Maryanne Morse, longtime Seminole clerk of courts, dies at 73
Maryanne Morse, who served as Seminole County’s clerk of courts for nearly three decades and was known as a no-nonsense fiscal watchdog, died Tuesday. She was 73.
“She would fight tooth and nail to protect her office and to protect her clerks, and I will always admire that about her,” said Grant Maloy, who succeeded Morse. “She had one of the most efficient clerk’s offices in the state. She really pinched every penny.”
Morse, a Lake Mary resident, was first elected in 1988 — when Ronald Reagan was president — and served through 2016, after she announced that she would retire and not run for re-election.
On her first day as clerk of courts, she fired a judge’s wife who worked as a deputy clerk. Years later, Morse withheld $1,081 from the paycheck of then-County Commissioner Dick Van Der Weide because he didn’t provide receipts from a European trade mission. He sued and a judge ruled in Morse’s favor.
Besides being the keeper of court and land records, the Seminole clerk of courts is also the county’s comptroller and auditor.
When it came to overseeing public spending, Morse proudly described herself as “to the right of Attila the Hun.”
Born in Madison, Wis., she earned a degree from Rollins College in 1980. She worked as a bookkeeper and comptroller for several companies before running for clerk of courts. She served as vice-chairwoman of the Seminole County Republican Committee from 1974 through 1980, co-chairwoman of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans in the late 1970s and secretary of the Florida State Republican Executive Committee in 1980.
Her former husband, Guy A. Morse, died in July 1997.
Arrangements are being handled by Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home, Oaklawn Park Chapel, in Sanford.