Who Was Mike Murphy?
To read about Mike's story, click on the photo above.
Source: Lt. Michael P. Murphy Memorial SCholarship Foundation
Mike asked for your Purple Heart photo prior to going through Hell Week. What did that mean to you?
If you saw “Murph The Protector” I said that it was a surprise. I wasn’t quite sure what Michael wanted. He knew that there was a photo of me sitting in a hospital bed with a General pinning the Purple Heart on me, and he asked if I still had it, and I said “Yes.”
I told him that my mother, his grandma, made a bunch of copies that I kept in a safe deposit box. He said, “Could you send me one?” And that’s when I had asked him what he wanted it for, and he said “Dad, if you got what you got through, I can get through Hell Week. I want to have it with me so that when things look like they’re getting tough I can look at it and know, if my dad could get through that, I can get through this.” What I thought was that it was more of a recognition of my service and my time as a combat wounded veteran, so of course I was very proud that he felt that that was important to him to hold onto in order to get through what he had to endure, which was a hell of a lot more than what I had to do.
"October 23, 2007: President George W. Bush presents the Medal of Honor to Daniel and Maureen Murphy, the parents of Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy, during a ceremony at the White House."
Photo Credit: U.S. Navy
During Hell Week, Mike had a case of cellulitis and ended up almost losing his foot. Does that dedication at all surprise you?
No, not at all. Michael always finished what he started, so that wasn’t a surprise at all. When he decided to go into the SEALs, we had made mention to him that “Michael, if you wash out we understand, it happens, it’s a very large failure rate.” And he said “That’s not going to happen Dad.” And it’s funny the way he said it, he said “I don’t want to be in jail.” And I said, "What do you mean about that?” And he said “Dad, if I wash out I’m going to end up a surface warfare officer sitting on some ship, and I’ll be the morale officer. I have no desire to be on a ship floating around on the ocean.” That’s not to put surface warfare officers down, but that wasn’t Michael, Michael wanted to be in the thick of the action. So we knew he was going to get through it, and keeping with what Marcus Luttrell made reference to as far as Navy Seals never quit.
What we were not aware of was how serious it was, like the documentary said he almost lost his foot, because he and his team during drown proof exercises. I don’t know if you know anything about the West Coast- I was not aware of it- but the currents on the west coast of the Pacific flow from south to north, so they blow up from Mexico, and San Diego bay is almost like a catch base. So the pollution that gets dumped in by Mexico winds up getting caught in the San Diego bay, and apparently Michael and his teammates, when they were getting dumped in the bay got placed in a polluted area. And they tie their legs together using bungee cords, because they’re supposed to be able to operate, if they need be, without being able to use their legs. Apparently, that scraped the skin and allowed an infection to get in and that’s how a couple of them ended up with cellulitis. And Michael was so dedicated to completing his mission that he never mentioned anything. When they finally found out what happened, he actually had to be cut out of his boots, and then he got rolled from class 235 to 236.
On the Difficulty of seal training.
The highest ranking Cadet Officer in Michael’s class was actually killed during training. Of the one-hundred and ninety-six men that started the program with Michael, only eighteen graduated- four officers, including Mike, and fourteen Enlisted Men. During Hell Week, Lieutenant Skop died when he had a pulmonary embolism during drown proof exercises. And that’s how intense the training and difficult the training is, and I think if anyone were to look, even after they become SEALs, I think that one-third of the deaths in Naval Special Warfare program are during training accidents-whether that’s a parachute that doesn’t open, or a diving problem. Two people died during training in Arizona from gunshot wounds when they were training to enter houses before they went over to Iraq. It’s an intensive and dangerous course, and when they say they are the point of the spear, they’re not kidding. That’s exactly what they are, and they train like it’s active combat, and that’s why it’s so difficult. As far as why so many wash out when you have the highest ranking cadet officer, who was a full lieutenant at twenty-nine years old, who was killed during training. It gives you some indication of how extensive and difficult the training is.
Click the photo to visit the LT Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation, and see the official Medal of Honor Citation.
How would you like to see the Lt. Mike Murphy Memorial Foundation grow in the next few years?
So we’re growing pretty well already, we are almost at three-quarters of a million dollars. Obviously I would love to see someone come up with a couple of million dollars for the foundation, that would just give us the opportunity to give out more scholarships. Right now, for 2017, we are up to twenty-four scholarships. We’ve increased the Penn State scholarship from five-thousand to twenty-five thousand, and we’ve increased the wounded warrior scholarship from five-thousand to ten-thousand. I’d love for the foundation, if we had a lot more money, to be able to expand that and be able to give a wounded warrior a free boat, but unfortunately we don’t have those kind of funds. So we are definitely growing. We started in 2006, and we grew very slowly. We had fifty-thousand in 2006, I think one-hundred-and-three thousand in 2007, and once 2010 came we grew in leaps and bounds, and now our total income is close to one-hundred and-sixty thousand dollars. About seventy percent goes back out, so only thirty percent goes into the capital to build, because our purpose is to give out scholarships, not to make money. So the more money we get, the more scholarships we can give out, which is what our ultimate goal is. And I would like to see Michael’s Foundation, since it carries his name, to be a major foundation, instead of just a local one.
Note
All of these questions were based on the film "Murph The Protector." To order and watch the film, click on the photo above.