Donna Murphy, 81 of Kearney passed away Monday, February 3, 2020 at Kearney regional Medical Center.
Donna was born July 11, 1938 in Dallas, TX to James C. Lee and Kathryn Shelton. She was adopted at an early age by her stepfather, Ben Latham. She grew up in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and graduated from Diamond Hill High School in Fort Worth, TX with the class of 1956.
On October 11, 1957, Donna was united in marriage to Lawrence A. Murphy in Ft. Worth, TX. To this union three children were blessed; Larry, Kelly and Scott. Donna worked for Southwestern Bell before going overseas with Lawrence. After returning to the states, Donna worked as a training supervisor for Payless Shoe Stores for 31 years before retiring in 2004.
Left to cherish her memory are her children, Larry Murphy and significant other, Melody Davis of Newport, Tennessee, Kelly Murphy and significant other, Jeff Messick of Richland, WA and Scott Murphy and wife, Cindy of Kearney; six grandchildren, Jason and Michael Jolkowski, Cody Murphy, McKenna Murphy, Riley Armes and Brett Murphy; 6 great-grandchildren, Addie Murphy, Langston Armes, Everly Armes, Michael Jolkowski, Ryan Jolkowski and Lincoln Jolkowski; and half-sister, Tammy Smith of Golden, CO; half-brothers, Steve Lee of California, Greg Lee of North Carolina, Roger Lee of California, and Scott Lee of Arizona; as well as several nieces, nephews and extended family and friends.
Donna is preceded in death by her parents; husband; half-sister, Shirlene White; and half-brother, Bill Latham.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kearney Hub 3 Nov 2018
Kearney woman's lifelong search for her father reveals she has four brothers.
Donna Murphy of Kearney spent 73 years wondering what happened to her father. After a lifelong search, she has discovered a new family.
When Murphy, now 80, was 2 years old in Dallas, her father, James C. Lee, left his wife, Kathryn.
“He just disappeared ...,” Murphy said.
Kathryn later remarried Ben Latham and he treated Murphy as his own, she said.
Murphy, who grew up in Fort Worth, had three younger half siblings — Shirlene, Billy and Tammy. But she felt sad not knowing her biological father.
“I couldn’t figure it out. Why? Why anybody could leave their child and never come back. I didn’t understand it, and I always felt like an outcast,” Murphy said of being six years older than her next oldest sister, eight or nine years older than her brother and 20 years older than her youngest sister.
The search for Murphy’s father
Kathryn didn’t talk much about Murphy’s father and divulged little information about him. But Murphy continued to wonder, and she searched for him most of her life with little success.
As a 5-year-old preparing to go to school for the first time, she took a peak at her birth certificate. Murphy, who already could read, learned at that moment that she was born with a different last name, Lee.
Murphy said she kept her discovery secret for a couple of years.
At about age 7, she asked her mother about her biological father. But Kathryn shared only that her father was a firefighter for the Dallas Fire Department.
Kathryn told Murphy she didn’t want to hurt her husband Ben’s feelings by talking about Murphy’s biological father.
At 20, Murphy married a military man, Lawrence (Mark) Murphy. As they moved to Italy and back to the United States, setting their roots in Grand Island, Murphy searched for her father but without much luck.
She hired experts to find her father.
One company guaranteed they could find anybody. Murphy paid them $500, which was a lot of money for the Murphys in the ’70s.
“They never found diddly squat,” she said.
Then she hired a private detective, who “didn’t come up with anything,” Murphy added.
Another door slammed in Murphy’s face when she contacted her parents’ divorce lawyer and had hoped to get information from their records. Murphy said she didn’t even know dates of her parents’ marriage or divorce.
But when Murphy called, she learned that six months earlier the lawyer’s office burned down, losing its files with it.
“It just seemed like every time I turned a corner, I tried in my meager way, but it just didn’t work,” she said.
In 2016, her luck began to change.
Murphy’s friend, Shirley LaFramboise of Arizona, found a death record on ancestry.com for Murphy’s paternal half-sister, Judy. From there, LaFramboise was able to retrieve a phone number for Murphy’s niece.
Murphy said she took a big gulp and called the phone number.
Her niece’s husband answered the phone and Murphy told him her story.
