The Indomitable Dee Murphy

Dee Murphy died on September 5, 2009 at age 89. She donated her body to the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences for medical research.

Her daughter shared, “She loved the military and military medicine that, even in death, she is still giving to them.”

We celebrate the life of Mrs. Dee Murphy.

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Recently, a military chaplain called and told me GUIDEPOSTS ought to do a story about an 85-year-old volunteer at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, named Dee Murphy.

To be honest, I was skeptical. Many people volunteer at hospitals. They do wonderful work, but we can't write about them all. The chaplain told me Dee helps the hospital distribute 3,200 copies of GUIDEPOSTS to patients each month. Well, I thought, many hospitals give GUIDEPOSTS away. Great, but not unusual.

Then he told me that since the war in Iraq started, Dee has personally visited more than 2,000 severely wounded soldiers who have been sent to the Medical Center when their injuries require treatment available nowhere else.

Six days a week, Dee, a retired real-estate broker, wakes up at 4 a.m., arrives at the hospital at 6:30, and, after reviewing patients records, hits the wards by 10. The chaplain told me that at a hospital with almost 4,500 employees and 700 doctors, Dee is perhaps the most beloved member of the staff. "They call her Miss Dee," he said. I told him I'd book a train ticket soon.

When I arrived at the hospital a few weeks later on a chilly March morning, I nearly looked right past Dee. She isn't imposing. If the soldiers she ministers to stood beside her, the top of her head would just about reach their chests.

She was wearing gray slacks, a red wool coat and black flats. Her halo of gray hair was set in a bouffant. Stuck to the lapel of her coat was a small U.S. Marines pin. "One day a group of grateful Marines pulled me into a room and said, 'We've decided to pin you. So they did. I've worn it ever since."

Dee had taken the bus that morning from her house, which is three and a half blocks from the hospital. She was using a four-pronged cane. Moving at a determined but unhurried pace, she led me to the elevator and took me to the floor where wounded soldiers are treated.

As we walked down hallways with beige walls and pale blue carpet, past nurses stations and doctors scribbling notes, she pointed out which rooms held soldiers. Each one has a small American flag wedged behind the nameplate. The rooms are usually filled with doctors and bulky arrays of blinking medical equipment.