12/30/2025
One last visit with “Sophie.”
🥰 ♥️
“Before I Go, I Want to Be Potter One Last Time.”
Harry Morgan’s Final Wish: One More Visit to Sophie 🐴
In the last months of his life, Harry Morgan knew time was getting short.
The man the world loved as Colonel Sherman T. Potter didn’t ask for awards, interviews, or red carpets.
He asked for two things.
To wear his Colonel Potter uniform one last time.
To visit Sophie’s grave.
“Get My Boots, Will You?”
One quiet afternoon, Harry called his son over to the bedroom.
“Do me a favor,” he said gently. “Open that closet… the far right.”
Hanging there, carefully covered in plastic, was the tan cavalry uniform fans knew so well: Colonel Potter’s jacket, the riding breeches, the boots.
Harry looked at it for a long time.
“I kept this for special occasions,” he whispered. “I think this is special enough.”
His family hesitated.
“Dad… are you sure? You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” Harry smiled. “Before I go, I’d like to be Potter one more time.”
They helped him dress.
It took longer than it used to. His hands shook at the buttons. His legs weren’t as steady sliding into the boots. But when he finally stood up, straightened the jacket, and put on the old cavalry hat…
For a moment, everyone saw him exactly as he had once been:
Colonel Potter.
Firm, kind, unshakable.
Harry looked in the mirror and chuckled.
“Not bad for an old horse,” he said. “Now… let’s go see Sophie.”
The Last Ride to Sophie’s Hill
Years earlier, when MASH* ended, Harry had insisted on buying Sophie — the gentle brown horse who had carried Colonel Potter through those final seasons.
“I can’t just walk away from her,” he had told the producers. “She’s family.”
Sophie spent the rest of her days on Harry’s small ranch, spoiled with apples, brushed every evening, talked to like an old friend. When she passed, Harry buried her on a little hill under a tree and had a stone carved:
SOPHIE
1963–1989
MY BEST FRIEND
Now, frail and in full uniform, Harry asked to go there one more time.
His son helped him into the car. The drive was short, but quiet. Everyone knew why they were going.
They walked slowly up the hill—Harry leaning on his cane, one hand resting on his son’s arm, boots pressing softly into the grass.
When they reached the stone, Harry stopped.
There it was. Weathered. Simple. Waiting.
“Sophie,” he whispered, voice breaking. “It’s the Colonel.”
“Thank You for Carrying Me”
He lowered himself carefully onto a bench they’d placed beside the grave years before. For a few minutes, he just looked at the stone, breathing in the cold air, the smell of earth and trees.
Then Harry began to talk.
“You carried me when the war was fake,” he said softly, “but the feelings were real.”
“You listened when I rehearsed lines. You stood still when I forgot them,” he chuckled. “You never complained about long days or bad weather.”
His family watched silently as this tough old actor — this beloved TV colonel — talked to his horse like she was still standing there, waiting for a sugar cube.
“You were my partner,” he said. “On screen and off. I just wanted to say thank you… for carrying me all the way to the end.”
A tear slid down his cheek.
Then he did something that broke everyone’s heart.
Harry reached up and tipped his cavalry hat toward the stone — a final salute from Colonel Potter to the horse who had shared his last great ride.
“Dismissed, soldier,” he whispered. “You did good.”
The Colonel Rides On
Harry Morgan passed away not long after that visit.
He didn’t leave behind a scandal or a headline.
He left behind something quieter — and maybe more powerful:
A memory of an old man in a TV uniform, walking with shaking legs to say goodbye to the horse who had carried his character, and his heart, for so many years.
Fans remember Colonel Potter for his wisdom:
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything — and the wrong way is to keep quiet.”
In the end, Harry Morgan chose the right way:
He said thank you.
He said goodbye.
And he did it dressed as the man millions loved — standing beside the friend who never had a line of dialogue, but helped tell the story just the same.
Somewhere out there, if you believe in such things, there’s an old cavalry doctor riding across a green field on a good, steady horse.
And he’s smiling, because he finally got his wish:
One last ride with Sophie. 🐴💔
