The Murphy's of Michigan

Early Life

The second of six Murphy children, Ethel doted on her older brother, Harry Joe, 2 years her senior, and that loving familial bond continued with each and every one of her four younger siblings:

• Patricia, born in 1926 but, sadly, passed away in 1927
• Margaret Mary, born in 1928
• George (Mickey), born in 1929
• Eileen, born in 1932

In 1930, one year into the Great Depression, the Murphy family moved to St. Clair, Michigan, where they rented a home on the river at the north end of town. How much of the move was dictated by the economic conditions of the time, or how much or if it was the irresistible attraction of the St. Clair River only fifty miles away — we aren’t sure, but the early transition of city life to the “country” life certainly played a huge role in forming the family’s love of being around water.

We don’t recall their parents, Harry and Margaret, being particularly aquatic, although their father was in the Navy. Regardless, all the siblings definitely shared amphibious genes that linked them to the water as if they were all half fish.

Bert Anderson

Milbert “Bert” Anderson grew up in St. Clair in the family home on Witherell Street. He attended SCHS, a year ahead of his future wife, and was President of his Senior Class of 1940. He played varsity basketball, but his true love was tennis, in which he excelled and was the State of Michigan Singles Champion.

After graduating from SCHS, he went to Port Huron Junior College before transferring to the University of Michigan in 1942. With WW II in full swing, Bert took a leave from college and enlisted in the Army Air Force where he became a fighter pilot with the 48th Fighter Group, 492nd Fighter Squadron, European Theater of Operations in February, 1944.

Like many service personnel, Bert & Ethel decided to get married before his deployment.

Ethel Gets Married – 1944

In April of 1944, Ethel and Bert were married in Virginia at the base where Bert was stationed.

Like many spouses of active duty servicemen, Ethel worked at a factory making airplane wing parts to support the war effort.

Pictured below are Bert & Ethel with Bert’s brother, Robert, and his wife, Betty, along with the boy’s parent’s, Clarence and Queen (Harris).

Married Life

When the war ended, Bert and Ethel moved to Pittsfield Village near Ann Arbor while Bert finished his college education at the University of Michigan.

Ethel & Bert’s Children

And So It Begins….

15 yr old Eileen (Don’s part-time baby-sitter) and her dad, Harry, with Bert holding baby Don, the first of who would be the 28 Murphy grandchildren

FIRST of the TRIBE

Donald Harris Anderson, born on June 26, 1946, is not only the firstborn of the Anderson Clan, he is also the FIRST grandchild of the MURPHY Clan of Harry William and Margaret Mary Murphy. At 77 years of age (2023), with the recent passing of our beloved Aunt Eileen (Murphy) Koenig, Don is now the Dual-Patriarch of the MURPHY Clan as well as the Anderson Clan.

Don was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father was completing his college education at the University of Michigan. In 1947, the young family moved to the Birwood house in Detroit where Bert had taken a job downtown with the National Bank of Detroit on Woodward. Along with his younger siblings, Mickey and Colleen, Don attended Precious Blood Catholic school near their home.

The young family spent their summer vacations in St. Clair, Bert and Ethel’s hometown. During two of those summer “vacations”, while staying at Burkemo’s (cottages), Ethel gave birth to their second son, Mickey, and, two summers later, their first daughter, Mary Colleen. Mickey was born on the exact same day (June 26) as Donald and, as such, was presented to him as a birthday gift.

With all that traveling back and forth to St. Clair, Ethel and Bert and their then five children decided to make St. Clair their permanent residence and moved into a home on Cass St. Incredibly, Bert continued to make the daily commute from St. Clair to downtown Detroit for years until he retired from NBD.

Now in St. Clair, 6th Grader Don and his two school age siblings attended St. Mary’s Catholic school. The first day at the new school, Don was shocked to see that two of the nuns from Precious Blood had coincidentally been relocated to St. Mary’s in St. Clair. Fortunately, they were two of the “friendly” ones.

At St. Clair High School, Don, called “Andy” by his teammates, lettered in football, basketball and golf. One of his most treasured athletic achievements was when he and the “Fighting Saints” held the highly ranked and much favored Marysville Vikings to a 6 – 6 tie on the Vikings home field, breaking their record winning streak! As a defensive tackle, to hold Marysville’s vaunted running attack to one touchdown, he and the rest of St. Clair’s D-line became heroes in the state of Michigan’s high school athletic community.

