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FRIENDSHIP AMBASSADORS FOUNDATION (FAF) MOURNS THE LOSS OF FOUNDER, HARRY MORGAN, ONE TIME WESTCHESTER RESIDENT AND ROVING EDITOR AT READERS DIGEST. MORGAN AND PARTNER CAPPY DEVLIN BROUGHT PRIVATE CITIZEN GROUPS ABROAD TO PROMOTE MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND GLOBAL COOPERATION THROUGH CULTURAL EXCHANGE in 1970s.
 Harry W. Morgan, who, with partner Cappy Devlin
(Cappy’s Travel, Mt. Kisco), pioneered private citizen, cultural exchange programs for the United States, across the former Soviet Union and in “Red” China, died Tuesday in the western Romanian city of
Timisoara. He was 73. Morgan died of a heart attack, three weeks after he was admitted to a hospital there with breathing problems.
Morgan traveled around the world with American citizen groups of all kinds and met numerous presidents and personalities, among them Mother Teresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Elvis Presley, Ernest Hemingway, and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who crisscrossed America with Morgan in a donated Rambler wagon in 1960
(SEE PHOTO). Morgan advised Annan to pursue a career with the United
Nations.“
This is a terrible loss for us,” states current Friendship Ambassadors Foundation
(FAF) Executive Director Patrick Sciarratta in their Greenwich offices. “Since I met him in Chappaqua fifteen years ago, he changed my life forever; I know there are countless people like me who feel the same. Since our inception, the foundation has served over 100,000 participants on these very special cultural exchange programs and we are recognized as a leader in the field. Now celebrating our 35th anniversary, FAF is proud that he and Ms. Devlin were honored during their tenures with us for encouraging Americans to travel together as communities, as private citizen groups, around the world.
“They led mostly amateur arts ensembles and educational groups – which was the genius of their plan,” Sciarratta continued. “FAF created the concept of cultural exchanges devoid of business, religion, or politics between global communities through their
efforts.
”Fulbright Scholar Harry Morgan moved to Romania in 1994, when the Romanian government invited him to assist in the development of journalism schools at the universities of Bucharest, Sibiu and Timisoara at a time when Romania's free press was still in its infancy. For the past 11 years he had lived in
Timisoara, in western Romania, where he taught at the university and set up a journalism club and an American library. He was made an honorary citizen of the city. Morgan is survived by his wife,
Margareta, and four sons.
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