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Childhood Memories I knew Paul from 1945 to 1953 in grade school at St. Francis Xavier's, and then from the fall of 1953 to June of 1957 in high school at New Trier. We went to the CCD classes together on Mondays. Paul was always there and very inspirational about that. During grade school I was close to the Murphys and ate dinner over there a lot. They were like a second family to me. We did a lot of playing in the woods over near their house. We would watch the troop trains come in from Chicago up to Great Lakes Naval Base at Fort Sheridan. The Murphy house was right by the train tracks. We would all go over there together and the troops would throw helmets and souvenirs from the train which was pretty neat. We played football together in grade school for St. Francis Xavier's Crusaders. We had a really good team and we were the Catholic city champions for the city of Chicago. We beat St. Ignatius from the 'Patch' down in the city, and we played the championship game at Loyola Academy which was down on the lakeshore. Jim Murphy was the halfback. Paul played up on the line and he was a pretty fierce hitter. He was also very good on defense. It was a pretty elaborate Catholic league. We were 'the guys that came in from the suburbs' to play the 'city boys'. We were considered the cream puffs, but hey, we won. I think we learned Notre Dame's 'Fighting Irish' fight song before we learned the Hail Mary and the Our Father. Fr. Shaughnessy, the Pastor of the parish, was great with us. He invited famous Notre Dame football players to come and address the young boys on the St. Francis football team. I remember we listened to George Connor, who played for the Chicago Bears professionally, and to Larry Coutre, who would later play for the Green Bay Packers. It seemed Jim Murphy had the calling to the priesthood then and there as a young boy. One of the neat things we did when we were all becoming altar boys was to stage these elaborate Masses where we would be the altar boys and Jim or Paul would be the priest. They would cut up little circles of bread as hosts. We had cassocks and surplices. I distinctly remember doing a lot of things like that. I believe Paul always had a deep sense of spirituality. Paul was a great student. In high school he and Jim were the leaders in the class. Paul had a girlfriend in high school and she was pretty neat. I was a diver in high school so my group of guys were all swimmers. I would see Paul from time to time at Church and obviously at school, but not much in the summertime. After Paul left high school we just kind of lost touch. We went our different ways and then I was shocked to hear that he had passed away. Grade school days were much more intimate with the Murphys as there were only forty or so in our class. In high school we were six hundred in a class. I knew this much. We were at a public school so we had to go to CCD every Monday night. Our priest from St. Francis would come up there and do the CCD classes. Paul was always there and he just had a great way about him. He was very friendly, 'Hi, Joe! How're you doing?' Just a great guy really. Jim was in the seminary and Paul wasn't but I'm sure they both had the same depth of spirituality and godliness. It doesn't surprise me that Paul was up daily at 5 a.m. to go to Mass at Notre Dame. That's the kind of guy Paul was. Although our grade school started at 8 a.m. it wouldn't surprise me at all if Paul was up regularly to serve the 6:30 a.m. Mass before school. |