RockIsland county Illinois, DAILY DISPATCH, MOLINE, ILLINOIS; THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 9, 1949 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Submitted by: Richard Krayenhagen OFF THE BEATEN PATH A History Talk Turns into Big Boost For Y as Wonderful Institution; Here, Too, Is Murph , Irish Catholic Friend of Boys By Fred Klann Dispatch Local Feature Editor The talking for this article started with a few unusual historical items, including " Laundress Town " on Arsenal Island around Civil war times, and then developed into a discussion of religion and the Young Men`s Christian association, the influence of a " live and let live policy " and the good things the Y.M.C.A. is doing. Joseph E. Murphy, an Irish Catholic, born here in 1881, who has successfully reared two sons and a daughter, has achieved some success in making money and living happily and for the last nine years has held a rather humble job at the Moline Y and is an enthusiastic and quite sincere booster for the Y is the " man who " in this piece. Murph, as one of his heroes N.L. (Mac) MacDonald, calls him, will tell you that the Y.M.C.A. is a great institution, pays no attention to creed or color or politics in trying to serve humanity, particularly boys, and that if there are prejudices against the Y it is only because people don`t know what that organization or institution is really doing. As locker room attendant at the Y, Mr. Murphy has been a sort of receptionist for all the boys and men who go there, has seen them in action, watched many of them grow up, has talked with them and helped them; so he should know something about the Y. "Never Turn Em Away" "They may never turn anybody away at the institution, no matter how bad a reputation they have," said Mr. Murphy. " There`s something that draws them there; I don`t know what it is. " I remember one night when Mr. MacDonald ( Mac, the general secretary of the Y) brought in a couple of street bums; you could pour them back in a bottle. " Take care of these fellows, Murph," he told me. " See that they get a hot shower and a cold one and let 'em sober up and get a good rest.' "Later one of ‘em, after he got all cleaned up and sobered up, asked me: ‘was that Mr. MacDonald himself who brought me in here ? He sure was all right. He`s a fine fellow!' I`ve seen that man around town quite a bit since and I`ve never seen him drunk, so I guess he must be all right now. "I`ll tell you one thing," continued Murph. " People say you`ve got to be a protestant to get anything out of the Y. You don`t. "There was a boy at Bethany home who had outgrown that place and I guess was kind of upset and did`nt know what to do. Mr. Macdonald heard about him. He was a Catholic boy. Did that make any difference to Mr. MacDonald ? No. " He went to that boy and talked to him and then sort of adopted him, gave him a home at the Y. That boy later put himself through college." Comes Home to Tell Mac. "You know, when a young fellow makes good in the world he likes to come back home and tell the folks about it. Not so long ago a young man came into the Y. He had made good. He was with the FBI on the west coast. He wanted to tell Mr. MacDonald about it. He was that Catholic boy from Bethany." Murphy can tell you about quite a few number of other boys who have been helped by the Young Men`s Christian association and his favorite illustration along that line consists of the young men who are studying for the ministry, some for one type of Protestant denomination and some for another and some, says Murph, for the Roman Catholic priesthood. One of these young men studying for the ministry, Jack Freed, now at Augustana, used Joseph Murphy and his work at the Y, and the Y, as a theme for a major theme for his semester`s work in a course in writing at Augustana. "His job is not an easy one" wrote Freed in discussing Murphy. "He must constantly deal with the public. However, his congenial manner has won him many friends, even among total strangers. Murph is keenly interested in the work of the Y.M.C.A." Story of A Boy. Freed then tells a story Murphy told him about a boy whose home was almost broken up, who was inclined to be a rowdy or a little on the tough side, but who through a free summer membership at the Y and through the patience of Jerry Wood, former Y physical director gradually became quite a changed youngster. That was several years ago. Recently that boy, now getting to be a young man, came in to say hello to his locker room friend, Joe Murphy. He has a new home, with " new parents" belongs to a Sunday school where his teacher is a leader in the Y and has a wholesome outlook on life. And his new parents gave him the best kind of birthday present, a membership in the Y. Mr. Murphy, in talking with the Off The Beaten Path man, got a little emphatic, if not excited, at times. " A lot of people got that prejudice against the Y," he said. " That makes me mad. "Sure, they have that word Christian in their name. Yes, they`d like to have you go to church. But they don`t tell you what church to go to." There are a lot of Catholics in the Y membership, according to Murphy. The Moline Y pool annually is selected by the Davenport Catholic schools for their swimming meet Murphy declares the Y.M.C.A. is an American institution. Not so long ago four boy scout troops were at the Moline Y for an evening`s program of games and swimming. Among them was a Negro troop from East Moline. The Negro boys were standing around sort of shy and lost, says Murph, because their scoutmaster hadn`t arrived and they had been told not to do any thing until