- April 26, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Thirty-five years ago, Bernard Murphy Jr. arrived at the city of Ormond Beach ready to serve.
He became the city's third city manager in 1986, bringing with him 20 years of experience in the field already. Being a city manager wasn't just his profession; it made him the kind of person he was, said his daughter Shannon Murphy Thornton. That is someone who was widely respected, highly principled and a leader that knew how to bridge divide.
“He was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person," Thornton said. "He was just full humor, full of stories that you might not even believe unless he had proof.”
Murphy died from congestive heart failure at the age of 80 on July 25, in Hyannis, Massachusetts. But in his wake, he left a legacy that touched 10 different cities up and down the eastern coast of the United States, including Ormond Beach, Flagler Beach and the town of Ponce Inlet.
According to his obituary, Murphy was sought after by city councils, trusted by department heads, appreciated by union leaders and celebrated by the citizens he served.
"He was the rare city manager who could nearly square the circle: providing excellent city services, while keeping taxes reasonably low," the obituary reads.
Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on March 1941, Murphy was given the nickname "Bernie" by his parents Bernard Murphy Sr. and Eleanor Moshier Murphy. He was their first child, and the nickname stuck throughout his life.
A 1987 article from The Orlando Sentinel described him as "laid-back" in its headline, and noted that Murphy's smile was contagious and that he often told funny stories about things that had happened to him, and tended to crack a lot of jokes.
That's a trait that Charlie Lydecker, president and CEO of Foundation Risk Partners, remembers well. He met Murphy after both were hired in 1990 at Brown and Brown Insurance after Murphy resigned from the city of Ormond Beach to pursue a career in the private sector.
They worked next to each other, Lydecker recalled, and anytime he found himself facing a hurdle in the profession, Lydecker he could stop by Murphy's office and talk to him about it. It didn't take long for Murphy to cheer Lydecker up.
“I have lots of memories of hysterically laughing with him, not taking myself so seriously, leaving feeling a lot better,” Lydecker recalled with a laugh. “He just always cracked me up, you know?”
J. Hyatt Brown, local philanthropist and chairman of Brown and Brown, Inc., said he remembers Murphy as someone that was warm, friendly and full of energy.
“He had a lot of personality — a very engaging personality," Brown said. "And lots of energy, and always had lots of questions because he was always thinking of new ideas," Brown said.
While he was a city manager in Ormond for those three and half years, several memorable issues were going on in the city. According to articles by The Orlando Sentinel, he was at the helm of Ormond Beach when the city joined Daytona Beach and Port Orange to create the Halifax Regional Water Supply Authority to supply untreated water to their cities in a year where underground water contamination was a public concern.
In his first few months on the job, he split police and fire into two separate departments. They were formerly under the city's Department of Public Safety. In the latter half of his time in the city, Ormond Beach was also getting a new city hall. Ways to save Hotel Ormond made headlines as condos, now known as Ormond Heritage, were proposed.
But one memory that comes to mind for Lydecker involves Central Park. The brainchild of the city's first city manager, Gerald Althouse, Murphy also played a role in bring the park system to fruition.
Lydecker remembers that when he met Murphy and told him where he was moving to — right off Sandy Oaks Boulevard, which at the time was a "big shell pit" — Murphy told him that was a great place to live. He promised there would be a beautiful park system there within the next decade, and he was right.
“To this day, I drive by there and always think of Bernie," Lydecker said. "That was one of his lasting legacies.”
After two years in the private sector, Murphy decided to return to government. In 1992, he moved to Staunton, Virginia, where he served as its city manager for eight years before returning to Ormond Beach. In his last decade of his career, he was the town manager of Ponce Inlet, and later the interim city manager for Flagler Beach in 2006, a position he held for four years before retiring.
Afterward, he served as an emergency-preparedness consultant to the International City Managers Association, and traveled twice to India and once to Ethiopia under the sponsorship of the United States Agency for International Development. He loved to travel, his daughter said.
Despite his job, he was the "best dad," on and off the dais, Thornton said. She grew up watching him in his city council meetings and he acted like the same person she saw at home.
In the last year and a half of his life, Murphy suffered from pancreatic cancer, but kept his interests in politics and history, according to his obituary. He is survived by Thornton and her siblings Kevin Murphy, Seán Murphy, and their families. He was buried next to his second wife, Linda, in Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton, Virginia. A celebration of life is scheduled for 3 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton on Saturday, October 23.
The city of Ormond has always been blessed with good managers, said Lydecker, adding that Murphy helped put Ormond Beach on a map for the high professional standard the city would come to expect.
“He was just one of those effervescent personalities that always lit up a room," Lydecker said."...You don’t get that often in life. I would say he was one-of-a-kind.”
