James Murphy

1241 Reserve Drive
Venice FL 34285

murphyjm10@verizon.net

Greetings from sunny Venice, Florida. This has been our home for about eight years. We do however, come back to Freedom NH for a few months each summer. This gives us lots of time with our Grandkids and gets us out of Florida during the steamy summer.

Life is good, the Murphy clan is lucky to be in pretty good health. Oh ya, I forgot. Marcia fell at Disney World a couple of years ago and broke her knee cap. I don’t think the discomfort from that experience ever completely goes away. And for me, last year I had a pacemaker installed to help me keep up with the 70 crowd. It’s been a real exciting time going through airport security these days! I’m on a first name basis with most of the TSA employee’s at the Manchester Airport!

Our oldest son, Craig lives on Long Island, NY. He graduated from Syracuse University where he met his wife Michelle. They have a son and daughter (Colin and Emily). Craig works in New York City as a property development manager.

Darrel (youngest son) lives in Brookline, NH. He graduated from UNH where he met and his wife Sara. They have two sons (Nicholas and Andrew). Darrel works for HP in customer support as a system analyst.

After high school, I worked for the MITRE Corporation (11 years) as a radar technician. This is where Marcia and I met and eventually married (41 years). Much to my surprise, the job at MITRE included a fair amount of tower climbing. The cold bothered me much more then the height, but like everything else it soon became second nature. Thanks to Jerry Dee, in 1973 I was able to get into DEC, and stayed employed there until 2001. My career at DEC began as a technical writer and eventually into catalog/magazine publishing. I also attended college at night and earned a BS degree in Business Administration from Hawthorne College. Finally, in July of 2001 I got caught up in a large layoff from Compaq who purchased DEC a few years earlier.

Since both Marcia and I are retired, we both play lots of golf and remain quite active in the community. We’ve traveled to Ireland, Italy, the Grand Canyon and other national parks. We also have taken a few cruises including one transatlantic.

I’ve kept in touch with Maynard happenings through the years, including checking out the Maynard Beacon (on-line version) from time to time. Last June I was reading the graduation class of 2010 valedictorian’s speech and noted his reference to the run down condition of the existing high school and the need for a new building. Makes you feel old, seeing that the high school we never attended now needs to be replaced. Wow! And, I think our old high school (currently the middle school), is still in operation. I guess they don’t build them like the good old days.

Marcia and I are really looking forward to attending the 50th year reunion. And thank you to all the committee members that have put it together. If it’s like any of the previous reunions it will be a big success! I’ve only missed one (45th) since graduation and that was due to a grandchild birthday!