“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain”
Mary Murphy was born in Pittsburgh PA August 28, 1932. She was the first child of Helen and Charles Brown. Helen and Charlie were friends in Pittsburgh – Charlie, five years older than Helen, was a good friend of Helen’s brother John – and their friendship turned into love after Helen returned from WW1 duty as a nurse and began working at a hospital in Birmingham Alabama. They were married in Florida in 1931. They had two children, Mary Ellen, and Charles, born 16 months later. Their marriage was long and loving. Charles Senior died in 1966, age 80, and Helen at age 95 in 1987.
Mary began her public career in 1972, serving as the Ridgewood, NJ, volunteer chairwoman for George McGovern’s presidential campaign. Under her leadership, a team of dedicated people ran one of the most coordinated and visible campaigns in that usual Republican stronghold.
After the presidential race, the new Bergen County Democratic County Chairwoman, Barbara Werber, hired her, in 1973, to serve as Assistant Executive Director under Executive Director Loretta Weinberg, now State Assemblywoman and majority conference leader from the 37th district. This new team opened up the party membership and strengthened its grassroots participation.
After Mary ran an unsuccessful campaign for the party’s nomination for freeholder in 1978, the new county chairman, Vincent Rigolosi, chose her to be his executive director. They worked together to strengthen the party and to bring together all the local organizations.
Leaving party politics in 1980, Mary joined the development staff at Felician College in Lodi, and rose to Director of Development in 1983. A breast cancer operation ended her career at the college.
After her recovery, she was hired to be chief fundraiser for the John Harms Theater in Englewood, NJ.
While working there, she was approached, in 1985, by two old friends, Paul and Vickie Giblin, to help them set up a major fund raising event in memory of their little daughter, Colleen, who had tragically died early that year from an inoperable brain tumor. This volunteer effort led to the beginnings of a new non-profit foundation, The Colleen Giblin Foundation.
Mary worked out of Paul Giblin’s law office, with a typewriter, a phone and an index card file of donors and supporters. From that modest start, the Foundation grew to become the established and highly successful one it is today.
She retired from her position at the foundation in 1995, continuing as a consultant and advisor.
Her bout with breast cancer, successfully treated, led to her other consultancy, The Octoberwoman Foundation, in Park Ridge, begun by The DiBella Family after the death of their then daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, at age 24.
Another of Mary’s interests, web site design and development, keeps her busy and active. Among her award-winning sites is one dedicated to her mother, Helen Burrey Brown, who served in France in World War 1 as a Red Cross nurse. That site is now part of the Smithsonian Institute’s Great War materials. She has her own domain on the internet — www.murphsplace.com. She also runs popular web sites for the actors Russell Crowe, who has become a good friend, and Clive Owen, as well as old favorites Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Alec Guinness and Carol Lombard.
Through all her active life, Mary’s family has been her greatest joy, her mainstay and support. She and her husband, Joe, a retired Senior Editing Manager in the McGraw Hill Book Company’s College Division, live in New Jersey. Their grown children, Chris, and his wife, Elaine; Paul, and his wife, Kathy, and sons Sean and Charlie and daughter Julia; and Mary Beth, her husband Mark, and son Griffin, live close enough to be in constant contact. Mary Beth and Mark are expecting twins in July.
