One of singing Osmonds helps Katrina victims

September 17, 2005
Courier Press

I talked Thursday with Merrill Osmond, one of the singing Osmond brothers, about one of the best and most worthy private Hurricane Katrina aid efforts I've heard of.

Osmond is president of The Morrell Foundation, a Salt Lake City nonprofit organization that has embarked on a campaign to raise $2 million in money and materials to construct one million square feet of temporary housing for the displaced in four devastated areas of Mississippi. The project will not only offer housing to, but will employ, thousands of displaced persons.

Osmond said The Morrell Foundation creates jobs and builds economic infrastructures that give people the means to provide for themselves. It creates and implements public works and housing construction, employing many unskilled workers, training thousands of others and building local management teams whose members understand their communities' needs and traditions.

In 2000, The Morrell Foundation needed just 34 days to build enough housing for the 5,500 troops who came to Salt Lake to protect the Olympics. The foundation has done similar work in Iraq. Those were commercial ventures, but Osmond told me The Morrell Foundation's work in Mississippi is strictly charitable and in keeping with its growing focus on providing private aid in disaster areas.

Speaking by telephone from his office in Branson, Mo., Osmond said he had spent the past 10 days in Mississippi and had returned home for a day to pack and gear up to go back for at least a month.

"There's no bureaucracy in our organization," he said. "One-hundred percent of our money is going for those four buildings. These buildings will have running water, beds, kitchens, everything needed."

Osmond said he and some of The Morrell Foundation's employees were preparing to go from Utah to a project in Indonesia when Katrina hit, so they changed their plans and drove down immediately. Other Morrell workers were called from their posts in Iraq to help. Living in a trailer on-site, Osmond said he plans to "grab a hammer and get right in there with everyone else."

Merrill Osmond, now 51, was the third oldest of seven performing Osmonds and, by all accounts, a leader in the group. It was he, not his more famous younger brother, Donny, who sang lead for The Osmonds on such early hits as the funky "One Bad Apple" and "Yo-Yo."

In later years the brothers got into more mature, rock-oriented sounds, writing most of their own music and playing their own instruments. Their albums, "Crazy Horses" and "The Plan," legitimately rocked, and the brothers were considered a heavy underground band in Europe, where Donny's exposure was minimal. Mention the word "Osmond" today, however, and people remember the silly "Donny & Marie" TV show and sappy songs such as "Puppy Love."

These are my opinions, not Merrill's. Nevertheless, he is not bitter about being overlooked by history. He said he loves his younger brother, who still packs them in as a solo performer. I interviewed Donny for another paper a few years ago and, like Merrill, he was a very nice guy.

If you want to help The Morrell Foundation with building materials or money, Merrill said the best way is to go to its Web site, www.morrellfoundation. com.

-Thomas B. Langhorne, 464-7432 or langhornet@courierpress.com