Winslow's Word: April 2025

It has taken me this long to process the sudden and tragic death of my dear friend Dale Morris earlier this month. Dale was one of those incredible colleagues that you meet and immediately connect with both professionally and personally—a very rare thing.

I first met Dale when he came to town with the Dutch embassy in the spring of 2018. He had come with the Dutch ambassador at Mayor Tecklenburg’s invitation to tour Charleston and meet with community leaders to discuss their capabilities to help US cities address the complex challenges of flooding and sea level rise. With the New Orleans-based firm Waggonner & Ball, Dale and the embassy helped to develop what we now know as the Dutch Dialogues. This planning process was born out of the devastation from Hurricane Katrina and was honed over the years into a new paradigm for both post-recovery and pre-disaster planning efforts around all things water. It was an innovative, interdisciplinary approach that brought together urban designers, water engineers, landscape architects, and scientists from the US along with a deep bench of expertise from the Netherlands. Shortly after that first visit, a group of us were invited with the Mayor to join a small delegation to Amsterdam to tour the country and see the diverse, ingenious ways that the Dutch were approaching water in all its forms. That trip was nothing short of revelatory for the group, and Dale was the person that made it all happen. He was so respected and beloved, in the US and in Europe, and his level of access was extraordinary. The rest is history.

We returned from that trip hopeful and inspired and, with the city and broader community, HCF led the Dutch Dialogues Charleston process which has resulted in a series of profound policy changes that continue to resonate today. I cannot list all his accomplishments but suffice it to say that none of this would have happened without Dale’s leadership and determination. When he ultimately moved down to Charleston to become the city’s Chief Resilience Officer, we were humming along a proactive path to address water across the city, inspiring the region to think differently about resilience. The Charleston Water Plan was Dale’s baby, and his legacy will live on through its successful implementation. To that end, the city will be hosting open houses in May to discuss just that. Please stay tuned and engage in this process, as Dale would have wanted us to do.

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