their leader told them to. The Negro boys looked pretty glum, Murph told me. Negro Boys Have Fun Too Then a a man came along , a teacher in Moline, saw the other troops were having fun and the Negro boys were just standing there unhappy and asked what the trouble was. Told, he said: "I`m a scoutmaster. How about me?" Murph explained the situation to a boy scout executive. He said O.K., so the teacher became the Negro boys` scoutmaster and they joined the other scouts for a great time in the pool. And then, reports Murph, there are the boys from the country home and school. Out there, according to Murphy, the boys naturally are under some at times strict discipline. But when those boys have their evening at the Y, they can really let themselves go. The deal is , says Murph, the boys are told only to remember to be gentlemen. But they do go to town, noisy, a little rough and a grand time, but they remember the cautionary words, Murphys ‘Old-Timers.' The Murphy family to which Joe Murphy belongs are what might be called "old timers" in Moline. Joe`s grandfather, Owen Murphy, with Joe`s dad, James, then about 10 or 12, came to Moline in the `50s before the Civil war, from Connecticut. The Owen Murphy family first lived in a cottage on the island, now Arsenal island, which Owen Murphy rented from D.B. Sears The grandfather was a paper maker and he got a job in that pioneer paper mill in Moline.( With Joe`s help maybe this column some day will tell about that mill.) During the Civil war the Murphy home on the island was located near " Laundress Town," which was so named because it consisted of a collection of huts occupied by women who did the laundry for the soldiers then stationed on the island. Joe`s father when he got old enough to go to work, also worked at the paper mill. Later he was a salesman for the paper company., and the Moline Pump company. (Remember that one?) A Bit of Island History After the Civil war the government bought up the ground on the island it had sold and the Murphy`s moved to Moline. Joe was born in a house whose address today would be at Sixteenth street and Twenty-first avenue. The streets had other names then and the house wasn't in the city of Moline. Joe went to Garfield school, not the present Garfield though located at the same place, now Fifteenth street and Twenty-fifth avenue. Joe`s dad, though a good Catholic, was a member of the three man board of education which ran the school district, not then connected with the Moline school system. One of Joe`s teachers, he recalled was Minnie Watt, about whom this column recently had an article. When he got through Garfield Joe went to Moline high and then Gustus business college. Joe Murphy`s Career Joe`s first job was in the Moline freight office of the Milwaukee railroad. Then he was with the freight department of the Pennsylvania railroad , in Davenport, for a few years, and next he was contracting agent for the New York Central in Davenport. In 1910, when Fifth avenue began to show signs of booming and Moline general too, Mr. Murphy went into the real estate and insurance business here. He later sold his business to John DeJaeger and became field secretary for the Columbia National Fire Insurance Co. He spent a few years in Chicago with a new and large insurance company and , he says, really went to town for a while. Came the depression of 1930 and on and in time the company" went on the rocks," so did Joe Murphy`s pretty good job. Later Murphy became a committee clerk in the state legislature, appointed by M. R. Carlson of Moline, then state senator and for a while president pro tempore of the senate. Right there in the talk I asked how come, a good Irish Catholic and a Republican? That`s not too unusual, answered Joe Murphy. His father, James Murphy, and his grandfather, Owen Murphy, were good Republicans too, said Joe Murphy. He brought up a number of reasons for that and also some explanation in addition to his ancestry, why he`s a Republican, but there isn't space for that today. Comment on Politics? Nope' I did ask Joe Murphy about his views on politics then and now, and also about the legislators at Springfield. " Do you want to comment on that, for this article?" "Nope," replied Joe Murphy. " Some is favorable and some is not." Somewhere along the line Murphy recalled the panic starting in 1893 and the dollar a day men were glad to get working on the Hennepin. And how when he was a young chap he was one summer the first conductor on the electric street car running up Fifteenth street to Prospect park. In the early days of that very much pioneer electric trolley they only had a motorman. Joe remembers, too, how Bill Hopkins, later vice president of the Missouri-Pacific railroad, worked on the tracks of the street car line. Mr. Murphy, whose territory as a traveling man at one time included Michigan, married Martha Jane Wurden, a buyer for a Lansing, Mich., department store, on April 28, 1921. The Murphys` daughter, Jane, now Mrs. Robert Johnson of Waterloo, Ia. And two sons, James H. and Joseph Francis, were in the service during World war 2. James was graduated from Moline high after the war and Joseph has been attending St. Ambrose college. Joe Murphy used to be a pretty heavy smoker and occasionally would have a glass of beer, but a few years ago he had a medical check-up and quit both tobacco and beer. He`s o Anti-Tobacco league man and no prohibitionist, he said, but as for himself he figures he knows what is best for him. Which seems to be in line with his " live and let live" policy and his theory that the Y.M.C.A. is a wonderful, helpful institution.