05/30/2022
Lynn Murphy Mark
A Navy man
I seldom write about my father. The relationship I had with him was complicated. So much of it hinged on his serious alcoholism that started well before I was born and didn’t stop until I was 20, when alcoholic dementia helped him forget how to drink. He paid a heavy price at the end of his 63 year old life. He died unable to speak or walk or manage any of his needs. I was 23 years old, and his was the first body in a coffin that I had ever seen.
He grew up dirt poor, the ninth child of a tenant farmer in Indiana. His father was also a raging alcoholic, so my Pop came by it naturally. His childhood can’t have been too easy, although in every picture I see of him as a kid he is wearing an “up to no good” smile. Eventually my grandfather settled into his own farm. He was known for driving a wagon from which he sold hominy and sauerkraut. His children all made successful careers for themselves – my aunts and uncles were farmers, engineers, teachers, and nurses. In fact, in Winchester, Indiana, they used to be known as “the Murphy brain trust”.
Pop got away from home and went to Purdue University where he studied electrical engineering. This education soon got him a job with General Motors, where he worked until his dementia made it impossible. He traveled all over Central America and Cuba, working for General Motors Overseas Operations. He met my mother who was working in New York City at the time. Soon they were married and off to live in India, where GM set him up as a manager. They lived there for five years or so, but when World War II started, he was brought back to the States.
I think his next two or three years might have been the happiest of his life. He had been in ROTC at Purdue. In his travels he had learned to love the ocean, so he immediately enlisted in the Navy when they got back Stateside. He spent three years on a ship that cruised up and down the west coast, guarding our shores. My mother followed along, living in various places where his ship was docked.
His biggest disappointment was that he did not see combat. He wanted to be on a ship that would sail right into the middle of the fray in the Pacific, but that was not his assignment. In any case, he was proud to be a Navy man. Somewhere I have a picture of him in full uniform and the grin on his face says it all. (I don’t think I ever saw that grin growing up.) But he was obviously one happy man during his Navy days. When he died decades later, we were given a beautifully folded flag in his honor. Richard Nixon wrote him a nice letter thanking him for his service.
In all of my moves, those tokens of my Pop’s service to his country have been lost, along with the letters that he wrote to his siblings as he sailed up and down the coast. They had saved them, and sent them to me after Pop died. His pride in being a Navy man was evident in his writing, as was his regret that he was not sent into combat. He applied for re-assignment but never got it. I think he was actually a little ashamed that young men his age were risking their lives for their country while he was relatively safe patrolling the western shores.
My parents’ wedding anniversary was November 2. The United States Navy day is October 27. Pop never forgot Navy Day, but he always had to be reminded of his anniversary a few days later. Priorities take the day.