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Fred Morrison launched a leisure lifestyle with his fantastic plastic flying saucer.
His contribution to recreation all over the globe gained air only after he dodged death by piloting fighter-bombers in the skies over Europe in World War II.
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Morrison, a Southern California beach boy, first called his spinning discs Flyin’ Cake Pans and then Whirlo-Way. It’s known today as the Frisbee.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO SPREAD GLOBAL GOSPEL OF SURFING, DUKE KAHANAMOKU, HAWAII’S ORIGINAL BIG KAHUNA
“It was an instant phenomenon,” Tristan Lin, brand director for Wham-O, told Fox News Digital.
“Before you knew it, every college kid in America was playing Frisbee.”
Walter Frederick Morrison, who invented the Frisbee, is shown promoting his Pluto Platters. They were the forerunner of the Frisbee.(Connecticut State Library/Public Domain)
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Wham-O, based in California, popularized the hula-hoop, super ball and Morrison’s Frisbee, among other whimsical innovations.
The genius of the Frisbee “is its simplicity,” said Lin.
“It was an instant phenomenon.”
Morrison was actually inspired by the easy-as-pie act of slinging baking pans through the air, a common recreational activity before his Frisbee took flight.
“The Frisbee started off as nothing more than a container that carried pies,” reported the University of Southern California online engineering publication Illumin Magazine, which analyzed the physics of the flying disc.
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Border collie Emma catches a Frisbee in the “Freestyle Flying Disc” competition during the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge at Huntington Beach, California, June 8, 2018.(MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
“It eventually became an immensely popular and internationally recognized toy.”
The Frisbee proved to be so much more than just a plastic plaything. It’s an icon of a confident, optimistic, victorious United States.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO INVENTED THE FOLDING BEACH CHAIR, FREDRIC ARNOLD, WWII HERO, INNOVATOR, ARTIST, ACTOR
“The Frisbee screams America to me,” said Wham-O’s Lin. “It screams patriotism. It’s a symbol of American culture and creativity and a laid-back, playful but competitive United States.”
Something motivated America’s war heroes to contribute happiness to America after the horror of war.
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The Frisbee proved to be so much more than just a plastic plaything. It’s an icon of a confident, optimistic, victorious United States.(iStock)
Morrison’s story is hauntingly mirrored by another combat hero pilot: Fredric Arnold, the American who invented the folding beach chair.
Airborne kick the can
Walter Frederick Morrison was born on Jan. 23, 1920 in rural Richfield, Utah.
His father, Dr. Walter F. Morrison, moved his optometry practice and his family to Los Angeles when the future toy titan was just 11 years old.
It was the Great Depression and even the most ordinary objects presented playtime opportunities. The Frisbee traces its roots to an airborne version of kick the can.
Four young friends jump for a Frisbee in Lake Erie on July 28, 2015, in Cleveland, Ohio. (Angelo Merendino/Corbis via Getty Images)
“The Frisbee story starts in college,” writes the National Museum of Play, which inducted the plastic surf-and-sand flying disc into its Toy Hall of Fame in 1988.
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“Late 19th-century students at Yale and other New England universities played catch with pie plates … made by the nearby Frisbie Baking Co. of Bridgeport, Connecticut. They yelled ‘Frisbie!’ to warn passersby away from the spinning discs.”
FOX NATION’S NEW SERIES ‘MEET THE AMERICAN WHO’ TELLS OF ORDINARY AMERICANS WHO GAVE US EXTRAORDINARY INNOVATIONS
The campus tradition gained air on a sunny SoCal beach in 1937.
Teenage Morrison, according to an often told industry tale, was tossing a 5-cent cake pan back and forth with his girlfriend Lucille when approached by another sunbum. The man offered Morrison 25 cents for the pan.
Model, author and actress Rachel McCord is seen with a Frisbee on July 30, 2016, in Los Angeles, California. (TSM/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
The couple instantly realized the profit potential.
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“Soon ‘Flyinʼ Cake Pans’ were available at beaches and parks all over L.A.,” wrote Phil Kennedy in an online account of Morrison’s life story.