“Of course, he was a little leery of everything,” Murphy said. But he said he would pass the message to his wife and ask her to call Murphy’s sister-in-law.
Murphy’s niece did just that, and soon after, Murphy’s 75-year-old half-brother Steve Lee called Murphy.
From their conversations, Murphy learned that she had three other half-brothers - Roger, 74; Scott, 72; and Greg, 70.
She also had a sister, Judy, whose death certificate had lead Murphy to her family. Her father also had died before she could meet him. He died at 66 years old in 1978 playing cards across the table from Steve.
Murphy learned that Judy was born 9-1/2 months after her biological father had left her and her mother.
Her biological father and his new wife, Marcelete, started their family in Brownwood, Texas, 180 miles southwest of Dallas. After Steve was born, they moved to Portland, Ore., where the other three boys were born. The family moved frequently as James acquired better chemical engineering jobs, according to Steve. They eventually ended in southern California where Steve and Roger still live.
The brothers said they had no idea they had another sister.
“Our father was very closed-mouth about his childhood and his growing up years. So we never knew anything,” said Greg, the youngest brother.
Steve said, “As we got older, we became more suspicious. It became more and more obvious that we weren’t being filled in on our ancient history.”
The day James died, Steve speculates that his father was trying to tell him about his past.
That day, Steve said, he felt he needed to spend time with his father. They ended up playing cards and as they were playing, James had a heart attack.
“It seemed to me that he was trying to tell me things he never had told me before. And I think the stress of trying to unburden himself brought his heart attack on,” Steve said.
Years later, Steve approached his uncle, Jim Maples, who was married to his mother’s sister. He asked Jim to explain his parents’ story.
“He (Jim) said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ I said I’ll be up this weekend because he lived 100 miles away,” Steve said. “And he (Jim) died the next day.”
So when Steve heard he had another sister, he was open to the idea of talking to her. Steve showed Murphy a photo of a little girl he did not know. She said it was her as a child.
Murphy shared the one photo of her father with Steve. The brothers agreed that it was their father.
Steve and Murphy then both took DNA tests and, of course, Murphy said, they were a match.
Murphy meets her brothers
Last week the Lee brothers traveled to Kearney to meet their sister for the first time.
Scott drove from Arizona, Greg flew in from North Carolina and Roger and Scott flew from California. Greg said they would have met earlier, but he was too ill with cancer to travel.
Though they never had met before, Murphy had talked on the phone with Greg and Steve for the last two years.
They said they had an instant connection when they met.
Greg said, “It’s neat to go from just having phone conversations with someone to meeting them and knowing ... that you loved them, that you were a part of their heart instantaneously.”
“We all hugged right away when they came to the door,” Murphy said. “Something about touching someone who has the same blood that I have ... I don’t know there’s something about that.”
During their days together, they played Boggle and the brothers teased their sister.
Greg told “punny” jokes, while Murphy threw sarcasm back at her brothers.
The brothers said meeting Murphy is like having back a sister. Greg said Murphy’s mannerisms and sense of humor are similar to his late sister Judy.
“When we lost Judy, it was like I lost my best friend. And to have a sister or have an idea that there’s a sister out there, and then to come and realize that her and Judy would have gotten along, loved each other,” he said. “And to have someone so much like the one we lost and to be so vibrant and such an integral part of us and our family in the first hour or minutes of our meeting, it’s pretty thrilling.”
Perhaps the most skeptical brother, Scott took to Murphy.
“I didn’t want to come up here. I thought I don’t know this woman. Why would I want to invite a new person into my life, you know?” he said.
However, Scott thought the meeting would be a good opportunity to see his brothers, and he was curious about what Greg and Steve had told him about Murphy.
“And so I came, and within 10 minutes I was really glad, and after one day, I’m going to really regret leaving,” he said. “She’s a spectacular lady.”
The Lee brothers also have replaced four men lost in Murphy’s life.
She explained - her father left her, her husband and stepfather later died and her 19-year-old grandson Jason Jolkowski disappeared in 2001 when he was last seen taking out the trash outside his Omaha house.
“So, four men have disappeared, but God gave me four men back,” she said.
Murphy said meeting her brothers was like having a 75-year weight lifted off her shoulders. She slept well for the first time in years, she said.
