Murray lives life full speed ahead. From
driving the farm truck over the Montana
pastures as a young lad barely able to see over
the dash, to daring the winter slopes in Austria,
to representing America in three Olympic
games, to serving our country in Vietnam, to
calling Moore home, you realize pretty quickly,
this man is one of a kind whose connections and
life experiences run deep.
With our feet on the ground, we stop in at
the local store in Derby where we chat with the
locals, have a look around, and share an ice
cream cone—strawberry cheesecake for Murray,
chocolate for me. Without the general store or
the “Derby” sign on the street out front, one
would never know the town even existed. Ever
heard of Derby? Me neither, but Murray made
the introduction, and I am the better for the visit.
Introducing so many worlds, Murray tells, “All
my life I have tried to avoid membership in the, I
coulda, I shoulda, and I wish I woulda, Club! Life
is what happens to you while your busy making
other plans.” With so many living trapped in a
life of regret, Murray has risen above the crowd
and soared. Following is his flight plan; buckle up.
The year was 1775, when William Murray
began homesteading in Martintown, Ontario,
Canada, the family history records. A direct
descendant from Castle Athol in Scotland, most
likely a Major in the Queen’s Army, William
was awarded a land grant of a thousand acres
from the Queen of England and soon became
one of the biggest dairy farmers in eastern
Ontario. Clouded by Indian treaties and colonial
skirmishes, the land grant finally gained a clear
title in the 1980s; descendants of the Murray
family still live on the land.
When William realized there wasn’t enough
land to divvy up among his four sons, Murray’s
grandfather David Plumas Murray left the
family farm when he was 16 years old. Called
Plume, he was named by two uncles who made
a lot of money in Plumas County, California
during the Gold Rush of 1870. After receiving an
inheritance of a team of horses and a thousand
dollars, Plume headed off to make his way in the
world. Hiring out his team to haul freight and
homesteaders to the next destination, Plume
worked his way from Ontario to Montana.
Finding work on the Halter Dam, the first dam
on the entire Missouri/Mississippi River basin,
he ran a ‘reno’ which was a scoop pan dragged
behind the horses to scoop up the dirt for the dam.”
Settling in Montana by the age of seventeen,
Plume earned a patent which entitled him to
320 acres of land. Working several jobs like
operating the gold dredges at night, Plume
established a foundation in Montana for the
Murray family. Along the way, he met an Irish
family with two sisters and five brothers. When
the younger sister started hauling his beans and
bacon from town with her saddle horse won
his heart, they married and celebrated 60 years
together. Murray remembers, “Her name was
Lucy. She used to show me a rock in old Ghost
Town where she and Plume had picnics. All of
her brothers, all basic cowboys, served in WWI;
one of them got gassed pretty bad.”
Plume and Lucy welcomed their first child
Raymond Plumas Murray on Armistice Day in
1918. From the back seat of a Model A on top
of the continental divide where Lewis and Clark
crossed over, Murray’s father was born. The
following day, Lucy received a telegram stating
that her brother had been killed in France. The
next day, her brother gets off of the train—it was
somebody else who had been killed! Enduring
all of this, Lucy always told, “I went to town three
months early with my other children because I
wasn’t taking any more chances.”
Murray informs, “My mother’s family came
with the railroads. My father’s family immigrated
from Canada. One grandmother was Irish; one
grandmother was Norwegian. One grandfather
was Welsh; the other one was Scotch. My dad
was born and raised in Montana; he never left.
None of them ever left.” While running the
family ranch, the Murray men also worked in
construction and in the phosphate mines.
When Murray’s father Ray came home from
WWII, he married Elsie the only daughter of
the signal maintainer for the Northern Pacific
Railway in town. Ray and Elsie met before he left
for WWII, but he didn’t come home for almost
five years! Murray shares, “My mom kept the
stacks of letters he wrote. He was shipped from
Fort Lewis near Seattle to England for the D-Day
invasion. He was an artilleryman with the
155 caliber, which coincidently is what I used
in Vietnam.” Ray returned home in January,
married Elsie, and Murray was born at the
hospital in Helena in November 1946. They were
married until Elsie passed in 1977.
