Mary Ellen Morris

Miss Morris passed away November 1, 2026, at Brookdale of Oakwood- Clare Bridge Memory Care, where she has been living since mid-May of 2021. Mary Ellen was born November 18, 1936 to William Stanley and Rosalie Mae (neé Swigart) Morris. She lived over 80+ years in the same house in the Bond Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati. She graduated from Woodward High School and the University of Cincinnati with a bacteriology degree. She went to work at the Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Virology Laboratory, which eventually became part of the Federal EPA. She retired in 1991 after 32 years’ service.

She was very active with the Mt. Washington Methodist Church and belonged to a group call the “Triple T’s” with whom she traveled extensively. Some of her trips included Europe, Scotland and New Zealand, as well as many places in the United States and Canada. She loved cats but was allergic, so she enjoyed all her friends’ cats and collected feline memorabilia. She was also an avid photographer and collected seashells on her many trips to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Her main hobby was knitting, which she learned in her teens and made hundreds of sweaters, afghans, etc. over her lifetime.

Through her work with Dr. Robert Safferman at the Taft virology lab, they first published an American Water Works Association article in 1964, that documented that they had isolated the “destructive power of the blue-green algae (BGA) virus (LPP-1 and LPP-2), which could serve as a highly potent and selective algae control, thus making it possible to eliminate the use of the potentially dangerous chemicals.” This revolutionized how wastewater could be treated. Their work extended into the 1970’s. Recently in 2022, at Indiana University, a PhD was able to identify the virus and chose to name it the Saffermanviridae Morrisvirius in honor of all the work over the years by Mary Ellen and her boss.

She is preceded in death by her parents, and close cousins Gene Rohr and Barbara Swigart. She is survived by her “first cousin once removed” Debbie Swigart; lifelong friend Jean (neé Lorenz) McFaddin and longtime neighbors James and Laverne Thomas.

Calling hours are Monday, November 9 from 11:00am-12:00pm and her funeral service is at 12:00pm at the Routsong Funeral Home, 2100 E. Stroop Rd., Kettering. Interment will be next to her parents at Mt. Zion Shoup Cemetery, North Fairfield and Indian Ripple Roads in Beavercreek.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Cincinnati Zoo.