“It was such a relief,” she choked up. “It just was like, I don’t know, I just finally found my family.”
[email protected]
Donna was born July 11, 1938 in Dallas, TX to James C. Lee and Kathryn Shelton. She was adopted at an early age by her stepfather, Ben Latham. She grew up in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and graduated from Diamond Hill High School in Fort Worth, TX with the class of 1956.
On October 11, 1957, Donna was united in marriage to Lawrence A. Murphy in Ft. Worth, TX. To this union three children were blessed; Larry, Kelly and Scott. Donna worked for Southwestern Bell before going overseas with Lawrence. After returning to the states, Donna worked as a training supervisor for Payless Shoe Stores for 31 years before retiring in 2004.
Left to cherish her memory are her children, Larry Murphy and significant other, Melody Davis of Newport, Tennessee, Kelly Murphy and significant other, Jeff Messick of Richland, WA and Scott Murphy and wife, Cindy of Kearney; six grandchildren, Jason and Michael Jolkowski, Cody Murphy, McKenna Murphy, Riley Armes and Brett Murphy; 6 great-grandchildren, Addie Murphy, Langston Armes, Everly Armes, Michael Jolkowski, Ryan Jolkowski and Lincoln Jolkowski; and half-sister, Tammy Smith of Golden, CO; half-brothers, Steve Lee of California, Greg Lee of North Carolina, Roger Lee of California, and Scott Lee of Arizona; as well as several nieces, nephews and extended family and friends.
Donna is preceded in death by her parents; husband; half-sister, Shirlene White; and half-brother, Bill Latham.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kearney Hub 3 Nov 2018
Kearney woman's lifelong search for her father reveals she has four brothers.
Donna Murphy of Kearney spent 73 years wondering what happened to her father. After a lifelong search, she has discovered a new family.
When Murphy, now 80, was 2 years old in Dallas, her father, James C. Lee, left his wife, Kathryn.
“He just disappeared ...,” Murphy said.
Kathryn later remarried Ben Latham and he treated Murphy as his own, she said.
Murphy, who grew up in Fort Worth, had three younger half siblings — Shirlene, Billy and Tammy. But she felt sad not knowing her biological father.
“I couldn’t figure it out. Why? Why anybody could leave their child and never come back. I didn’t understand it, and I always felt like an outcast,” Murphy said of being six years older than her next oldest sister, eight or nine years older than her brother and 20 years older than her youngest sister.
The search for Murphy’s father
Kathryn didn’t talk much about Murphy’s father and divulged little information about him. But Murphy continued to wonder, and she searched for him most of her life with little success.
As a 5-year-old preparing to go to school for the first time, she took a peak at her birth certificate. Murphy, who already could read, learned at that moment that she was born with a different last name, Lee.
Murphy said she kept her discovery secret for a couple of years.
At about age 7, she asked her mother about her biological father. But Kathryn shared only that her father was a firefighter for the Dallas Fire Department.
Kathryn told Murphy she didn’t want to hurt her husband Ben’s feelings by talking about Murphy’s biological father.
At 20, Murphy married a military man, Lawrence (Mark) Murphy. As they moved to Italy and back to the United States, setting their roots in Grand Island, Murphy searched for her father but without much luck.
She hired experts to find her father.
One company guaranteed they could find anybody. Murphy paid them $500, which was a lot of money for the Murphys in the ’70s.
“They never found diddly squat,” she said.
Then she hired a private detective, who “didn’t come up with anything,” Murphy added.
Another door slammed in Murphy’s face when she contacted her parents’ divorce lawyer and had hoped to get information from their records. Murphy said she didn’t even know dates of her parents’ marriage or divorce.
But when Murphy called, she learned that six months earlier the lawyer’s office burned down, losing its files with it.
“It just seemed like every time I turned a corner, I tried in my meager way, but it just didn’t work,” she said.
In 2016, her luck began to change.
Murphy’s friend, Shirley LaFramboise of Arizona, found a death record on ancestry.com for Murphy’s paternal half-sister, Judy. From there, LaFramboise was able to retrieve a phone number for Murphy’s niece.
Murphy said she took a big gulp and called the phone number.
Her niece’s husband answered the phone and Murphy told him her story.
“Of course, he was a little leery of everything,” Murphy said. But he said he would pass the message to his wife and ask her to call Murphy’s sister-in-law.
