Mary Beth Murphy, a longtime Milwaukee journalist, died May 26 of metastatic breast cancer at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was 78.
Born in 1945 in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, to Rita and Charles Compton, she was a graduate of Mt. Vernon Township High School and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
She applied for a job at the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1969 even though the newspaper stated a man was preferred, wrote Beck Andrew Salgado of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Murphy got the job, and covered women’s issues first, then the Milwaukee County Juvenile Court System and finally religion — a beat that she would transform during her tenure. She interviewed popes, archbishops, priests, parishioners, and victims of sexual assaults by priests and other clerics. In 2003, she was inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame.
After Murphy retired from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she and her husband, Dale, moved from Milwaukee to a home they built in Sister Bay in 2000. She moved to North Carolina after her husband died.
A memorial service will be held in late June in Egg Harbor. The family suggests that friends may remember Mary Beth with donations to the Northern Sky Theater, 9058 County Road A, Fish Creek, WI 54212.
