alabama’s busiest and most effective
supporters of worthy causes
from the arts to economic development.
Education has been one of her
most active fields of service. She has served on the boards
of her alma mater, Sweet Briar College in Amherst, Virginia;
Washington and Lee University, also in Virginia; and
Spring Hill College in Mobile. She served on the advisory
board to the business school of the University of South
Alabama and the foundation board for the Alabama Institute
for the Deaf and Blind. She also served on the governing
board and chaired the foundation of the Alabama
School of Mathematics and Science; she led the fund drive
to build the school’s state-of-the-art library.
In nontraditional education, she has played a transformational
role at American Village, a unique civic and educational center in Shelby County. As deputy director,
she has brought national attention to the cultural and educational
resource, in part by drawing
on her national contacts within the
Colonial Dames and the Mount Vernon
Ladies Association. As vice regent
and then regent of Mount Vernon,
she helped plan and lead a $100
million capital campaign to preserve
President Washington’s home and
dramatically upgrade its educational
facilities and programs.
In Mobile, her involvement has
been felt in almost every significant
community campaign over the past
four decades. She chaired the Mobile
Infirmary Medical Center board;
was chairman of the capital drive to
build the new $15 million Mobile Museum of Art; served
for years with the Mobile Junior League; and is on the
board of governors of the new Carnival Museum, which
preserves the history and lore of the nation’s first Mardi
Gras celebration; to name a few. She has served as a director
of AmSouth Bank.
At the state level, she is a trustee of the Department of
Archives and History; the State Council on the Arts; the
Women’s Hall of Fame.
She is a graduate of Leadership Alabama and has served
on the vestry of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. She has four
children and eleven grandchildren.
Updated: November 17, 2008