Tom Morgan Steps Down from Fairfield Council – TAPinto.net

FAIRFIELD, NJ — Fairfield Councilman Thomas J. Morgan has resigned from the township council after 32 years of service to the community. Morgan decided an hour before his last council meeting on July 20 that he would resign. Morgan said, “It’s time for new blood and a time to give other people a chance.” He has plans to eventually move to Florida and to venture into real estate. He is not anywhere near ready to fully retire.

Morgan stated that he and his family moved to Fairfield in 1969 when he had enough of a 600 miles a week commute to Newark from his hometown of Point Pleasant. Since Morgan’s commute and job as a Newark police officer kept him away from his family, one day he just looked in the Star Ledger and happened to see a house for sale in Fairfield. They had wanted to live in Essex County, and the taxes in Fairfield were low.

When he came up to see the house off of Little Falls Road, he loved that it was on a dead end street, just made up of crushed rock like a long drive way, and surrounded by woods. He knew it was perfect. “My wife came up the next day to see it, we liked it, and I have been living there ever since,” said Morgan.  He remembers when Fairfield was a one traffic light town, full of farms and had no sewers.

In the mid-1970s, Morgan began his journey in Fairfield politics by running for a position on the board of education. The hot topic of the day was whether to separate the schools by grade level or location of their homes. The proposal was that the lower grades would go to Adlai Stevenson Elementary School and the upper grades would go to Winston Churchill Elementary School. At the time, parents did not want to divide the schools by grade levels because they did not want their children separated. Morgan ran in favor of the parents. He won the election, but he now said, “It was the one mistake I made. The schools should have been divided by grade levels.” They are now divided, and Morgan believes this is best for the community.

Morgan’s time on the board of education prepared him for his tenure on the Fairfield council. He served on the council from 1981-1989 and 1997-2020. He is proud of his work on the council in establishing the Green Acre Parks and Recreation Programs in Fairfield. The Green Acres Program was created in 1961 to meet New Jersey’s growing recreation and conservation needs, and Morgan has had the privilege of watching the parks grow to be successful in providing recreation for the whole community.

Many of his memories of being on the town council deal with the township’s flooding problem. Morgan said, “It’s a helpless feeling.” He explained no matter how hard he and the mayor and council worked to make changes to help with the problem, “in the end, no changes could be made.” He did say that this year because of the dry summer, the township, along with the county, are clearing streams and ditches and clearing fallen trees in an attempt to de-snag the Passaic River. Morgan has seen many changes in the community since 1969.

Morgan and his children come from a long line of men and women who served their communities and country proudly. Morgan has two children, Christopher, who is a retired sergeant from the Fairfield Police Department, and Tami Novak, a lieutenant in the Essex County Sheriff’s Department. His children went through school in the township’s public school system. Morgan’s dad, John, born in 1894, was in World War I, and after the war, he became a police officer in the Newark Police Department in the 1920s. According to Morgan, there were no police cars. The police officers had to take trollies. When they did get police cars, there were no radios. Eventually, when they did get radios, they were one-way radios that were used to give out jobs. To communicate back to headquarters, they had to use battery operated call boxes on the side of the streets.

After serving in Newark for 30 years, he retired as a lieutenant. Morgan’s mom, Cora, was a housewife. When his dad retired, they moved to Point Pleasant from their home on Lake Street in Newark, where Morgan lived until he was 10. Morgan had three siblings. His two brothers have died. Jack was an insurance agent, and Frank taught history and served in World War II. His sister, Lorraine, is now 96 years old and was a wave in World War II. She did not go overseas but was an admiral’s receptionist in Washington, D.C.

Tom was the baby of the family born 17 years after the others. He did not serve in the war because he was exempt for being a Newark police officer. He said, “I always wanted to be a police officer. I was happy being a cop. It was a good job, and the fact that I got paid for it made it a fantastic job. ”

Morgan was a police officer during the infamous 1967 Newark riots. It was one of 159 race riots that swept cities in the United States during that summer. It occurred between July 12 and July 17. After the rioting, looting, and property destruction, 26 people died and hundreds were injured. Morgan described the police force at that time as not being prepared for such an event. Morgan served as a Newark police officer from 1964 to 1970, and then he worked in the Essex County Sheriff’s department from 1970 through 1999.

In addition to serving as a police officer, sheriff, and councilmen, Morgan had an entrepreneurial side to him. In the 1980s, Morgan owned a stand in Seaside Heights called Lucky Bonzo’s. He worked it along with his children and nieces and nephews. He said, “Lucky Bonzo’s was not so lucky. It was a lot of hours and not a money maker.” He worked the wheel for five years and then gave it up.

At the age of 49, when he had a family and a full time job, Morgan entered law school at Seton Hall. He was able to do this because he worked the night shift from 4 a.m. to noon. When he got his degree and passed the bar exam, he left law enforcement and opened a law practice in Fairfield, which he still owns today.

When Morgan first entered politics, he was a Democrat. Township Business Administrator Joseph Catenaro remembers those days and said that he and Morgan would go out for coffee together. Catenaro’s Republican friends would tease Catenaro saying, “How can you go out with that Democrat?”

At the July 20 council meeting, Mayor James Gasparini and the entire council, along with Catenaro and Denise Cafone, township clerk, all complimented Morgan on his dedication to the community and wished him well.

Pompano Beach on Florida’s east coast is where Morgan is headed to enjoy his condo and start a new adventure as a realtor.