Community leader mourned
Published Friday September 18th, 2009
HAMPTON - Retired educator, artist and musician John Murphy, a passionate pacifist who for many years crusaded for human rights and social justice, died unexpectedly Tuesday.
He was 66.
Murphy was found dead in his car on the side of the highway. With his wife, Pip, away visiting her father in England, it's believed he started to drive himself to the hospital. Earlier in the day, he had cancelled a meeting due to illness.
"It is so like him," said his friend and fellow artist George Fry. "He wouldn't want to bother anybody about driving him in."
His sudden passing has left many in his adopted home of Hampton reeling from the news.
"It was just shock," said John Hooper, a teacher at Hampton High School, where Murphy once taught.
But it wasn't just those at his former school who were moved. Over the years, Murphy extended his reach beyond the walls of the classroom and into the community, quietly but convincingly extolling the importance of human rights whenever he could.
He was the chairman of the Hampton group of Amnesty International Canada and both a director and secretary of the John Peters Humphrey Foundation. As one of its directors, he saw the unveiling last summer of the Credo project - a monument honouring the Hampton native who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
He was also the organizer of Bloomin' Artists, an annual foundation fundraiser which this year raised money for a human rights mural that is being painted by Sussex artist Fred Harrison and students from Hampton High School. It will be affixed to the outside of the school this fall.
"The mural is for John now," said an emotional Harrison, pausing from sketching the design on the large mural panels. "The teachers talked about putting a plaque on the wall next to the mural to dedicate it to him."
Sonja Travis, who taught with Murphy and is a director of the foundation, said he was active right up until his death and had a quiet yet persuasive way of involving others in his projects.
"He always had 20 things in the fire at once," she said "He was someone I couldn't say no to. You kind of got wrapped up in his passion.
"To me, he was the modern day John Peters Humphrey."
Murphy was born in England. He and his wife, Pip, emigrated to Canada in 1974. As a student in his native country, he obtained his National Diploma in Design from Goldsmith's College School of Art in London and a master's in art education from Birmingham Polytechnic. At one time, he even entered the seminary to become a priest.
Lured to Canada by Fry, then Saint John school arts director, Murphy and his wife eventually settled in the Hampton area, raising their two daughters, Alison and Anna, in a home they shared with an assortment of dogs and horses. He taught art at St. Peter's School in Saint John, at Kennebecasis Valley High School in Quispamsis and later Hampton High School.
"He always wanted to inspire you and get you to raise the bar," said art teacher Glenn Hall. "He didn't let you rest on your laurels."
In 1999, through a Rotary program, Murphy went to Africa to build schools and establish an AIDS hospice. It was a trip, say some who knew him, that propelled him into activism.
"What he saw there affected him enormously," agreed artist Kathy Hooper, who knew him for 30 years and worked closely with him on the Credo project. "But I think he was already that kind of person.
"He was able to touch people and yet remained such a humble person himself."
Eight years later, Murphy and a fellow Hampton teacher went back to Africa to do handiwork at a school in Piggs Peak, Swaziland - a HIV/AIDS-ravaged community that is twinned with Hampton.
Murphy was also a musician and a member of the group Hal N' Tow. Artistically, he was a print maker.
"He was one of the most gentle men you could meet," Fry said. "He was somebody that just gave and never stopped giving. And his art was like that."
A service is scheduled for Sept. 26 at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Hampton.
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