Murphy’s niece did just that, and soon after, Murphy’s 75-year-old half-brother Steve Lee called Murphy.
From their conversations, Murphy learned that she had three other half-brothers - Roger, 74; Scott, 72; and Greg, 70.
She also had a sister, Judy, whose death certificate had lead Murphy to her family. Her father also had died before she could meet him. He died at 66 years old in 1978 playing cards across the table from Steve.
Murphy learned that Judy was born 9-1/2 months after her biological father had left her and her mother.
Her biological father and his new wife, Marcelete, started their family in Brownwood, Texas, 180 miles southwest of Dallas. After Steve was born, they moved to Portland, Ore., where the other three boys were born. The family moved frequently as James acquired better chemical engineering jobs, according to Steve. They eventually ended in southern California where Steve and Roger still live.
The brothers said they had no idea they had another sister.
“Our father was very closed-mouth about his childhood and his growing up years. So we never knew anything,” said Greg, the youngest brother.
Steve said, “As we got older, we became more suspicious. It became more and more obvious that we weren’t being filled in on our ancient history.”
The day James died, Steve speculates that his father was trying to tell him about his past.
That day, Steve said, he felt he needed to spend time with his father. They ended up playing cards and as they were playing, James had a heart attack.
“It seemed to me that he was trying to tell me things he never had told me before. And I think the stress of trying to unburden himself brought his heart attack on,” Steve said.
Years later, Steve approached his uncle, Jim Maples, who was married to his mother’s sister. He asked Jim to explain his parents’ story.
“He (Jim) said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ I said I’ll be up this weekend because he lived 100 miles away,” Steve said. “And he (Jim) died the next day.”
So when Steve heard he had another sister, he was open to the idea of talking to her. Steve showed Murphy a photo of a little girl he did not know. She said it was her as a child.
Murphy shared the one photo of her father with Steve. The brothers agreed that it was their father.
Steve and Murphy then both took DNA tests and, of course, Murphy said, they were a match.
Murphy meets her brothers
Last week the Lee brothers traveled to Kearney to meet their sister for the first time.
Scott drove from Arizona, Greg flew in from North Carolina and Roger and Scott flew from California. Greg said they would have met earlier, but he was too ill with cancer to travel.
Though they never had met before, Murphy had talked on the phone with Greg and Steve for the last two years.
They said they had an instant connection when they met.
Greg said, “It’s neat to go from just having phone conversations with someone to meeting them and knowing ... that you loved them, that you were a part of their heart instantaneously.”
“We all hugged right away when they came to the door,” Murphy said. “Something about touching someone who has the same blood that I have ... I don’t know there’s something about that.”
During their days together, they played Boggle and the brothers teased their sister.
Greg told “punny” jokes, while Murphy threw sarcasm back at her brothers.
The brothers said meeting Murphy is like having back a sister. Greg said Murphy’s mannerisms and sense of humor are similar to his late sister Judy.
“When we lost Judy, it was like I lost my best friend. And to have a sister or have an idea that there’s a sister out there, and then to come and realize that her and Judy would have gotten along, loved each other,” he said. “And to have someone so much like the one we lost and to be so vibrant and such an integral part of us and our family in the first hour or minutes of our meeting, it’s pretty thrilling.”
Perhaps the most skeptical brother, Scott took to Murphy.
“I didn’t want to come up here. I thought I don’t know this woman. Why would I want to invite a new person into my life, you know?” he said.
However, Scott thought the meeting would be a good opportunity to see his brothers, and he was curious about what Greg and Steve had told him about Murphy.
“And so I came, and within 10 minutes I was really glad, and after one day, I’m going to really regret leaving,” he said. “She’s a spectacular lady.”
The Lee brothers also have replaced four men lost in Murphy’s life.
She explained - her father left her, her husband and stepfather later died and her 19-year-old grandson Jason Jolkowski disappeared in 2001 when he was last seen taking out the trash outside his Omaha house.
“So, four men have disappeared, but God gave me four men back,” she said.
Murphy said meeting her brothers was like having a 75-year weight lifted off her shoulders. She slept well for the first time in years, she said.
“It was such a relief,” she choked up. “It just was like, I don’t know, I just finally found my family.”