Kennedy co-authored the 2006 book “Flat Flip Flies Straight!: True Origins of the Frisbee,” with the inventor himself.
The couple instantly realized the profit potential.
Sales of discs “funded dates and eventually a wedding ring. Fred and Lu got joined.”
And then they got separated by war. Morrison joined the Army Air Force, piloting P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers in World War II.
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“The P-47 was a behemoth,” writes the National World War II Museum. The 5-ton warplane, it notes, was “loaded with 3 tons of fuel, bombs and ammunition.”
The Republic P-47B Thunderbolt. Believed to be fastest fighters flown during World War II.(Getty Images)
He survived 58 nerve-breaking missions when his string of skill and luck ran out.
He was shot down in Italy and captured by the Germans.
“He was held as a POW for over a month, but he survived,” The Saturday Evening Post wrote in a 2021 Frisbee chronicle.
“After the war ended and he returned home, Morrison’s thoughts turned back to his homemade flyer.”
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Luck arrives from out of space
The mechanics of flinging a Frisbee were familiar to humanity for millennia.
“Humans have been tossing flat, round objects since time immemorial – first, out of curiosity to watch something remain airborne in defiance of gravity and because it was fun,” wrote Morrison co-author Kennedy.
In Ancient Greece, the sport of discus throwing is shown. Colored engraving by Heinrich Leutemann (1824-1905). (Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images)
He added, “Later, it was discovered that flying objects could also be used as weapons, which led to showing off feats of skill, and organized sporting events, such as hurling the discus at the early Greek Olympics.”
Morrison put an entrepreneurial post-World War II American spin on the age-old spiraling missile. He harvested wealth from leisure.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO REPORTED THE FIRST SENSATIONAL UFO ENCOUNTERS, PURITAN LEADER JOHN WINTHROP
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Ever since his 1937 epiphany, Morrison had gained intense wisdom studying the science of soaring at Uncle Sam’s school of survival.
“His flying experience gave him new insights [into] the aerodynamics of flight … and, once out of the service, a new inspiration to pick up where he had left off,” wrote Kennedy.
Morrison’s first new disc in 1946, the pressed metal Whirlo-Way, was soon replaced with a lightweight disc made possible by advances in plastics.
Jesse Marcel, head intelligence officer, who initially investigated and recovered some of the debris from the Roswell UFO site, is shown above. Corsicana Daily Sun on July 9, 1947.(Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Unforeseen fortune also arrived from out of space – or did it?
“It’s hard to imagine today, but in 1946 there were no flying saucers … at least by that name,” reported the Flying Disc Museum, a repository of Frisbee history and lore in Phoenix, Arizona.
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“It’s a symbol of American culture and creativity and a laid-back, playful but competitive United States.”
Pilot Ken Arnold claimed to see a flying object in Washington state in June 1947. Roswell, New Mexico became the center of UFO conspiracies that same summer.
America’s emerging mass media dubbed the aerial phenomenon “flying saucers.”
The nation’s also-emerging consumer culture was obsessed by the flying discs, portrayed in popular culture to look much like Morrison’s Whirlo-Way.
He renamed an improved version the Flyin-Saucer, and then, with a breakthrough new design in 1955, the Pluto Platter.
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UFOs portrayed as flying saucers became a pop-culture phenomenon after World War II. (iStock)
After business fits and starts, the war hero celebrated his 37th birthday on Jan. 23, 1957, by inking a deal with Wham-0, a toy-marketing dynamo.
Wham-O renamed it the Frisbee, reportedly inspired by the pans from Frisbie Baking Co. that Yale students tossed around the Connecticut campus.
Morrison said he “hated” the name. Then the royalties arrived.
Wham-O reportedly sold 100 million Frisbees by the mid-1960s.
‘Obvious connection’ with another WWII pilot, inventor
Walter Frederick “Fred” Morrison died on Feb. 9, 2010 at his home in Monroe, Utah, after battling cancer and Father Time. He was 90 years old.
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He made international headlines when he passed away.
