Walter Morrison, father of the Frisbee, dies at 90

LOS ANGELES — Walter Frederick Morrison,
whose post-World War II invention of a “flying” plastic disc became an
American recreational icon known as the Frisbee, has died. He was 90.

Morrison died Tuesday of age-related causes at his home in Monroe, Utah, said his son, Walt.

Wham-O Inc. has sold more than 200 million Frisbees since
Morrison sold the company the rights to what he called the “Pluto
Platter” in 1957.

“Fred’s
timeless contribution to the sport and toy industries has brought
smiles to well over 200 million faces and continues to do so every
day,” Kevin Martzolff, Wham-O’s vice president of
design & marketing, said in a statement. “We are forever thankful
for his invention of the Frisbee Disc and his ongoing partnership with
Wham-O for over 50 years.”

For Morrison, who was born Jan. 23, 1920, in Richfield, Utah, and moved to California at age 11, his contribution to popular culture had its origins in 1937.

That’s when the 17-year-old Morrison and his
girlfriend and future wife, Lucile, began tossing a large popcorn can
lid back and forth for fun during a Thanksgiving party.

When the lid got banged up, they switched to cake pans, which they discovered flew much better than the lid.

A year later, they were tossing a cake pan to each other on the beach in Santa Monica when someone saw them and offered a quarter for the pan.

“That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for five cents,
and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well,
there was a business,” Morrison told The Virginia-Pilot newspaper in
2007.

Soon, they were regularly selling cake pans on the beach for a quarter.

They continued their modest enterprise after
marrying in 1939 and on up to World War II, when Morrison served in the
Army Air Forces as a P-47 pilot in Europe, where he spent time as a prisoner of war.

Back home in 1946, Morrison sketched a design for an aerodynamically improved flying disc he dubbed the Whirlo-Way.

In 1948, after modifying his drawings and experimenting with a number of prototypes, Morrison and an early partner, Warren Franscioni, began producing the first plastic discs that — in the wake of reported UFO sightings — were now called Flyin-Saucers.

“We worked fairs, demonstrating it,” Morrison told
The Virginian-Pilot. “That’s where we learned we could sell these
things, because people ate them up.”

In 1955, after further improvement of his design, Morrison began producing new discs, which he now called the Pluto Platter.

After Morrison sold the rights to his disc to Wham-O in 1957, the company named the disc the Frisbee.

“I thought the name was a horror. Terrible,” Morrison told the Riverside Press Enterprise in 2007.

But Morrison, who told Forbes magazine in 1982 that he by then had received about $2 million in royalty payments, later changed his mind. “I wouldn’t change the name of it for the world,” he said.

A 1964 redesign by Wham-O employee Ed Headrick added grooves to the top of the Frisbee’s surface that improved the
discs’ flight. The company then began marketing the Frisbee as a sports
product, spurring the creation of Frisbee Golf and the team sport known
as Ultimate Frisbee.

A longtime carpenter who also spent time as a Los Angeles building inspector, Morrison later raised and raced quarter horses as a hobby on his Utah property.

Asked the secret to the perfect Frisbee throw, Morrison told the Press Enterprise in 2007 that it was “all in the wrist.”

“A good throw takes practice,” he said. “You need a good, firm grip and a quick release.”

But, he conceded, “the darn things can be unpredictable.”

Morrison was preceded in death by his wife. In
addition to his son Walt, he is survived by his daughters, Judy and
Christie; and four grandchildren.

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