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Return of Tommy Murphy stops traffic in Cincinnati area
The return of Greencastle native Thomas Jesse “Tommy” Murphy, killed during World War II and missing since November 1943, literally stopped traffic Friday in Cincinnati.
The long-lost remains of Murphy, contained in a flag-draped coffin and accompanied by U.S. Navy personnel, were flown into the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport for an emotional 40-mile, red-white-and-blue procession to Hamilton, Ohio.
Police actually closed the interstate to allow the procession safe passage on its way to Zettler Funeral Home in Hamilton, where visitation is scheduled Sunday, followed by funeral services and burial in an 11 a.m. ceremony on Memorial Day.
“They closed the interstate for this,” his niece, Chantel Oliver of Fairfield, Ohio, told the Banner Graphic. “We had the interstate to ourselves. It was magical and powerful and very poignant.”
She described “many police escorts and the Patriot Guard, 25 or more on motorcycles, stretched in front of us half a mile ... many with 3 x 5 foot flags,” plus police on bikes with the firemen on aerial ladders with a flag near the funeral home.
As the procession rolled into Hamilton, several people lined the streets, some standing at attention, and others clutching American flags.
“It was very bittersweet, one of the saddest days ever,” Oliver added, “mainly missing our (late) dad to see this for his brother, and the best day ever (in terms of) love and support of police, Patriot Guard, strangers and friends.”
It was all a dose of reality, helping solve a 75-year mystery that even the surviving family of “Tommy” Murphy didn’t know was a mystery until his remains turned up on a distant South Pacific island. That came when a homeowner was digging footers for a carport and rusty dogtags were unearthed of another American serviceman.
Murphy’s remains were finally identified last October. Oliver, remembers the phone call.
“Are these people for real?,” she told reporters she thought initially. “How do you know this is not fake? How do you know this is really happening? Then when I saw the Navy in my sister’s living room, I realized this was happening.”
Pharmacist mate second class (PhM2c) Murphy’s remains and those of some 23 other fellow servicemen had been interred in an impromptu mass grave dug by battle-weary Marines in the hours after the bloody battle at Tarawa that claimed the 22-year-old Greencastle native’s life on Nov. 20, 1943.
“You wonder what was going through his mind,” Chantel Oliver told WCPO, Channel 9, Cincinnati. “He signed up for four years and 17 months later ... You know, it happened to a lot of them.”
Murphy’s two surviving nieces, Chantel Oliver and Nancy Oliver Huentelman, of Fairfield, Ohio, and two nephews, Jim Oliver and John Oliver (sons of Tommy’s brother Les Oliver) weren’t even born yet when Tommy met his way-too-soon demise.
Chantel and her sister had always assumed their uncle was buried somewhere in Greencastle, not forgotten in a “lost cemetery” in the Pacific.
He was the son of Jesse L. Murphy and Anna Oliver Murphy of Greencastle, but by then his mother had been remarried to a man named Russell Vanlandingham and Thomas was living with them in Greencastle when Murphy enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserves on April 16, 1942.
Thomas Jesse Murphy will be interred in Greenwood Cemetery at Hamilton, next to his brother, Lester Oliver, formerly of Greencastle, along with his sister-in-law, Juanita (Ison) Oliver, also from Greencastle.
“We have closure now that we have his remains brought back and laid to rest next to my grandfather,” Oliver told WLWT, Channel 5 TV, Cincinnati.