Frisbee inventor Fred Morrison with an unnamed woman during a publicity shoot for the Wham-O Frisbee. From “The Wham-O Superbook: 70 Years of Fun” by Tim Walsh.(Tim Walsh/Wham-O)
“That simple little toy has permeated every continent in every country, as many homes have Frisbees as any other device ever invented,” Morrison’s attorney, Kay McIff, told The Associated Press in an obituary published around the world.
“How would you get through your youth without learning to throw a Frisbee?”
The Pluto Platter was an early version of the Frisbee by inventor Fred Morrison. The name capitalized on the nation’s obsession with UFOs after World War II. The mysterious objects were dubbed flying saucers in popular culture and portrayed to look much like Morrison’s flying discs. From “The Wham-O Superbook: 70 Years of Fun” by Tim Walsh.(Tim Walsh/Wham-O)
Morrison’s wartime and postwar story echoes with haunting similarity that of another architect of the postwar American lifestyle: Frederic Arnold, the American who invented the folding beach chair.
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Both were named Fred. Both flew dual-purpose pursuit planes, Arnold a P-38. Both miraculously survived 50 or more terrifying combat missions. Both were shot down and sent to German POW camps.
To read more stories in this unique “Meet the American Who…” series from Fox News Digital, click here.
Fred Morrison and Fred Arnold even shared the same birthday. Frisbee Fred was born on Jan. 23, 1920. Folding Chair Fred was born on Jan. 23, 1922.
Fred Morrison, shown in the center photo, first conceived of a flying disc for recreation during the Great Depression. It became a reality after he flew 58 combat missions in World War II.(TSM/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images; Tim Walsh/Wham-O; MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
Both men conceived their inventions at the beach – with the women they married.
“There is an obvious connection between the two men,” Marc Arnold said of his dad, and of Morrison, after Fox News Digital shared the similarities between the two men.
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Team Xi’an Physical Education University V7 (in blue shirt) competes against Team Xi’an Terra-Cotta Warriors-RJM in the opener of the China’s first National Ultimate Frisbee League on August 6, 2022. (Zhang Yichen/China News Service via Getty Images)
“I think after the horrors of war they left behind, they sought to build a new reality. I think after surviving all that carnage they thought, What’s the point of living if there aren’t also on the other end a spectrum of joyous opportunities?”
A Utah automotive dealer has taken back the courtesy cars it once provided to Utah State University coaches in an apparent protest of recent firings within the school’s athletic department.
The Murdock Auto Team, co-owned by Ben, Tyson and Blake Murdock, previously provided courtesy vehicles to all Utah State head coaches. Murdock ended its relationship with the USU athletic program after associate athletic directors Jerry Bovee and Amy Crosbie were fired last month.
“I’m very aware of Murdock (Auto Team)’s decision,” Sabau told The Salt Lake Tribune. “We’re super appreciative for all the years of providing courtesy cars for our head coaches. And it’s their business and their decision and we respect that decision. Yeah, it hurts our coaches because now we don’t have cars for them.
“We understand that, and we will come together and we’ll recover from it. It should never be about Diana Sabau. It’s about our student athletes, and it’s about our coaches who work with our student athletes every day. So, I’m hoping that over time maybe we’ll get them back involved and maybe they’ll like the direction that we’re going. This community, this Utah State campus has had crimes of sexual violence for too long. And, to just continue to allow it to happen, I wouldn’t be proud to be associated with that.”
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Bovee was fired on July 2 following a Title IX investigation, led by Kansas City-based law firm Husch Blackwell, that concluded that former head coach Blake Anderson, Bovee and director of player personnel and community engagement Austin Albrecht violated reporting policies regarding sexual assault and domestic violence cases. Crosbie was also terminated on July 8 for reasons that have not been made public.
After Sabau, USU President Elizabeth Cantwell and Utah State’s general counsel terminated Crosbie and Bovee, select members of the Logan community have voiced their displeasure about the moves. Last week, former and current student athletes signed a letter addressed to the Utah Board of Higher Education and Utah State University Board of Trustees, asking for an “independent investigation” to be done on behalf of Crosbie and Bovee.