After graduating in 1964, Don attended Port Huron Junior College where he played on the school’s Golf Team. After receiving his Associates Degree, he attended the University of Michigan – Business Extension College in Dearborn while staying with Gramma Murphy at her deluxe trailer home in Taylor, Michigan. After Gramma passed in June of 1966, Don lived in the trailer until he graduated.

Don was drafted into the military where he was offered the opportunity to attend the Army’s Officer Training School at Fort Hollibird in Maryland. Graduating as a 2nd Lieutenant, he was in military intelligence stationed at Fort Devon in western Massachusettes.

After his stint at Fort Devon, Don decided that a military career was not in his DNA, he entered civilian life and took a job in sales management with New York Life. In 1978, he left New York Life to work for Fidelity Investments in Boston where he would become one of the original managers of the company’s new Destiny Fund. He continued to rise in the Fidelity organization and to becomeExecutive Vice President and National Sales Manager for the popular Destiny Fund, a position he held until his retirement in 2001.

In 1979, Don was invited to a party by one of the managers who worked for him. The manager’s wife was a nurse and the party included many of her nurse friends from local hospitals, many of whom were also single. Apparently, one of these friends caught Don’s eye and within a year, RN Patricia Gill became Mrs. Donald Anderson.

The couple were married in Boston on May 31, 1980.

The newlyweds purchased a home in Danvers, just outside of Boston, where they lived for twenty years. During their time in Danvers, they purchased a small “summer house” on Cape Cod. When Don retired in 2001, they purchased a large home on the Cape, on the New Seabury golf course. For a moment, they were the proud owners of three homes in the Boston area.

Happy Birthday, Don….

As a child, his mother said that he was a bit of a neat freak and wouldn’t even tolerate snow on his snow suit. And, whenever he was sent off to the corner of the yard as punishment, which happened on occasion, he would spend hours counting and studying ants.

Mickey (bottom row, second from the left) was an altar boy and a cantor in the school choir at St. Mary’s. Not that he had any kind of vice at all, he was one of the few who could pronounce Latin properly. He wasn’t crazy about getting up at 5:30 every morning to sing at the 6:30 mass –but the upside was he and his fellow cantors were always first in line on Friday morning when the warm, freshly baked donuts from the local bakery were served for the students returning from the 8:00 service.

One of his St. Mary’s classmates lived in a home with a large side yard that became the daily battle grounds for neighbors to play football, baseball, field hockey — whatever was in season — from sunrise to sunset every day in the summers growing up. Occasionally, brother Don and his friends would join in, elevating the level of play. The “Riverside Rams” as they were called, would often play another St. Clair neighborhood, the “Thornapple Thorns”. Games were all they played…..until they discovered girls in their early teens.

Speaking of girls, Mick first saw his future wife when she and several of her public school Catholic classmates from the Elementary School came from down the street to St. Mary’s for Confirmation Classes. Again, this was before boy-girl things weren’t much of a thing at all. Little did he know he’d be spending the rest of his life with her.

Mick’s was the first class to go through all four years at the new St. Clair High School.

While in high school, Mick played on the Golf Team which, by the way, still holds the School’s low team score for a single match. He played junior varsity football and basketball, but his varsity interest in those sports were directed more towards the cheerleaders than the locker rooms — in particular, one Terri Ann Brown (bottom row, left). Must have been the Prince Valiant hair style.

Their first “date” took place on a Saturday afternoon, when Mick went with Terri’s mother to pick her up from the high school where she was just completing her final driver’s training class. It was 1965 — he was 16, she was 15. They quickly became part of each other’s families and not a day went by when they weren’t with each other. Mick would walk three miles to Terri’s house every morning, drive her sisters to school in her dad’s car, then come back and the two of them would walk to school together.

Mick graduated from SCHS in 1966. That summer, the two of them worked evenings together at Pauly’s mom & pop grocery store. In the fall of that year, Mick attended SC4 (St. Clair Community College), formerly Port Huron Junior College, while Terri completed her Senior year at SCHS.

Terri graduated in the spring of 1967. That summer, they returned to the mom & pop store and began making wedding plans. It proved to be an interesting summer at the store when the Detroit riots broke out and the city banned the sale of alcohol within a fifty mile radius. As fate would have it, “Pauly’s” fell just outside the restricted perimeter and Detroiter’s flocked to the store in pickups and station wagons (there were no SUV’s back then) and loaded up with as many cases of beer as could fit in their vehicles. Mr. P. emptied his store shelves of the standard grocery items and filled the store with cases of beer. Not sure how much money he made during that awful time, but he did retire shortly after that summer.

