One of South Floridas well-known & respected roofing companies is Morton Roofing. John Morton III grew this company that was passed down to him by his father. In 1976 he became certified for the state of Florida as a roofing contractor. The Miami-Herald wrote an article about him in July of 1999. As years went on John started & maintained Roofer’s Organized On Fairness’ (R.O.O.F.) where he helped many consumers who had issues with other roofing contractors. John was the go-between/mediator where he helped customers to resolve these issues. In one instance he helped a customer who sought help through Help Me Howard. He received the Super Service Award from Angie’s List starting 2009 through 2013.
Then suddenly in the year, 2014 things took a turn for the worst health-wise for John. John went into the hospital for a hip replacement surgery & while to John the surgery seemed to be successful, he did not know at the time when the hospital discharged him, that they released him with an infection forming in the open wound from his surgical procedure. Only a few days passed & John grew worse, not better. All of John’s organs began shutting down from the infection. The infection rapidly spread throughout his body & once it reached his heart he immediately went into cardiac arrest. His family quickly contacted 911 & when the paramedics arrived, they began to paddle him back to consciousness. John came to shortly after but those very few seconds that John was without oxygen caused him to sustain severe brain damage. As a result of this & his whole body including all of his organs now infected, John was taken back to the hospital & given no other choice but to be induced into a coma. While coma induced & not being able to breathe on his own John was also placed on a ventilator.
Eventually, the hospital placed him in hospice. As more time passed & with his immediate family by his bedside praying for a miracle, they came to receive more bad news when the hospital informed them that there was nothing more, they could do for John to save him & that they would soon need to take him off life support resulting in him not being able to survive. With his family not prepared to say their goodbyes to their loving husband, father, brother & grandfather they all stood by him devastated while praying as John was disconnected from the hospital’s ventilator. Then just moments later, to everyone’s surprise, their prayers had been answered as John started breathing on his own. John was still very disoriented, confused, could barely speak & was unable to recognize his loved ones but he was still alive & breathing. And funny enough, the first words he spoke were in Spanish. This was truly a miracle. Unfortunately, at this time, John was obviously incapable of managing his company & so he placed his beloved company in the hands of someone who presented the offer to partner with him in his time of desperation. John thought of this person to be a trusted individual who’d be capable of maintaining his business & handling his customers with the same care & respect as he always did. To his dismay, as John was trying to get better, having to learn how to walk & to talk again his company began to digress in the absence of his presence.
Everything that John had worked so hard to build in life came crumbling down. I’ll end with saying that it has been a long road to recovery for John, his family, and his company. But with much determination, hard work, going through the proper channels & with his son John Morton IV, his daughter Bella Morton & his grandson John Morton V working by his side; John Morton III is slowly but surely bringing himself & his company back to being healthy again.
