Obituaries

John L. Morrow II Construction Executive

John L. Morrow II, 62, a vice president with the Clark Construction Group who was also an award-winning wildlife photographer, died March 30 at his home in Glen Echo after a heart attack.

Mr. Morrow, whose full name was John Lloyd Morrow II, was born in Washington. He graduated from Wheaton High School and served in Vietnam with the Marine Corps in the 1960s.

He began his construction career as a steamfitter apprentice with Local 602 and later worked for the John C. Grimberg Co., a Rockville-based contractor, before joining Clark Construction in 1986.

Mr. Morrow was a superintendent on the company's Village of Shirlington project in Arlington County. He also directed field operations in many other high-profile construction projects, including the Washington field office of the FBI, the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, the Advanced Measurement Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building at the University of Maryland.

At the time of his death, he was supervising construction of the U.S. Institute of Peace near the Mall.

Mr. Morrow enjoyed the outdoors and, in the past 15 years, cultivated a second career as a photographer of wildlife, often traveling to Alaska and the Rocky Mountain states. His photos of bears, moose and other animals appeared in national magazines and at the National Museum of Natural History. In 2006, his photograph of a playful grizzly bear in Alaska won a first-place award in a contest in National Wildlife magazine.

He also enjoyed cooking and entertaining.

His marriage to Diane Duvall ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 14 years, Sharon Lerner of Glen Echo; a daughter from his first marriage, Shannon Warner of Wilmington, N.C.; a stepdaughter, Holly Copeland of Lander, Wyo.; his father, John L. Morrow of Longwood, Fla.; a sister; and two granddaughters.

-- Matt Schudel