Douglas Noel Morilon

Born at Helena, Montana, on 25 Aug 1916, the second son of John R. Morilon, a sanitary inspector at the East Helena smelter, and Maud Noel. By 1923 his mother was living as the wife of Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Jr. near Pollock, South Dakota, and the Bismarck Tribune's notice of Richard's death names "two sons, Douglas, age 7, and Donald." His own obituary says he "had a nomadic childhood which was spent in Canada, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and North and South Dakota with various relatives farming, raising cattle and horses, working on harvest crews wherever they could find work, and helping run a family sawmill." That was his stepfather Hiram Wallace's sawmill. In 1930 he was entered as Hiram's own son.

In 1934 he moved to Portland, where his father was living, and graduated from Benson Tech in 1938. He joined the Army Air Force in 1942, and flew 35 combat missions over Europe as a B-17 bombardier; in Nov 1944, "son of J. R. Morilon" of Portland, he was promoted to second lieutenant ("Portland Flier Wins Gold Bars," The Oregonian (Portland), 25 Nov 1944, p. 15). He married twice, in 1945 for the second time (marriage-return-morilon-garton-1945). After the occupation of Germany, 1947-49, he farmed outside Hillsboro, Oregon, and was a county appraiser until 1980. He died on 13 June 2003, "preceded in death by his big brother, Mick Morilon" (obituary-douglas-morilon-2003).

He was Richard Holbrook's stepson, not his son: Richard was in Alaska when Douglas was born, and Douglas's birth certificate names John Morilon as his father, as Douglas himself did in later life. He was identified with the Douglas of Pollock on 9 Oct 2026 (Research decisions; the research thread).

Open questions

• Where in Canada his childhood was spent, and when. The Canadian indexes searched on 9 Oct 2026 have no entry for him under Morilon, Holbrook or Noel, but they are incomplete; Ancestry's U.S.-to-Canada border crossings, 1908-1935, are still to search.