Remembering Destiny Morris
My Tusk teammate, my Jon M. Chu co-writer, and one of the brightest people I got to create alongside.
Written by Gregory Ferraro for GF Creative House Blog
“Some people change the feeling of a room the moment they walk into it. Destiny Morris was one of them.”
I met her on the staff of Tusk Magazine’s 26th edition, and as Creative Director I got to work closely with every person who brought that issue to life, but getting to create alongside Destiny is something I will carry with me for a long time.
She was a third-year journalism student, a member of the Titans Dance Team and a sister of Zeta Tau Alpha, and on the magazine she seemed to be everywhere at once: writing, modeling and building our social media and outreach. Whatever the day asked of her, she showed up with a smile that was genuinely infectious, and she carried that warmth into every space she entered. I was really lucky to get to work with her.
Wicked, and Jon M. Chu
The piece we built together is the one I return to most. Destiny and I both love “Wicked” and have always had a passion for it, so when director Jon M. Chu came to Cal State Fullerton on Sept. 18, 2025, and I interviewed him in front of a live audience for Tusk, getting to share that moment with her meant everything. Seeing the director live and in person, and hearing from him about the stories we had loved for so long, was an amazing experience.
We wrote “Jon M. Chu: Finding the Truth Within Fictional Stories” side by side, two fans working to do justice to a conversation that mattered so much to both of us. Getting to create something we were both this passionate about is a memory I hold close.
In front of my lens
I also got to photograph her. Destiny was one of the models in our advice column, the feature where the models answered readers’ questions on a set we designed for it, and looking back at those frames now, they hold so much more than a shoot. They hold her, exactly as she was on that set.
The issue she never got to see
Destiny passed away on Nov. 14, 2025, right around the time our magazine was going to print. She never got to hold the finished issue she helped create, and that is something that still sits heavy with me.
When ProComm Magazine’s second edition came together, I wrote a memorial for her in its pages, so the College of Communications could remember her the way we did at Tusk. She was the definition of a creative: a dancer, a writer, a pianist, a vocalist, an actress and a painter, someone who met every opportunity with a desire to grow.
“Her work lives on in the pages of Tusk, in the feature we wrote together and in every person who got to know her.”
I’m grateful I was one of them.