Bovee also recently filed an official grievance against Cantwell and Sabau. He now awaits a decision from a General Grievance Counsel that will then write a letter on their decision and send it to Cantwell, who will either uphold, reject or send it back to the committee for further review.
Jeannine Bennett, who is the chair of the Utah State Foundation, spoke out in support of Sabau and Cantwell following the decisions to fire Crosbie and Bovee. She has been a donor to the university and athletic department and says she’s excited about its future direction.
“It just goes to show that the rules apply equally to everyone, and everybody is held to a high standard at Utah State University, and we have a president who is willing to make that happen regardless of the fallout, because that’s the right thing to do,” Bennett told The Tribune.
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Bennett also hopes that Utah State donors who are now hesitant to donate or are pulling funds completely from the university will jump back on board in the future. More particularly, she feels more confident in the direction and the culture of the athletic department despite the pushback Sabau and others have faced from the Cache Valley community.
“I am very hopeful that they see the progress that the university is making, and also still see that there are so many students that still need our support to get their education, and that’s what we need to do as a university,” Bennett said.
“We are taking the appropriate steps to right any wrongs that have happened in the past, and so I’m sorry that we have alumni that have told their support, and I hope that with the more information they gain, that they will change their position.”
An ink-wash drawing once owned by President George Washington will be going under the hammer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The work of art, “The Destruction of the Bastille,” will be offered as a part of Freeman’s | Hindman Books and Manuscripts auction.
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The piece drawn in 1789 was personally gifted to Washington by French military commander Marquis de Lafayette, according to a press release from the auction house, which is headquartered in New York City.
ITALIAN ESTATE WITH HISTORIC ‘MONA LISA’ CONNECTION HITS THE MARKET FOR $19.66M
Notably, Major General Lafayette helped lead the Continental Army’s victory at Yorktown, Virginia, that ended the American Revolution in Oct. 1781.
George Washington “was taken by the young man’s ebullience and profound dedication to the American cause,” writes the Washington Library of Mount Vernon.
“The Destruction of the Bastille” is an ink-wash drawing that was gifted to George Washington from Marquis de Lafayette. (Freeman’s | Hindman / Fox News)
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The drawing was “made at the onset of the French Revolution and only weeks after the Bastille fell” and was one of the two gifts Lafayette sent to Washington on behalf of France’s appreciation for the American president,” according to Freeman’s | Hindman auction house.
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The other was a main key to the Bastille prison, serving as a symbol of victory against French royal oppression.
The drawing was one of “Washington’s most cherished possessions,” according to Freeman’s | Hindman. The work of art will go under the hammer at the auction house’s location on Market Street in Philadelphia this September. (Heritage Images via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“The drawing would become one of Washington’s most cherished possessions, hanging prominently in the presidential house during his two terms, and then in the entryway of his Mount Vernon home, even after his death,” said the auction house’s press release.
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Before going under the hammer, the famed piece will return home on an international tour starting with a stop in Paris, France.
It will then be shown in New York and Chicago before heading to Philadelphia, the auction house said.
Proceeds from th.sale of “The Destruction of the Bastille”will be split 50/50 with the Shriners Hospital for Children in Florida and the Masonic Charity Foundation of Connecticut to benefit each organization’s mission. (Freeman’s | Hindman; Heritage Images / Getty Images)
“It seems only fitting that it returns to Paris, the heart of French democracy, before being sold in Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy. I can only imagine Washington and Lafayette would have appreciated the symmetry,” Darren Winston, senior vice president and co-head of Freeman’s | Hindman Books and Manuscripts department told FOX Business in a statement via email.
He also said, “Freeman’s | Hindman is extraordinarily proud to offer this incredible testament to the power of liberty over oppression.”
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The auction will be held on Sept. 10. The work is art is estimated to sell for between $500,000 and $800,000.
All proceeds from the salewill be split 50/50 with the Shriners Hospital for Children, headquartered in Florida, and the Masonic Charity Foundation of Connecticut to benefit each organization’s mission.