[email protected]
Donna Murphy, 81 of Kearney passed away Monday, February 3, 2020 at Kearney regional Medical Center.
Donna was born July 11, 1938 in Dallas, TX to James C. Lee and Kathryn Shelton. She was adopted at an early age by her stepfather, Ben Latham. She grew up in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and graduated from Diamond Hill High School in Fort Worth, TX with the class of 1956.
On October 11, 1957, Donna was united in marriage to Lawrence A. Murphy in Ft. Worth, TX. To this union three children were blessed; Larry, Kelly and Scott. Donna worked for Southwestern Bell before going overseas with Lawrence. After returning to the states, Donna worked as a training supervisor for Payless Shoe Stores for 31 years before retiring in 2004.
Left to cherish her memory are her children, Larry Murphy and significant other, Melody Davis of Newport, Tennessee, Kelly Murphy and significant other, Jeff Messick of Richland, WA and Scott Murphy and wife, Cindy of Kearney; six grandchildren, Jason and Michael Jolkowski, Cody Murphy, McKenna Murphy, Riley Armes and Brett Murphy; 6 great-grandchildren, Addie Murphy, Langston Armes, Everly Armes, Michael Jolkowski, Ryan Jolkowski and Lincoln Jolkowski; and half-sister, Tammy Smith of Golden, CO; half-brothers, Steve Lee of California, Greg Lee of North Carolina, Roger Lee of California, and Scott Lee of Arizona; as well as several nieces, nephews and extended family and friends.
Donna is preceded in death by her parents; husband; half-sister, Shirlene White; and half-brother, Bill Latham.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kearney Hub 3 Nov 2018
Kearney woman's lifelong search for her father reveals she has four brothers.
Donna Murphy of Kearney spent 73 years wondering what happened to her father. After a lifelong search, she has discovered a new family.
When Murphy, now 80, was 2 years old in Dallas, her father, James C. Lee, left his wife, Kathryn.
“He just disappeared ...,” Murphy said.
Kathryn later remarried Ben Latham and he treated Murphy as his own, she said.
Murphy, who grew up in Fort Worth, had three younger half siblings — Shirlene, Billy and Tammy. But she felt sad not knowing her biological father.
“I couldn’t figure it out. Why? Why anybody could leave their child and never come back. I didn’t understand it, and I always felt like an outcast,” Murphy said of being six years older than her next oldest sister, eight or nine years older than her brother and 20 years older than her youngest sister.
The search for Murphy’s father
Kathryn didn’t talk much about Murphy’s father and divulged little information about him. But Murphy continued to wonder, and she searched for him most of her life with little success.
As a 5-year-old preparing to go to school for the first time, she took a peak at her birth certificate. Murphy, who already could read, learned at that moment that she was born with a different last name, Lee.
Murphy said she kept her discovery secret for a couple of years.
At about age 7, she asked her mother about her biological father. But Kathryn shared only that her father was a firefighter for the Dallas Fire Department.
Kathryn told Murphy she didn’t want to hurt her husband Ben’s feelings by talking about Murphy’s biological father.
At 20, Murphy married a military man, Lawrence (Mark) Murphy. As they moved to Italy and back to the United States, setting their roots in Grand Island, Murphy searched for her father but without much luck.
She hired experts to find her father.
One company guaranteed they could find anybody. Murphy paid them $500, which was a lot of money for the Murphys in the ’70s.
“They never found diddly squat,” she said.
Then she hired a private detective, who “didn’t come up with anything,” Murphy added.
Another door slammed in Murphy’s face when she contacted her parents’ divorce lawyer and had hoped to get information from their records. Murphy said she didn’t even know dates of her parents’ marriage or divorce.
But when Murphy called, she learned that six months earlier the lawyer’s office burned down, losing its files with it.
“It just seemed like every time I turned a corner, I tried in my meager way, but it just didn’t work,” she said.
In 2016, her luck began to change.
Murphy’s friend, Shirley LaFramboise of Arizona, found a death record on ancestry.com for Murphy’s paternal half-sister, Judy. From there, LaFramboise was able to retrieve a phone number for Murphy’s niece.
Murphy said she took a big gulp and called the phone number.
Her niece’s husband answered the phone and Murphy told him her story.
