Ruth Murphy and Jacques Murphy

00:05 My name is Jack Murphy. I'm 47 years old. Today's date is November 10th 2007. We're in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I'm the son of Ruth Murphy who we are here to get talking for a storycorps mom. Could you just tell us your your name? My name is Ruth G Murphy and how old are you? I'm about to be 90 on the 17th of this month, right 17th of November. You also have two other Sons. There's Gardner. Yes, who is so what we figured out his age. Now this year old are 9th 4747 born in 1960 starting to sound like a long time ago now.

01:01 Just a start out with I I'd love to hear if you care to mention you or your philosophy or your recommendation for memoirs.

01:13 The best time to record your Memoirs, well, I think I would advise people not to try to do this with a person who is over 80.

01:27 The limit top to be 80 years and I'm 10 years beyond that now so I think my Memoirs are not going to be as accurate or as great as I would have been so yeah. Yeah, I've heard you say that often that if you know someone was going to record some of their life been more as they really ought to do it a little earlier than later and a number of people have already which is good for the church.

01:56 Sugar Universal Main Line Unitarian Church, which was where you work for how many years are about 16 years as secretary to the minister and the administrator.

02:13 Are the church which is located in Devon, Pennsylvania, so you probably saw a lot of people go by in when you were working there and had a lot of interesting conversations very and the whole congregation I was there so long they had temporary secretaries, but none that lasted this long as I did or administrators, but they

02:43 The congregation became my extended family.

02:48 Right, right. It's it's kind of interesting actually that you said extended family because we actually had an extended family. We made one right? Do you remember in the in the 1970s? Yes. We did. We joined a little group that they had to form 2 based on maybe our location on our butt and it included people of various ages and we met with this extended family every two weeks or something like that company. I think it was every two weeks or every every month. We had a meeting of the extended family and the idea was it was kind of helping to create a social group, like people used to have I felt their extended family. I felt it was very good for you because you were my you were born so much longer.

03:39 After the first two children right that you didn't grow up with brothers and they were already gone or on their way most of your life. So I found it would be good for you and I hope it was it was I think for me it was it was actually maybe more valuable all the adults input kind of like aunts and uncles we would we had a somewhat formal thing where every every time we met two different people would pair off to talk for 45 minutes. It was a great way. I think from for me to hear all sorts of

04:18 Stories from people and even guidance, you know at a time when it's kind of hard to take guidance from from your your parents or you know, some of the people you know better it was it was great to hear all those perspectives had people you could relate to and when you came to church with me, right right, I had like I want to go to school.

04:43 Well, let's Jump Around 2 something very different The Color Purple. I I know this is one of your favorite colors and as and I've seen in recent years that more and more everything you have is purple that you where are you? I think you came in a purple jacket, right or was it blue? That's blue. Okay, but you have we saw a purple scarf at home. Do you have purple gloves? Purple purple purse purple person. I don't I'm trying to remember I thought you know as a kid, I don't think I would have noticed one way or another what colors you want. Did you wear purple then know until I was maybe seventy but I started wearing a lot of purple and once you get something in purple, then the next thing you buy has to go with it. Haha. So it mounts up. Okay, and it's my favorite color.

05:43 I'm sorry, what was there any particular reason that you know, there was a time when there were riding a lot about the fact that old elderly women wore purple.

06:00 What's their favorite color? And so I started but I can't remember exactly what year that was. How old I was 70. Maybe maybe maybe after I retired from?

06:16 Now you're almost 90. I I keep teasing you about how you're going to get to be a hundred and you say oh please no, right but you grew up in do you remember any of the twenties particularly as as a neera? You were probably a pretty little kid then

06:37 Yeah, Let's see in the twenties. But can you remember the stories of the market crash in 29? Remember that some some of my parents closest friends suffered a lot and the market crashed my my family didn't have a whole lot of money. We were just I love Anna lower income level but I mean not poverty not anything like that but the smartest but some of our friends suffered greatly and lost their a lot of money and never seem to recover their Spirits after that. I didn't know anybody who committed suicide though, but there are but I heard about them did you know people who are out of work then put out of work in the 30s?

07:36 Well

07:38 I don't know that I was too much aware of that. Nobody in my clothes.

07:44 Her extended family then was out of work, but they just didn't.

07:52 Bring in the income that they used to and were used to living that style of life.

08:01 You you you went to Bethany College in the 300 K felony in every state West Virginia. That's good to know. I just learned something that's in that little corner.

08:25 Pennsylvania and West Virginia come together right? I remember you telling me what you had like a work-study job there right you had a a job in the

08:44 I worked in the kitchen doing dishes and things like that. They did have a dishwasher even then an electric dishwasher. But a lot of anyway and I are in $0.25 an hour so that way which helped me pay for the tuition. It's so hard to imagine. So $0.25 an hour added up and and actually amounted to write in those days notice of 634 mostly and when you answer if you can look towards your son.

