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Grandma said, ‘I thought we were all dead!’ The
bear took off squealing and Plume calmly comes
back, takes his hat off, takes his boots off, and
crawls back into bed.”
College days brought another adventure
when Murray noticed a poster about a Luge
Club being formed. Remembering back to his
childhood days of going to the movies and seeing
the bobsled team from Lake Placid with Stan
Benham win the World Championship, Murray
thought, “Wow! That looks really cool!’ Also we
went ice skating on frozen ponds with our little
American Flyer sleds, and if we could get a mom
with a pickup to haul us up Mine Rd, then we’d
ride our sleds down. At any rate, the Luge Club
being formed meant nothing, but when the first
line says ‘Luge, similar to bobsledding’—Oh
yeah!” Murray attended the meeting in 1965;
two years later, he was President of the club.
A track was built at Lolo Hot Springs, the site
of Fort Fizzle where Louis and Clark crossed
over into the Pacific Northwest. It seemed like
a good idea at the time, but the part of the
track that went over hot springs always melted.
The good part was after rigorous training, you
could refresh in the hot springs.By 1967, Murray
traveled to Austria for extended training; the
following year, the team was chosen to compete
in Grenoble, France—four men singles riders;
two women; two doubles teams. Murray was
chosen to be a single rider. Murray informs,
“Luge was introduced into the Olympics in 1964,
and the 1964 U.S. team was composed mostly
of Army guys running loose around Europe. I
represented the second U.S. luge team as a 22
year old in the 1968 Olympics.” Murray exclaims,
“You’re overwhelmed! You’ve never been there
before, so you don’t have anything to base it on.
We went for it! We had two guys on our team
who raced in 1964, one a coach; one a racer.”
After the 1968 Olympics, Murray graduated
from college in 1969, was commissioned into
the United States Army Artillery as a Second
Lieutenant, and scheduled to report for active
duty the first of October, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
He explains, “Fort Sill is the home of artillery
training for not only the U.S. military but for
half of the militaries around the world. The
Comanche County Cannon Cockers College
trains all of the free world to shoot artillery.”
Upon graduation, normally Murray would
have gone straight to Vietnam, but he got orders
to go to Germany and thought, “That’s where we
can train for sleds!” Just before Christmas 1969,
Murray was sent to Germany, and by the second
week of January, he was called to train with the
Olympic luge team in Valdora-Olang, Italy.
By October of 1970, the Army informed,
“You get to go to Vietnam.” From Fort Lewis,
the unit boarded planes at McChord Air Force
Base and flew to Anchorage, Tokyo, and then
Vietnam. Stationed with the 155 outfit, Murray
got “volunteered” for a top secret mission
as he was “unmarried with no dependents.”
Along with two other soldiers, Murray was sent
to Cambodia to become an aerial observer.
“We were assigned sectors, south, middle
and north. I got the middle section,” explains
Murray. “For about 2 months, I sat in the back
seat of an airplane putting in air strikes and a
lot of artillery where it was in range of our RVN
border Fire Support Bases. We could reach out
approximately 26 kilometers with the 175 guns.”
On December 30th, Murray receives orders
to go back to the luge team. That New Years Eve
was unforgettable! With his whole head swollen
up because mosquitoes had been eating on him
all night long, Murray boarded a little cramped
airplane at 4 AM, and flew all the way to Travis
Air Force Base in sunny California. Murray
laughs, “Due to the international dateline, guess
what? I’d been on the plane for 24 hours, but it
was still New Years Eve. By January 2, I needed
to be in New York City to catch a flight. A flight
attendant informs, ‘Tonight, you're flying to
Portland and then to Seattle until New Years
Day. The next morning you’ll fly to Pocatello,
Boise, and then into Missoula. (It was 30 below
zero when he got off the plane, still in short
sleeved khakis!) Then it’s non-stop from Seattle,
to Portland, to San Francisco, and then non-stop
from San Francisco, to New York City, to catch
a flight to Stockholm.” Once Murray arrived, he
traveled 11 hours by car north of Stockholm,
Hammarstrand not too far from the Arctic Circle.
Soon the team flew to Munich, onto
Copenhagen, Anchorage, Tokyo, and Hokkaido,
Japan for competitions in the 1972 Olympics.
Celebrations were cut short as it was back to
Vietnam for Murray. From Tokyo to a week
in Hong Kong, Murray hopped on a Cathay
Pacific flight and flew to Saigon to check in at
the Officer’s Club. Back to shooting from the
airplanes, Murray soon received a week’s pass
for a little R&R in Australia. Murray tells, “I wasn’t
scheduled to leave Vietnam until November, but
they released me early. Basically I served from
October through end of June. I never got nicked
or dinged. They shot at me, but thankfully they
missed every time.”
When the 1976 Olympics were supposed
to be in Denver, Colorado, Murray returned to
Montana, got his winter gear, and moved to
Denver. When Denver was voted out, Innsbruck,
Austria, landed the 1976 Olympics and hosted
Murray’s third Olympic experience.
From one adventure to the next, in a haunted
hotel by Georgetown, Colorado, in 1978, Murray
got married. Meeting over a shared flight,
Murray was flying home because his mother was
dying, and his new friend was heading to Dallas.
“When you get back, why don’t you come over
for some chicken and dumplings?” she invited.
That was the end of that. They married and soon
welcomed their daughter Amanda.
Just when thoughts of his Olympic endeavors
came racing across the finish line, the
organization asked, “Would you like to be the
team manager for the Olympics in Lake Placid?”
Upon attending a coaches’ conference in East
Germany, Murray picked the team to compete
for the 1980 Olympic games and completed his
assignment as manager in 1981.
As Denver became home for the Murrays,
real estate became the new career starting in
1979. Inspired by a friend, Murray tells, “When
a friend on the Olympic team started selling
real estate up in Boston, I thought, ‘Well, that’s
neat. He works when he wants to, and he makes
pretty good money.’ When I went to Denver,
the Whitmore Corporation was advertising for
agents, and I was hired. Running a project up
in Steamboat, we were to make cold calls to
get people to come and take a look. We got a
chunk of the commission if we sold anything.
Soon I was invited to work on site; in the winter,
we operated from a snow mobile—Cold! With
visitors from all over the country, we’d wine and
dine them and hopefully sell a property. That’s
how I got into real estate.”
Murray’s boss began managing deals in
a little town named Pinehurst. At the time,
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Jim Murray serving our country in Vietnam.
Jim Murray with the USA Olympic Luge Team, January1968.
p.34 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 132