Howard Emmett Murphy

Howard E. Murphy of Priest River, beloved husband, father, father in law, brother, grandfather and friend, passed away on October 5, 2007 in Sandpoint, Idaho, at the age of 79. A memorial service for Howard will be held at the Coffelt Funeral Chapel on 109 N. Division Ave. in Sandpoint, Idaho at 11:30 on November 17, 2007, with lunch and friendship to follow at 1:00 at the Sandpoint Community Center. Everyone who wishes to share memories of Howard is welcome to speak at the memorial. Howard “Bud” Murphy was born in Borger, Texas on October 16, 1927, the son of oil field worker, Howard Emmett Murphy, Sr. and Beulah A. Murphy, of Bent County and Cloudchief, Oklahoma. His family experienced the “black blizzards” of Skelly Town, Texas in 1935, and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1938. Howard experienced both great joy and tragedy during his life. He married Kathleen Susanna Gilpin on February 4, 1948 in New Mexico. Kathleen and Howard’s first son, James Howard Murphy, was born in 1948, suffered mental retardation and cerebral palsy, and died on May 21, 1965. His daughter, Sharan Ann Gibson, and son, Patrick Edward Murphy, were born in 1951 and 1957. Kathleen and Howard moved to the Bay Area of Northern California in 1955, and to Priest River following retirement in 1990. Kathleen and Howard both settled well into life in northern Idaho, enjoying new friends and their forested “ranch,” with tractors, pond, stream, raspberries, and turkeys. Howard and Kathleen both found great joy in their friendship with David Solis and his family during this time, as well as enduring connections to the Quaker Friends community of Sandpoint and Judith and Jim Clarke. Following the death of Kathleen to breast cancer in 2003 after 55 years of marriage, Howard married Ann Lafferty Pfeiffer in 2004. LiAnn preceded Howard in death in 2005. Howard was a World War II veteran and recipient of the Victory Medal, having enlisted in the U.S. Navy as soon as he was of age and serving between 1945 and 1947. He earned a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1955, and had a distinguished, 35-year career as an electrical engineer working at Sandia Corporation in Albuquerque, Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, A.B. Dick Company, Granger Associates and Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation in Palo Alto, and E G & G Reticon in Sunnyvale, California. Howard also founded and was President of a small engineering company, IDEA, Inc., in Sunnyvale, California. During his career, he was credited with several U.S. and Canadian patents, including the “Automatic Rangefinder Electronic Circuitry.” He also wrote and published several articles, including “Monolithic Integration for a Camera Control System.“ Howard received numerous honors and awards during his career, including the President’s Award from Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. Howard held a life-long commitment to scientific inquiry and invention, and his work was important to the development of color television, the Polaroid camera, and optical recognition systems. Howard is survived by his daughter and son in law, Sharan and William Gibson, son and daughter in law, Patrick and Patricia Murphy, grandchildren, David, Leona, and Theodore Murphy, step grandchildren, Erin and Kathryn Fleming, and sisters, Julia Sellars and Mary Ellen “Tag-a-long” Hayworth. He was an exceptionally wise and gentle person, and is deeply missed by all who knew him.