In the fall, Mick and Terri were wondering why they were waiting to get married. Neither were interested in a big wedding or a fancy honeymoon, so they decided in early November to make it happen. St Mary’s weekend wedding dates were booked into the following year and, because Mick was in classes at SC4, the soonest, best date they could determine was Thanksgiving Eve, which would give them a four-day weekend to celebrate. So, giving their families a ten-day notice, they circled Wednesday, November 22 on the calendar.

The Wedding

So, with only the small fortune they managed to save at Pauly’s, they made it happen. The church yielded to the weekday marriage and a simple wedding reception was held at the home of Terri’s folks. Their honeymoon plans were to hop into their Kharman Ghia VW convertible and head south and just keep driving until they got too tired to go any further. They got as far as Mt. Clemens! They spent the first three days of their married life at the beautiful and luxurious Coral Gables, a quarter-star hotel on the banks of the enchanting Clinton River. It should be noted that the “honeymoon suite” at the Gables is located right above the hotel’s second-floor bowling alley.

With finances what they were back then, the couple was happy to live in the basement “apartment” of Mick’s grandparents, CHF and Queen Anderson. Terri quickly got an office job at the Diamond Crystal Salt Company while Mick finished out his second year of college at SC4.

Mick received his Associates degree in June and, thanks to Terri’s modest income from the Diamond Crystal, entered the University of Michigan within a week — just enough of a break to move their negligible belongings into the married housing apartment building on campus.

At that time, the Business School curriculum included a work internship program where students attended school for four months, then work full time as in a co-op arrangement with a local company for four months….and continued this cycle through the two years it took to get a BBA (Bachelor Business Administration) degree.

Mick’s internship was with the Ford Motor Co in Dearborn where he worked in the Controller’s Office of Ford’s Engine & Foundry Division –at full salary!. Terri, in the mean time, got a job at the University’s campus library, then later, in the school’s human resources and counseling department.

This was Mick and Terri’s first apartment after his graduation from UofM in 1970. The coolest thing here was the clubhouse that featured a connected outdoor/indoor pool that allowed for outside swimming in the winter.

Military Life

With his college deferment coming to an end, Mick joined the US Army Reserves and, three months after officially hiring in at Ford Motor Co in 1970, was shipped off to California for three months of basic training at Ford Ord in Monterrey. Terri stayed at the Villa Halcyon in nearby Pacific Grove while he was there. After the first couple of weeks, Mick was permitted to stay with her on weekends.

Advanced Infantry Training was at Fort Polk, Louisiana — where the living quarters were not quite as glamorous. On the plus side, Mick’s company C.O., having been informed that Mick’s new wife would be staying at the Base Guest House (usually available for weekend-only family visitors) for the duration of his three months, allowed him to stay with her there, rather than sleep in the barracks, much to the chagrin of his fellow soldiers.

After Basics and AIT, for the next seven years, Mick spent one weekend a month at the Roseville Army Reserve facility on Gratiot and two weeks every summer at an Army base, most often, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as a hand grenade instructor. For two weeks a year, he would teach new recruits about grenades, including getting into the “pits” with them as they made live throws.

Having worked at the University of Michigan for several years after Mick graduated, Terri became a full-time student at the U of M and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Economics. After graduating, she held several marketing positions until eventually finishing her career at Darcy advertising.

Mick and Terri did their share of traveling. The first international trip was to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. The “Pearl of the Adriatic” had only recently opened up for tourists. They actually opened “too soon” and didn’t realize that most Americans are turned off by fish heads being served with every meal. So, tired of eating bread and chocolate, they jumped on a puddle-jumper plane to Rome and spent the duration of the 10-day trip there before returning to Yugoslavia for the trip home. This would be the last of their “group” trips..

MARY COLLEEN

Colleen was born on August 19, 1950 in St. Clair, Michigan, the third child and first daughter of MIlbert & Ethel…AND, the first “Murphy” granddaughter.

The Wedding

COLLEEN ANN

RENE ETHEL

MARGARET MARIE

JOSEPH WILLIAM

WILLIAM PATRICK

Ethel Margaret

The Wedding

The Kids

JAMES McWILLIAMS

PATRICIA ANN

John’s 3 kids…

Back to Mom and Dad……

The Homes

Group Shots

The fam at The Andersonian Games, Lake Ernie

Mom and the fam…..celebrating something fancy!