“Of course, he was a little leery of everything,” Murphy said. But he said he would pass the message to his wife and ask her to call Murphy’s sister-in-law.
Murphy’s niece did just that, and soon after, Murphy’s 75-year-old half-brother Steve Lee called Murphy.
From their conversations, Murphy learned that she had three other half-brothers - Roger, 74; Scott, 72; and Greg, 70.
She also had a sister, Judy, whose death certificate had lead Murphy to her family. Her father also had died before she could meet him. He died at 66 years old in 1978 playing cards across the table from Steve.
Murphy learned that Judy was born 9-1/2 months after her biological father had left her and her mother.
Her biological father and his new wife, Marcelete, started their family in Brownwood, Texas, 180 miles southwest of Dallas. After Steve was born, they moved to Portland, Ore., where the other three boys were born. The family moved frequently as James acquired better chemical engineering jobs, according to Steve. They eventually ended in southern California where Steve and Roger still live.
The brothers said they had no idea they had another sister.
“Our father was very closed-mouth about his childhood and his growing up years. So we never knew anything,” said Greg, the youngest brother.
Steve said, “As we got older, we became more suspicious. It became more and more obvious that we weren’t being filled in on our ancient history.”
The day James died, Steve speculates that his father was trying to tell him about his past.
That day, Steve said, he felt he needed to spend time with his father. They ended up playing cards and as they were playing, James had a heart attack.
“It seemed to me that he was trying to tell me things he never had told me before. And I think the stress of trying to unburden himself brought his heart attack on,” Steve said.
Years later, Steve approached his uncle, Jim Maples, who was married to his mother’s sister. He asked Jim to explain his parents’ story.
“He (Jim) said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ I said I’ll be up this weekend because he lived 100 miles away,” Steve said. “And he (Jim) died the next day.”
So when Steve heard he had another sister, he was open to the idea of talking to her. Steve showed Murphy a photo of a little girl he did not know. She said it was her as a child.
Murphy shared the one photo of her father with Steve. The brothers agreed that it was their father.
Steve and Murphy then both took DNA tests and, of course, Murphy said, they were a match.
Murphy meets her brothers
Last week the Lee brothers traveled to Kearney to meet their sister for the first time.
Scott drove from Arizona, Greg flew in from North Carolina and Roger and Scott flew from California. Greg said they would have met earlier, but he was too ill with cancer to travel.
Though they never had met before, Murphy had talked on the phone with Greg and Steve for the last two years.
They said they had an instant connection when they met.
Greg said, “It’s neat to go from just having phone conversations with someone to meeting them and knowing ... that you loved them, that you were a part of their heart instantaneously.”
“We all hugged right away when they came to the door,” Murphy said. “Something about touching someone who has the same blood that I have ... I don’t know there’s something about that.”
During their days together, they played Boggle and the brothers teased their sister.
Greg told “punny” jokes, while Murphy threw sarcasm back at her brothers.
The brothers said meeting Murphy is like having back a sister. Greg said Murphy’s mannerisms and sense of humor are similar to his late sister Judy.
“When we lost Judy, it was like I lost my best friend. And to have a sister or have an idea that there’s a sister out there, and then to come and realize that her and Judy would have gotten along, loved each other,” he said. “And to have someone so much like the one we lost and to be so vibrant and such an integral part of us and our family in the first hour or minutes of our meeting, it’s pretty thrilling.”
Perhaps the most skeptical brother, Scott took to Murphy.
“I didn’t want to come up here. I thought I don’t know this woman. Why would I want to invite a new person into my life, you know?” he said.
However, Scott thought the meeting would be a good opportunity to see his brothers, and he was curious about what Greg and Steve had told him about Murphy.
“And so I came, and within 10 minutes I was really glad, and after one day, I’m going to really regret leaving,” he said. “She’s a spectacular lady.”
The Lee brothers also have replaced four men lost in Murphy’s life.
She explained - her father left her, her husband and stepfather later died and her 19-year-old grandson Jason Jolkowski disappeared in 2001 when he was last seen taking out the trash outside his Omaha house.
“So, four men have disappeared, but God gave me four men back,” she said.
Murphy said meeting her brothers was like having a 75-year weight lifted off her shoulders. She slept well for the first time in years, she said.