09:27 Well I had to

09:32 I guess what I used it forever was really to help pay my expenses with my room and my board I didn't have a whole lot of spending money or any place there was to spend it on cuz I'll let everything was taken care of. Other than that, right? You told me something funny that you know, as I have a kid in college now eat for the laundry, you would actually pack all your laundry in a duffel bag and ship it back to your mom. We had to do it right back to you clean. We had special cases that went through the mail in order that whatever it was and post posted yesterday and that we're for laundry and a lot of the students did that send it home.

10:22 That's a pretty good deal. And then sometimes you get some nice things back with the laundry like your mother would put something in there. That was a surprise. I know if she found some like I know a relative of mine who was a little bit older than I and had been through the promising and that kind of thing. My mother will get the dress from her and include that in the laundry.

10:56 Thing that came back I can't know what to call. It was like a box kind of.

11:08 Like a hard shell works out. Okay, interesting with a strap around it and you I don't think we even locked had a lock on there in those days. I just sent it through the mail and entrusted it got for it and go laundry was no that was a big deal at the time. I mean where there any did the robin use the machine?

11:31 I can't remember what the laundry machines were. Like. I remember the dryer is which for

11:38 Not like once I'd seen before you they were like a big steel cabinet. And with rods on the mun, you hung your clothes over the rods and turn them on and they dried. Okay, like a little drawing-room highlights like a drying cabinet sort of yeah, at that time for

12:03 Women like to go to college where you on usual and Dad or was that not so extraordinary at the time?

12:14 I know there were certainly a lot as many women as men and the college so I didn't think of it as but it was an unusual way that I got to go there because my mother applied for a scholarship for me. This was where my mother graduated from college and and so she got the scholarship, but my brother older brother was entering college at the same time I was so they didn't intend they didn't have the money relate to send both of us at once. But when I got the scholarship, they couldn't turn that down and so he and I went I was allowed to I only had a 2-year college education.

13:04 You know and those days it was important for the males to read to get the full education and women were if your family could afford it fine, but

13:22 The thinking them was for a career of the man needed to the mail and needed and the family needed anyway, so I got to go I only got to go to the promised to send one year, but that's all I could afford but I got had some special deal that I did with my sorority and was sent on a trip and was supposed to go to California and I was supposed to report on that the next year so they had to send me in back for one more year, even though it wasn't very hard. They put themselves in great depth to do that. And then they sadly you weren't able to go after that. I went to

14:09 Business college in Philadelphia Spencer Business School, Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland

14:21 In Cleveland for about nine months and I didn't get a degree there. I didn't stay for it because that was 1936.

14:35 And it wasn't that depression.

14:40 And

14:41 Everything I was advertised for employment always said only experience you had to have some experience behind you have work someplace before they die. Are you well, how do you make that happen, you know?

15:02 So my first job was very poorly paid, but I took it I'm work for a man who was a patent attorney and

15:15 And I made $5 a week, but 250 of that went for transportation from Bedford to Cleveland took a bus in or was that the guy mr. Pettibone?

15:38 Now that forget work. I know you're doing what brought that up to you. I think sometimes about how different it is not working environment when Mr. Met. Mr. Pettibone was the owner of the business where you work and I walked in the room everybody jumped. Yes, they did cuz what he was a very was the president about the company and we feared him we had to look busy and be busy one of the things I'm wondering about this and then came the War years and you were married to Dad. He was in the Marines you were you went to San Diego and you were there alone while he was in the Pacific but there were jobs. That was it. I mean, did you feel like you went from a a really tough time in the Great Depression to a a really tough time in the war or

16:38 How did that feel was it? Just as bad was it worse was the effect of the Depression was different on me and I was at a different age then then when I married I was 25.

16:56 Let's see.

16:58 I lost it. Well, I'm just wondering was it how was moral I guess maybe for you in the depression compared to the wartime?

17:09 We look back on and I talked to the depression being effect on me. I was protected by my parents from from what the situation really was whenever drawled on that. We never dropped. I'm not being able to afford something.

17:32 But

17:36 So what was the end of the war years were had to have been pretty scary?

17:48 Okay, during the more years. I mean I was supposed to accompany.

17:57 Ralph your father out to the West Coast from Indiana where we were staying with his parents, but I got bumped because somebody a military man needed the seat and so I was left behind and then when I got to

18:19 California the next time I could get a plane seat.

18:27 We didn't know how to reach each other. He thought I was coming in on one Airline, but I had gotten shifted to another airline. So he kept going to look for me and ask for me when I came in and I didn't come in there. So I didn't know where he was living because the officers were all living outside not on the base. This is San Diego right Marines and army. So the only thing I did I wandered around for about 3 days with very little money left. I found a room in a woman's resident hotel for $2 a night, but that wasn't going to last me long. I had such a check that was in my trunk somewhere.

