Mary Murphy Marketing

Sudden Death. Life Perfectly Timed.

Sudden death.

The loss of a beloved friend, without warning, rips a gaping hole in the memory-rich fabric of life.

Mary Murphy Hamann, my college roommate, longtime friend, and one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met, died on Good Friday in a remote village in Paraguay.

Her plan? To attend her daughter’s wedding there and meet the Paraguayan in-laws. But God planned otherwise. Mary hemorrhaged unexpectedly from a hidden, life-threatening tumor, just one day before her daughter’s wedding.

Nothing could have saved her. Even if she’d been stateside, the end result would have been the same.  Her close-knit family – husband, four adult children, seven surviving siblings, in-laws, and dozens of nieces and nephews – reeled from the blow, in shock and grief.

But the days that followed found them steadied by the mercy of God’s grace and the hope born of faith. 
It was her time.

I remember once, thirty years earlier, when Mary told me, “It’s time.” 

Only then it was “time” to marry her high school sweetheart, Mike –  a decision that seemed as ill-timed (to others) as her death now thirty years later.  Just 19 when Mike slipped the engagement ring on her finger, Mary married at 20. No shotguns involved, just a young couple in love and ready to team up for life.

“He’s the one,” Mary told me, “It’s time.”

So she married and left school, taking a job that would support them both while Mike spent his last two years at Notre Dame.

The young feminists in our dorm sizzled with outrage. Clearly appalled, one driven engineer-to-be expressed her indignation – on Mary’s behalf – to me. “She’s got a 3.9! Why is she leaving school?  Why doesn’t he leave school so she can finish?”

Mary’s decision made no sense to the career-oriented, high-achievers of the 80s. Forget the balancing act. Marriage and motherhood were obstacles to career success.

Some imagined a he-versus-she wrestling match over dominance and ambition, with Mary finally yielding. Others carped that Mary’s conservative beliefs and traditional Catholicism must be at fault. “What a waste.” They lamented their friend’s all-but-certain future: talents undeveloped and opportunities lost, all sacrificed at the altar of marriage and motherhood.

Poor Mary.

“Poor Mary” never looked back. Her sureness emerged from a prayerful heart intent on one question: ”What is the Lord’s will for me?

Mary Murphy from Marlon Brando's 'The Wild One' Passes Away at 80 ...

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Daughter Stephanie Specht tells the Los Angeles Times that Murphy died May 4 of heart disease at her Beverly Hills home.

Murphy had several roles in 1950s films, including “ The Desperate Hours ,” “ Beachhead ,” “ A Man Alone ,” “ Sitting Bull ” and “ The Mad Magician .”

But she’s best-known as the innocent in a town terrorized by a biker gang led by Brando.

Murphy was a package wrapper at Saks Fifth Avenue on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills when she was discovered in a nearby coffee shop by a Paramount Pictures talent scout.

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