Murphy, William M. 1916-2008 (William Michael Murphy)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 6, 1916, in Astoria, NY; died September 26, 2008, in Schenectady, NY. Educator, municipal official, biographer, editor, and author. Murphy taught English for almost forty years at Union College in Schenectady, New York, but it was reportedly a chance encounter outside the classroom that inspired his lasting commitment to the legacy of Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Murphy was a politician who campaigned for public office at the state and national level several times, never with success. At the local level, however, he served on the county board of supervisors and chaired a municipal housing authority. There, it is said, he met a poet who had taken care of Yeats at the end of his life and arranged for his burial in New York State. At the woman's urging, Murphy went to Ireland to research the poet's background, met his surviving family members, and unexpectedly became immersed in the project that would occupy him for the rest of his career and beyond. The idea that began as a potential article on Yeats's time in America grew into a biographical study, not so much of the poet himself, which had been done by many others, but of the family members whose relationships with Yeats had a profound impact on his work. Murphy first wrote The Yeats Family and the Pollexfens of Sligo (1971). He then turned to the letters of Yeats to and from various family members and acquaintances. Finally Murphy published the studies for which he is best known: Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, 1839-1922 (1978), the biography of the poet's father, and Family Secrets: William Butler Yeats and His Relatives (1995). He was also the author of The Parnell Myth and Irish Politics, 1891-1956 (1986).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, October 9, 2008, p. A29.