19:27 But I couldn't have cash that any place there any way my terminal check for my job anyway, so I decided I would sit in the hotel lobby of the U.S. Grant hotel in the center of San Diego and see if anybody I knew came in, but the only people I knew with one couple that we written for a short distance on the train with well sure enough, but man came in with his wife into the lobby so I ran over to him through my cell phone him. Let me know where Ralph was was living and how to reach him.

20:11 Well, he said he didn't know but they'd gone and call the payroll office and see if I could get it. He came back with Melo. He didn't the payroll office didn't have a record of it yet.

20:24 So I'm sitting there and I said well, I'll just sit here and wait.

20:29 And slept and sure enough. He came in. Dad came in your dad came in as a friend of his had.

20:40 Had sent come in and let's go in here and have a beer or something a bite to eat before you go home because he was going to go home and call all the hotels in San Diego to see if he could locate me. So he walks in and there I am so that's how we got together there and I had found a little

21:10 I want to take all them a little temporary place to live that was not far from the base and I had put a deposit down on it like a boarding and register know it wasn't it. This wasn't a boardinghouse. I was only in the boarding house when I got married.

21:35 Washington, okay.

21:37 No, that's what's a little.

21:40 Small house condominium or something. You could I don't know what it was called then.

21:49 They didn't have that name. So.

21:55 We were able to go and live there immediately and it wasn't far from where he was based. So.

22:02 You have a pretty funny story of finding a place to stay when you first got there and weren't able to find dad. Didn't you start out at the Hotel Coronado looking gel for the Del Coronado Hotel? Which was how much is Wilson funny? All the hotel rooms were filled or taken and I went to I got a taxi and we run around to several places and there's they had No Vacancy for me and then particularly were suspicious of women. I guess there were a lot of women hanging around for the troops. But so the Taxi man took me so let's go to Wyatt actually just a hand and not spend money driving around your money driving around and I'll make calls so he called a lot of hotels and he got no no, no, but the only one he got it.

23:02 Answer from was the fanciest hotel in the whole area.

23:09 It wasn't that Del Coronado Hotel and it was where the President Roosevelt came to review the troops the Navy reviews the president. That's where he's so expensive, but I had to have some place to sleep and I had to go over a little bridge that had a toll. So by the time I got to that room and I could afford to pay for it one night, but after that I wouldn't have had funds to pay. So I stayed there and I made telephone calls and tried to track him down and I would hear people turning away from phone to say wasn't there lieutenant Murphy in here just a little while ago.

24:04 Unless a well. I don't know where he lives in are we don't know where he's house. And you said I think the Del Coronado was 750 me a $7.50 a night right at the time is right director another one.

24:23 So the next day I run out and found this little resident hotel that I could stay in and then we ran into each other accidentally in the U.S. Grant Lobby. Don't tell on me.

24:38 It was it certainly was cuz

24:45 But

24:47 That was the kind of thing you had to do. Right and a lot of people I'm sure went through the same thing all those people who asked me to tell my story about that bass. I've never heard one fight like that. But now you also talked about when dad was going to be shipped out overseas the waiting. I don't want to put it the wrong way but being almost relieved when it finally happened that's quite right for both of us. We he was scheduled to ship out and every night he would take his disassemble his rifle oil and clean it.

25:28 Put it together again.

25:31 Ready to take it all prepared to leave the next day. So he would leave in the morning and we thought we were saying our final farewells and then he would they didn't ship out for two weeks. So by the time we did that every night every morning. It was a relief 45 and I happen to be working. I had found a job already and

26:04 I happened to look out the window at the right time to see the Convoy.

26:10 Driving off to the ship, And you said you mentioned finding a job that was in it. I guess it was a lot easier than during the war suddenly. They were needing employees. I wasn't hard to find a job and I had to work for the government. You know, I'd worked at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio and and

26:35 So I had that connection sort of right tell that story a little of where you know, it was the war department right when they were starting to ramp up thinking the country was going to go to war. Was that where you started it at Wright Field at Wright Field?

26:51 Yes, it was I took a civil service exam and that's where I was hired Wright Patterson field, Dayton, Ohio and that was building up to the preparation for to go to war and I was I can remember so well hearing the announcement standing in the all of us working in the Personnel Department standing and listening to the president announced.

27:27 The war has begun.

27:30 And that you actually worked in the air airplane museum. There was no room in the museum all kinds of things hanging over our head. So you have craft of all kind cuz there wasn't room that was because I had to hire so many new employees. They didn't have an office they made that into offices.

28:01 I have a question with you know.