The oldest of four children, 2 boys and 2
girls, James Donald Murray, whom we know as
Jim Murray, was named after James Ball, one of
the original homesteaders who knew most of
the mountain men the likes of Jim Bridger and
Charles Russell. From the little town of Avon,
Montana, consisting of 200 residents, Murray
enjoyed a good life on the family farm. Murray
smiles, “I lived near both sets of my grandparents
my entire childhood, so I got to hear all the
stories from the 1800s—you’re literally listening
to people from the horse and buggy days.”
As for Montana, Murray laughs, “Montana is
Montana. It’s 40 below in the winter and 110 in
the summer. We put up around 400 tons of hay
a year, and I started off being the pull-off driver
when I was six years old. When I was about 10 or
12, we built what is called a beaver slide, named
for the Beaver Head Valley area, to make our
haystacks. From being the hay rake, I graduated
to being the mower guy and the bull raker.”
Along with working the family farm, Murray
got a job as a gandy dancer on the railroads. He
recalls, “If you were called to fix something, then
you would ride the speeder down the track and
fix it. At the time, the rails were bolted together;
now they’re welded, so you don’t hear the
clickety-clack of the railroads anymore.”
Every memory has a story including the time
Murray was old enough to work in the phosphate
mines drilling holes and exploding dynamite
in the deep tunnels. Well, he wasn’t legally old
enough to go to work as he was only 15, but
with family connections, age was ignored.
Remembering August 10, 1964, Murray tells, “At
11:00 AM when the temperature was 80 degrees
and by 5:00 PM, there were 6 inches of snow on
the car. Of course, the family was trying to put
up hay that night, but they never got the hay up
until October.” Life was rugged but loved.
Early on, Murray’s thirst for travel was
inspired by a grandmother on Lucy’s side who
took him on adventures. In those days, women
did not travel without escorts, but she broke the
norm. When she decided she wanted to visit
some relatives in New York, Murray recounts,
“She took the stagecoach from Helena to Fort
Benton, the steamboat down to Saint Louis,
and the train to New York. Deciding she didn’t
want to go back the same way, she boards a
ship and goes clear around South America to
San Francisco and takes a stage coach from San
Francisco to Montana. Her visit took 2 years.”
The thirst for flight arrived with Chester
Taylor whom Murray’s grandmother raised
along with his dad. When Chester turned 16,
he hopped on a freight and boarded a boat
to Hawaii. When the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor, Chester was taking flying lessons, so he
wound up in the Army Air Corps during WWII.
Converting his military service into a career
with TWA and Pan American Airways, he flew
until he couldn’t fly anymore. “But one time,”
Murray continues, “He flew to Montana with a
little kid, and I thought that was the coolest thing
ever!” (Note: Murray flies young kids around the
county with the Young Eagles program.)
Back then the local school consisted of 8
grades with three rooms holding more than one
grade. Because of the war baby boom, Murray’s
class averaged between 12 and 14 kids while
most other classes held 8 students. Attending
the closest high school in Deer Lodge 30 miles
away, Murray graduated in ’64 and enrolled in
the University of Montana.
College days found Murray pursuing a
secondary education degree along with ROTC.
Attending a land grant college, Murray informs,
“Land grant colleges happened when the
railroads came west, and the government gave
them 80 miles of property on either side of the
tracks to sell land, start towns, and even establish
colleges. Most of the colleges in the northwest
were land grant colleges who had to provide two
years of ROTC to all males of military age and
provide free transportation from the college to
the closest home town on the railroad.”
In 1967, on the way to Fort Lewis for ROTC
training, Murray and a friend decided to take
the scenic route up to Vancouver along the
Canadian Highway One to Glacier. That’s the
night the bear ate the two girls, still remembered
today. Murray remembers his own bear story,
“My grandparents and I were sleeping away
on a moonlit night, when we heard something
outside like a dang pig grunting around.
Grandma said Plume climbed out of the bed
with his long john’s on and one button undone
so one cheek is hanging out, not in a hurry to
do anything. He puts his hat on, puts his boots
on, and he walks over to where the bear is trying
to push into the tent, and Plume lets fly with
his foot and smashes him right in the nose.
MEETING MURRAY continued
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Jim Murray, Pilot of the flight.
Our traffic circle from the clouds.
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p.32 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 132