Carol Ann Murphy, 91, Vallejo
Carol Murphy loved French wine and German beer. She traveled to more than 20 countries as a civil servant and Peace Corps volunteer, but her penchant for being in the right place at the right time — Seoul in the 1950s, East Berlin in the 1960s and Saigon in the 1970s, for example — led her family to joke she was really a member of the CIA.
“She was everywhere,” said her niece Anne Mendoza, “although she never did fess up to that!”
Murphy died at a skilled nursing facility in Vallejo on May 10 at the age of 91 from complications of COVID-19.
Murphy was a firebrand from the start. Born in San Francisco in 1928, she was the second of three sisters, with Lois above and Elinor below. She chose to remain single and dedicated her life to her work overseas, returning to California only once or twice a year to make her rounds with family. Her many nieces and nephews treasured her visits, which often came with trinkets and gifts from the places she had been.
Murphy spent much of her career as an educator in the U.S. Army’s Morale Welfare and Recreation program, which took her to military bases across Europe, Southeast Asia and the U.S. She helped set up the first education center for the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy at Ft. Bliss, Texas, before eventually making her way to Belize with the Peace Corps, where she ran an education center for teachers.
“We’re all giving to a point, but Carol would go without in order for you to have something,” Mendoza said. “Helping people” was her aunt’s favorite hobby.
Ever the activist, Murphy never shied away from a protest or a political debate. She called the Berlin Wall “a pathetic tottering partition” and advocated for women’s rights “even before Gloria Steinem,” her niece said. Her stories ran the gamut, from tea parties with Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to meetings with Norodom Sihanouk, the prince of Cambodia, in Angkor Wat. They were enough to fill a book, although she hardly sat still long enough to write one.
“She would show up in her red Porsche,” recalled her nephew, Tom O’Brien. “She would always come rip it up. She was pretty cool.”
Upon retiring at the age of 66, Murphy knew precisely what to do next: She traveled to England with a friend from Korea, then embarked on a months-long trip to India, Singapore, Bali, Bangkok, Saigon, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Macao, Japan and Hawaii.
She continued traveling until her mid-80s, at which point she had friends all over the world.
Although Murphy was reluctant to name a favorite country — she called them all “great places” — her niece said India was the one she loved most.
“Out of all her pictures,” Mendoza said, “the one with the biggest smile on her face is at the pool in front of the Taj Mahal.”