28:08 Pearl Harbor, you know a day to live in that will live in infamy in some ways 911 is the Pearl Harbor of my generation didn't did you feel that connection when it happened or I mean, did you kind of think Pearl Harbor will never happen again and nothing like it will

28:29 What time will we all like to think this was the war that would end all wars? And that was for it was touted but

28:41 I don't know that I thought much about that. Once once we got back to the peace was declared then people could get back to their families and get together again. I didn't think about whether there be another War would you I mean

29:03 Yeah, I don't know.

29:06 So what was 9/11 like for you?

29:11 9/11 was

29:15 Was more like was a terrorist.

29:19 Attack it wasn't

29:23 I didn't think we were going to go to war after that that we didn't know who to go to war with not clear. But how was it to me? It was it was a terrible thing to witness.

29:39 Because we thought we were when we were living in a peaceful.

29:47 Country are world at that time.

29:51 We had no I didn't have any suspicions of this terrorism. Did you do you remember that if you did?

30:02 Not really know well if you are fairly young then maybe.

30:12 I didn't have any idea what to predict.

30:16 Following that and where things would go from there, so

30:23 I don't know how to answer that exactly. That's terrible and you couldn't watch or think about anything else for days and days and days.

30:35 An alliance or lost?

30:40 You you worked the you never knew what you worked on the Manhattan Project. It turns out during did you have that? Same job Los Angeles. I mean, oh you move to Los Angeles for the are priorities office. And in that office there was myself as a secretary a captain who was in charge of the office and there were

31:14 6 and another female their secretary

31:20 And there were about six men Manning telephones all around the room.

31:31 And we could never hear what they were is they talk directly. We could never hear what they were talking about, but it turned out that they were and I didn't know it till afterwards that they were helping to move personnel and materials.

31:49 From all around the country

31:52 4 in preparation for the band Hatton project, huh?

32:00 And the and the bomb right and you not only I mean they use the Manhattan Project to kind of keep it secret but you never even heard those words for the whole it was list called the are priorities office.

32:18 And most of the people there had worked in Airlines and now they were commissioned as military.

32:37 But I'mma tell you what I think of offhand is how tight-lipped people were there were no such thing as leaks about the what was going on. Right and it's amazing and you wouldn't find that today. You can't keep secrets.

32:57 Anymore

33:01 Would you be where you while I guess you didn't ever mention what you did for work to anybody did you talk about?

33:09 Mark 5 minutes 7 10 minutes Ono I didn't talk about the work and these are dead and yet I used to Carson secretary. I'm the captain around the office manage the office dictated his reports to me, but there was nothing in those reports that I could interpret as to what was happening interesting.

33:42 How to start a secret about it or was that something that know it's something that you really didn't question. I didn't know and I don't think others working their dead either will they have those papers? They knew that they had that was secret, but they had to keep

34:03 I'm talking about it. Right didn't they have loose lips sink ships signs all yes. Oh, yes. We didn't have that side poster up in the office, but

34:15 When did you discover what the project was that you had been working on?

34:21 When did you know I tried to recall that?

34:29 Blood said no not long after the bombing took place.

34:35 Did I know that I learn and I can't remember where I was when I found this out her.

34:42 That doesn't come back to my mind.

34:49 Of the bombing. I thought it was necessary. I supported it.

34:55 Although we never knew we didn't really know yet until then what the nuclear bomb was going to do to a country and a people.

35:06 I'm not Sunday lives that were lost.

35:12 But it hadn't but I supported and I don't know how we would have managed to win the war if we didn't you hadn't used it.

35:23 I hope we never have to use it again.

35:30 So now I did Dad come back before the end of the war.

35:36 Or was it know he arrived?

35:39 In San Diego after being gone for 27 months and and he arrived on VJ Day.

35:49 Show the whole base was shut down, and everybody was gone celebrating this had so they couldn't process him for about 3 days, and I I was living in San Diego. No wait. I was a living in Los Angeles, and he came in and back in San Diego. So he just had to sit there and wait to be processed and couldn't you couldn't get a telephone call through everybody was calling everybody else.

36:24 High five Mormon, right? So yeah, so he was stuck there on the base base.

36:38 Did you get to meet him at the base or did you know I know he came to find me where I was living in sin in Los Angeles and we stayed there for a few days or something. We had a hide-a-bed. They could see could sleeping.

36:58 Did you sell it? Do you remember what you did to celebrate the end of the war we did was have a honeymoon and we went to San Francisco and stayed in the fancy hotel there for an in the city for three days and three nights and that was our honeymoon and then we got all night.

37:25 Train to come back to Indiana. We're here for his folks left and and then to go to see my folks in Ohio and he taught me to play bridge on the way. We had a compartment on the train and he taught me how to play bridge on the way home honeymoon Bridge with what you've done. Every bridge is my favorite. I'm happiest when I'm playing bridge.

37:55 Awesome