Holdthefrontpage...former DIeditorPaulMurphyturns 80withnoplansto‘retire’
AS he reaches his 80th birthday, local journalist Paul Murphy looks back on over 60 years of news with Alison Comyn.
For someone who has spent most of his life writing, it was very nearly inside leg measurements over column inches!
Born in Drogheda in 1944, Paul has been a journalist with the Irish Independent, editor of the Drogheda Independent, and continues to cover court all over the northeast, but his working life began with chalk and a measuring tape.
“I had started out in a factory in Mell when I was just 15, and a year later, I went to England to stay with my uncle Nicholas Travers, who was originally a Dundalk man, but had lived in London for years,” explains Paul. “I worked in a couple of shops in men’s tailoring, including Burton’s, which is very well known, and even when I came back home to Drogheda two years later, I worked in Melville’s shop in Shop Street, in their household department.”
And the location of that store was to factor in Paul’s literary future.
“I was working there one day when I met Anne Kane (the Doyenne of the Drogheda Independent) and she told me a junior reporter was after leaving the DI and there is a job going,” he recalls. “My father knew I had written some bits and pieces and told me to apply, and I met with the editor George O’Gorman, who gave me the job on the spot!”
Although Drogheda to the core, Paul’s dad James was from Haggardstown, Dundalk and his mother Bridget was from Dublin, and grew up in an orphanage in New Ross.
“My family moved to Drogheda in 1929, where there were six children, three of whom are sadly deceased,” explains Paul. “I went to school in St Joseph’s CBS, and I was very academic I’m afraid, but I loved English, and I had one teacher Joe McGillion, who really encouraged me.”
And that love of English would stand Paul in good stead when he started his cub reporter job in Shop Street.
“There were no mobile phones in those days – just one payphone in the office, so everything was done by getting out and about,” he says of his first forays into journalism. “in the first couple of days, I was out on ‘patrol’ on the Donore and I could hear shouting at the top of the hill where the first houses were being built.
“A trench had collapsed on top of a man there called Nulty from Copperhill, and sadly died and that was very traumatic.”
Over the years, Paul covered all the staples of local news; the corporation meetings, the courts, the obituaries, and even the Drogheda Chamber of Commerce.
At various stages over the past 60 years, he worked as a reporter with the DI, freelanced with the Irish Press Group (now defunct), RTE, The Irish Times, the Daily Mirror, the Drogheda Leader, was on the staff of the Irish Independent/Evening Herald/Sunday Independent for 19 years as a news reporter (and also Industrial Correspondent), was editor of the Drogheda Independent for 16 years, and now freelances with the Meath Chronicle newspaper.
But it was in 1965 when his most memorable story was to occur, one that has received several edits over the years!
“My friend Pat Bailey and I were walking up Laurence Street late on May 2nd 1965 when we heard a baby crying and looked into a phone box and found the child wrapped in a hold-all, says Paul. “The story has been well documented over the past year or so, as I met with the baby – now a grown man - and the rest of his family, and it remains one of the most memorable of my career.”
Indeed Paul has also documented many of his exciting stories and experiences in his own book ‘Get There First: A Reporter’s Life’, follows the trajectory of his career from the ‘ hot metal’ days of the provinces, to a national paper covering the four counties of Louth, Meath, Cavan and Monaghan.
“The outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland marked a seminal moment in my career, when I witnessed some of the horrors of the conflict and its effect on communities and individuals over a 40-year period,” he explains. “Echoes of that conflict came into stark relief when I reported on the searches for the bodies of some of the Disappeared in bogs in Meath from 2013.”
Two of Paul’s children – Anthony and Brian – followed him into journalism, working first alongside him in the DI and then further afield.
“They didn’t get any special privileges because I was editor, in fact, they say I was harder on them than anyone else!”, he laughs. “It wasn’t nepotism, it was carrying on generations of a skill.”
Paul still keeps his hand in even in his 80th year and is also involved in several charity and voluntary endeavours.
“I’m on the boards of Drogheda Homeless Aid and the Ledwidge Museum and keep myself busy with a passion for history as well,” he says. “I had a wonderful celebration of my 80th birthday with the family recently, and I can’t say I will ever retire, and will keep writing as long as I can and as other’s let me!”