Wildlife management officials from Montana celebrated the translocation of two grizzly bears from northwest Montana to Wyoming, supplementing the genetic pool of the population around Yellowstone National Park and bolstering arguments for state management of the iconic species.
In an announcement on Aug. 2, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon announced that two bears had been successfully trapped near the Middle Fork Flathead River, part of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE), and released in Wyoming’s Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).
“Due to the work and sacrifice of Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) and many Montanans over many decades, we’ve been successful in helping the grizzly bear recover,” Gianforte said during a Monday press conference in Helena. “Since Fish and Wildlife Service listed the grizzly bear under the Endangered Species Act, this milestone marks the first time we have a confirmed NCDE bear in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. The state of Montana has made genetic connectivity between these two ecosystems a priority and now we have acted on that priority.”
Grizzlies in the Lower 48 states are protected as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) with six defined recovery areas across the northwestern United States. In both the NCDE and GYE recovery areas the grizzly population is estimated around 1,100, with roughly 80 bears in the Selkirk recovery area that spans the Washington-Idaho-British Columbia border, around 40 bears in Montana’s Cabinet-Yaak recovery area. A handful of grizzlies have been documented in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, while there are currently no bears in Washington’s Northern Cascades.
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Recovery zones and current estimated distributions for the six ecosystems identified in the Grizzly Bear
Recovery Plan. Graphic by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Despite an increase in the number of animals and expanded ranges in the two largest populations, the animals remain isolated from each other with no documented grizzlies crossing between the NCDE and the GYE.
The physical separation prevents any genetic mixing between the two groups with potential long-term implications for the conservation of the species. The translocation of grizzlies from one population to the other supplements the existing gene pool and increases the sustainability of the population.
“We’ve done a lot to help improve the conditions of the Yellowstone and the NCDE grizzly bear population. Both of those populations have met their recovery goals or exceeded them, really,” FWP Research Biologist Cecily Costello said. “Natural movement between these two populations might happen in the future, but this basically gave a head start to that process.”
Costello said that the GYE bears have a lower genetic diversity than other grizzly populations in the Lower 48 with biologists estimating they have been isolated for roughly 100 years. While there is no immediate danger to the population’s genetics and no evidence of inbreeding, the addition of the two Montana bears will serve to bolster the population long term.
“It’s really trying to allow for this population to have enough diversity in their genetics to respond really well to any kind of changes in the future,” Costello said.
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After spending two months trying to trap suitable bears to move to Wyoming, biologists with FWP captured the two grizzlies back-to-back within 48 hours along a remote section of the Middle Fork Flathead River.
The first bear, a sub-adult female, was captured near the headwaters of the Middle Fork Flathead River and was released in the Blackrock drainage approximately 35 miles northwest of Dubois, Wyoming on July 30.
The following day Yellowstone National park personnel released a sub-adult male south of Yellowstone Lake within the park boundaries.
A Montana grizzly bear is successfully relocated to Wyoming. Courtesy Montana FWP
Republican officials across the western states have long pushed for the delisting of grizzlies with management returned to the states. Montana officials petitioned FWS to remove the distinct NCDE grizzlies from the ESA back in 2021, citing the robust population and the state’s track record in conserving both the species and its habitat. Idaho and Wyoming officials have also submitted their own petitions for delisting — Wyoming for the GYE, and Idaho for all grizzlies in the Lower 48.
In late July, the FWS announced it would release a decision over delisting the species by the end of January of next year, according to a court filing related to the three state petitions. If either of the distinct populations, or the species as a whole, was delisted, management would be turned over to the states, a future Montana officials have already begun planning for.
“The bottom line is this: The Endangered Species Act was designed to keep species from going extinct, not manage a robust population that’s growing,” Gianforte said during his press conference. “Working with state of Wyoming and our partners, we achieved the goals set for us and we’ve shown the ability to manage bears, protect habitat and population numbers. It’s time for the state to take over management of these iconic animals. It’s time to have full authority for grizzly bears in Montana returned back to Montana.”