“It was such a relief,” she choked up. “It just was like, I don’t know, I just finally found my family.”
[email protected]
Donna was born July 11, 1938 in Dallas, TX to James C. Lee and Kathryn Shelton. She was adopted at an early age by her stepfather, Ben Latham. She grew up in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and graduated from Diamond Hill High School in Fort Worth, TX with the class of 1956.
On October 11, 1957, Donna was united in marriage to Lawrence A. Murphy in Ft. Worth, TX. To this union three children were blessed; Larry, Kelly and Scott. Donna worked for Southwestern Bell before going overseas with Lawrence. After returning to the states, Donna worked as a training supervisor for Payless Shoe Stores for 31 years before retiring in 2004.
Left to cherish her memory are her children, Larry Murphy and significant other, Melody Davis of Newport, Tennessee, Kelly Murphy and significant other, Jeff Messick of Richland, WA and Scott Murphy and wife, Cindy of Kearney; six grandchildren, Jason and Michael Jolkowski, Cody Murphy, McKenna Murphy, Riley Armes and Brett Murphy; 6 great-grandchildren, Addie Murphy, Langston Armes, Everly Armes, Michael Jolkowski, Ryan Jolkowski and Lincoln Jolkowski; and half-sister, Tammy Smith of Golden, CO; half-brothers, Steve Lee of California, Greg Lee of North Carolina, Roger Lee of California, and Scott Lee of Arizona; as well as several nieces, nephews and extended family and friends.
Donna is preceded in death by her parents; husband; half-sister, Shirlene White; and half-brother, Bill Latham.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kearney Hub 3 Nov 2018
Kearney woman's lifelong search for her father reveals she has four brothers.
Donna Murphy of Kearney spent 73 years wondering what happened to her father. After a lifelong search, she has discovered a new family.
When Murphy, now 80, was 2 years old in Dallas, her father, James C. Lee, left his wife, Kathryn.
“He just disappeared ...,” Murphy said.
Kathryn later remarried Ben Latham and he treated Murphy as his own, she said.
Murphy, who grew up in Fort Worth, had three younger half siblings — Shirlene, Billy and Tammy. But she felt sad not knowing her biological father.
“I couldn’t figure it out. Why? Why anybody could leave their child and never come back. I didn’t understand it, and I always felt like an outcast,” Murphy said of being six years older than her next oldest sister, eight or nine years older than her brother and 20 years older than her youngest sister.
The search for Murphy’s father
Kathryn didn’t talk much about Murphy’s father and divulged little information about him. But Murphy continued to wonder, and she searched for him most of her life with little success.
As a 5-year-old preparing to go to school for the first time, she took a peak at her birth certificate. Murphy, who already could read, learned at that moment that she was born with a different last name, Lee.
Murphy said she kept her discovery secret for a couple of years.
At about age 7, she asked her mother about her biological father. But Kathryn shared only that her father was a firefighter for the Dallas Fire Department.
Kathryn told Murphy she didn’t want to hurt her husband Ben’s feelings by talking about Murphy’s biological father.
At 20, Murphy married a military man, Lawrence (Mark) Murphy. As they moved to Italy and back to the United States, setting their roots in Grand Island, Murphy searched for her father but without much luck.
She hired experts to find her father.
One company guaranteed they could find anybody. Murphy paid them $500, which was a lot of money for the Murphys in the ’70s.
“They never found diddly squat,” she said.
Then she hired a private detective, who “didn’t come up with anything,” Murphy added.
Another door slammed in Murphy’s face when she contacted her parents’ divorce lawyer and had hoped to get information from their records. Murphy said she didn’t even know dates of her parents’ marriage or divorce.
But when Murphy called, she learned that six months earlier the lawyer’s office burned down, losing its files with it.
“It just seemed like every time I turned a corner, I tried in my meager way, but it just didn’t work,” she said.
In 2016, her luck began to change.
Murphy’s friend, Shirley LaFramboise of Arizona, found a death record on ancestry.com for Murphy’s paternal half-sister, Judy. From there, LaFramboise was able to retrieve a phone number for Murphy’s niece.
Murphy said she took a big gulp and called the phone number.
Her niece’s husband answered the phone and Murphy told him her story.
“Of course, he was a little leery of everything,” Murphy said. But he said he would pass the message to his wife and ask her to call Murphy’s sister-in-law.
