• Overview
• 1885 - 1927
• 1927 - WWII
• WWII - 1960
• 1960 - 1975
• 1975 - Present

Morris & Garritano Insurance History: 1960-1975

Local sports, always a source of enthusiasm, became one of sorrow in the autumn of 1960. The families of the agency relished Cal Poly football: For years, the agency footed live radio broadcast of the home games, while the men and their wives cheered from the fifty-yard line. Also, the partners took turns traveling with the team on away games.

Tragically, when a chartered airplane carrying much of the Mustang team to Ohio crashed, the students, Pete Bachino, and others onboard lost their lives.

For the agency, losing the man loved as the “Bing Crosby of Higuera Street” caused a time of mourning and a time of change. Harry Morris and Robert Bachino would soon have two new contributors to agency’s future.

Marvin Dee, formerly a Hartford claims adjuster, started in 1961. Good with people, he built the business aggressively.

Then Greg Morris, after graduating from Santa Clara University and working for Hartford, returned to San Luis Obispo in 1964. That year the agency moved to the Sinsheimer Trust Building and became known as Morris & Dee Insurance. In this year that Bob Dylan sang, “For the times they are a-changin’”, Morris & Dee purchased a state-of-the-art bookkeeping machine the size of a church organ that sat two people.

And by the early Seventies, Morris & Dee had purchased land for new offices on the corner of Pacific and Santa Rosa Streets.