Myrtle Viola Murray's Obituary
Myrtle Murray was born on Nov. 9, 1921, and grew up in Madison, IL, right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. She and her brother Bryan spent childhood summers at their grandparents’ farm near Paragould, Arkansas, hoeing cotton and doing other farm chores. All through her life, she could recognize crops in the field for the urbanites with her.
She met her future husband, Robert Murray, at a USO dance during World War II. She moved to California to marry him immediately after the war, and they raised their two daughters, Peggy and Kathleen, in southern California. After her two girls left home, she moved with her husband to Sacramento, and continued to reside there after his death in 1989. She developed a wide circle of friends, learned to play golf, and was the social organizer for many Elks Club and other groups’ activities.
A child of the Depression, she brought common sense to her decisions about work and household finances. She managed a beauty shop before her marriage and worked as a school district payroll clerk for some years before her retirement. Her friends valued her cogent and down- to-earth comments about everything from politics to fashion to personal relationships.
In 2007, she moved to Rossmoor to be closer to her daughters in Richmond and Lafayette. She bravely faced a number of serious illnesses: two separate breast cancers, three abdominal surgeries, and several bouts of pneumonia. She was determined to stay physically active, and always battled back to health and went back to playing golf and dancing.
With weakened health after a serious bout of pneumonia in 2013, she moved to assisted living in Rockridge in the spring of 2014, and passed away on Oct. 30, 2014. She is mourned by her two daughters, Peggy Murray and Kathleen Beavers, her son-in-law Lynn Beavers, and other family and friends.
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