Murphy’s niece did just that, and soon after, Murphy’s 75-year-old half-brother Steve Lee called Murphy.
From their conversations, Murphy learned that she had three other half-brothers - Roger, 74; Scott, 72; and Greg, 70.
She also had a sister, Judy, whose death certificate had lead Murphy to her family. Her father also had died before she could meet him. He died at 66 years old in 1978 playing cards across the table from Steve.
Murphy learned that Judy was born 9-1/2 months after her biological father had left her and her mother.
Her biological father and his new wife, Marcelete, started their family in Brownwood, Texas, 180 miles southwest of Dallas. After Steve was born, they moved to Portland, Ore., where the other three boys were born. The family moved frequently as James acquired better chemical engineering jobs, according to Steve. They eventually ended in southern California where Steve and Roger still live.
The brothers said they had no idea they had another sister.
“Our father was very closed-mouth about his childhood and his growing up years. So we never knew anything,” said Greg, the youngest brother.
Steve said, “As we got older, we became more suspicious. It became more and more obvious that we weren’t being filled in on our ancient history.”
The day James died, Steve speculates that his father was trying to tell him about his past.
That day, Steve said, he felt he needed to spend time with his father. They ended up playing cards and as they were playing, James had a heart attack.
“It seemed to me that he was trying to tell me things he never had told me before. And I think the stress of trying to unburden himself brought his heart attack on,” Steve said.
Years later, Steve approached his uncle, Jim Maples, who was married to his mother’s sister. He asked Jim to explain his parents’ story.
“He (Jim) said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ I said I’ll be up this weekend because he lived 100 miles away,” Steve said. “And he (Jim) died the next day.”
So when Steve heard he had another sister, he was open to the idea of talking to her. Steve showed Murphy a photo of a little girl he did not know. She said it was her as a child.
Murphy shared the one photo of her father with Steve. The brothers agreed that it was their father.
Steve and Murphy then both took DNA tests and, of course, Murphy said, they were a match.
Murphy meets her brothers
Last week the Lee brothers traveled to Kearney to meet their sister for the first time.
Scott drove from Arizona, Greg flew in from North Carolina and Roger and Scott flew from California. Greg said they would have met earlier, but he was too ill with cancer to travel.
Though they never had met before, Murphy had talked on the phone with Greg and Steve for the last two years.
They said they had an instant connection when they met.
Greg said, “It’s neat to go from just having phone conversations with someone to meeting them and knowing ... that you loved them, that you were a part of their heart instantaneously.”
“We all hugged right away when they came to the door,” Murphy said. “Something about touching someone who has the same blood that I have ... I don’t know there’s something about that.”
During their days together, they played Boggle and the brothers teased their sister.
Greg told “punny” jokes, while Murphy threw sarcasm back at her brothers.
The brothers said meeting Murphy is like having back a sister. Greg said Murphy’s mannerisms and sense of humor are similar to his late sister Judy.
“When we lost Judy, it was like I lost my best friend. And to have a sister or have an idea that there’s a sister out there, and then to come and realize that her and Judy would have gotten along, loved each other,” he said. “And to have someone so much like the one we lost and to be so vibrant and such an integral part of us and our family in the first hour or minutes of our meeting, it’s pretty thrilling.”
Perhaps the most skeptical brother, Scott took to Murphy.
“I didn’t want to come up here. I thought I don’t know this woman. Why would I want to invite a new person into my life, you know?” he said.
However, Scott thought the meeting would be a good opportunity to see his brothers, and he was curious about what Greg and Steve had told him about Murphy.
“And so I came, and within 10 minutes I was really glad, and after one day, I’m going to really regret leaving,” he said. “She’s a spectacular lady.”
The Lee brothers also have replaced four men lost in Murphy’s life.
She explained - her father left her, her husband and stepfather later died and her 19-year-old grandson Jason Jolkowski disappeared in 2001 when he was last seen taking out the trash outside his Omaha house.
“So, four men have disappeared, but God gave me four men back,” she said.
Murphy said meeting her brothers was like having a 75-year weight lifted off her shoulders. She slept well for the first time in years, she said.
“It was such a relief,” she choked up. “It just was like, I don’t know, I just finally found my family.”
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