R.D. Murphy: A heart that bled camouflage

I still hear your sea waves crashing, while I watch the cannons flashing; I clean my gun and dream of Galveston

JULY 30, 2010: The place was a gym at Fort Drum and the year was longer ago than I would like to remember. A team of Watertown six-graders, including one of my sons, was playing a team from Fort Drum.

During the past 35 years, I have watched hundreds of youth basketball games, either as a coach or as a father. But that day I saw something I had never seen before.

Instead of blowing his whistle relentlessly, the ref spent most of the game whispering/talking to the players.

“You're in the lane too long, son.”

“You can't push like that, son.”

“Watch your pivot foot, son.”

During every stop in the game, the ref would show this player or that player what he was doing wrong. And all the while the ref never raised his voice. And he never stopped smiling.

Reading in print or on computer screen today about that game years ago might draw a likely response: What? Refs are supposed to ref. Coaches and parents are supposed to teach the kids how to play. Why was the ref overstepping his role?

But if you saw the referee that day you would have concluded what I did: That's right! The game is not as important as the lesson. Why CAN'T a ref be like another coach and parent? In fact, why aren't all youth refs just like HIM?

It wasn't long after that game that I came to know R.D. Murphy professionally as a public affairs officer at Fort Drum. On countless days with many of my reporters, “Murph” was the person helping us tell the story of the 10th Mountain Division.

And it wasn't just a job for Murph. He served in the Army for two decades and retired as a master sergeant. So in his after-Army job he wasn't just talking about soldiers; he was talking about HIS soldiers.

But there was also this: As big of a heart as he had for kids and the Army, that very heart was so very defective. It finally took his life this week at the age of 62.

Murph's battle with heart disease was well documented in the pages of the Times. Robust, fit and 42 years old in 1990, he suddenly collapsed while talking to fellow soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm.

He was in a coma for 16 days. He recovered but that was the start of a 20-year fight to keep living.

Open-heart surgeries, cardiac defibrillators, numerous medications... in time Murph willingly became an unofficial spokesman for the American Heart Association, relaying all that he went through so the general public would have a better understanding of what heart disease is.

He continued to work at Fort Drum and he made a comeback as a referee. But as we reported several years ago:

“Mr. Murphy was working as a referee at a basketball game at Copenhagen Central School when the (cardioverter-defibrillator) went off... Mr. Murphy said he felt faint and got down on one knee just as he was about to hand a basketball to one of the players.

‘I decided after that incident to stop working as a referee,' said Mr. Murphy. ‘I didn't want to take a chance that one of the kids would see me go down one day.'”

Journalists in the area knew the hell Murph was going through just to do his job. And when we made requests for information and found Murph to not be his normally helpful, cheerful self, we all knew that Murph's health was once again in jeopardy.

When Murph retired a couple of years ago, we were sorry to lose him as our main Fort Drum contact, but we were also happy to know he would have less stress in his life.

At his retirement reception at Fort Drum, he challenged himself to do a remarkable thing: During his little farewell speech he looked around the room in The Commons and attempted to recognize each person by name. That would be tough for anyone to do at any age, but try pulling it off after your heart has been trying to not send blood to your brain for 20 years.

At first it seemed awkward and unnatural, but as Murph worked his way around the room of some 100 people and finally called out my name, I felt honored to be included in this gentle man's memory bank.

Soldiers come and go and it's likely the majority of today's 10th Mountain soldiers have no idea who R.D. Murphy was and what he meant to telling the division's story for so many years.

But if Fort Drum ever decides to consider doing something in his memory, it will find no shortage of local and national journalists who will rise to speak in favor of such an effort.