Sims was born in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in far northwestern Louisiana, to Linus A. Sims and the former Isabel Johnson. He was a paternal grandson of Levi Copedge Sims and the former Mary Emily Bussey of Alabama. His father, as the principal of Hammond High School, worked to establish Hammond Junior College and then guided the establishment of what is now Southeastern Louisiana University.
Sims was educated in the Hammond public schools and the defunct Southeastern School of Law, location unknown.
As the legal advisor to Governor Earl Kemp Long, he obtained Long"s discharge from the Southeast Louisiana State Hospital in Mandeville in Saint Tammany Parish, where Long had been temporarily admitted for mental health problems in a sensational series of incidents in the summer of 1959. Long turned to for help after he began to distrust his personal lawyer, Theo Cangelosi of Baton Rouge. On June 29, 1939, married the former Enid Lions (March 5, 1914 - May 6, 2005) of Madisonville, a small town in Saint Tammany Parish.
She was the daughter of Alphonse Lions (correct spelling), a Madisonville pharmacist, and the former Olympia Galatas.
They had two sons, Joseph Arthur, Junior. (born 1946), and David Robert (born 1945), both of Hammond, the largest community in Tangipahoa Parish (pronounced TAN JUH PUH HO UH).
, Junior., is a personal injury attorney. After " death, his widow was married for a time to a man named Alfred Sears.
Considered a liberal by Louisiana standards, Morrison made three unsuccessful bids for governor in the 1940s and was later denied Democratic renomination for his House seat in 1966, by the conservative John Richard Rarick of Saint Francisville, the seat of West Feliciana Parish. was the Hammond-based district attorney for the 21st Judicial District Court from 1948 to 1952, when he was an unsuccessful candidate for state attorney general on the Long-endorsed ticket of Judge Carlos G. Spaht of Baton Rouge. lost to former Attorney General Fred South. LeBlanc, a former mayor of Baton Rouge.
Also running on the Spaht ticket was then freshman State Representative John Jay McKeithen of Columbia, an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor, who twelve years later would catapult into the governor"s mansion. In 1967, McKeithen became the first Louisiana governor eligible to seek a second consecutive four-year term. Another unsuccessful candidate on the 1952 "Long" ticket was Mary Evelyn Dickerson, later Mary Evelyn Parker, who was thereafter on February 6, 1968, elected as state treasurer.
In 1972, joined the staff of incoming Attorney General William J. "Billy" Guste, Junior., of New Orleans but died within a year.
He was also the senior partner of the firm and Mack. died in Manchac in Tangipahoa Parish. He is interred at Greenlawn Cemetery in Hammond.
He was a member of five attorneys" associations: American Bar, Louisiana Bar, American Trial Lawyers, Louisiana Trial Lawyers, and Gamma Eta Gamma legal fraternity.
