Doris Murdock

The Marsh family moved to Redlands, California, when Doris was 6 years old when her father took up a position as Professor of Physics at the recently created Redlands College (now University of Redlands). He later became Dean of Men and served as interim President.

She graduated from Redlands High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Redlands College, one of the first women to do so. She then earned a master’s in Library Science from the University of Illinois.

Returning to Redlands, she worked first in the San Bernardino Public Library and then in the A. K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands. In 1931, she married Glenn Murdock, a classmate at Redlands College

Doris and Glenn took great pleasure in working with architect Herbert Powell to build a small house on a hill above Redlands, doing painting and other finish work themselves. Just as the house was completed, they had a son, Gordon, and WWII broke out, causing Glenn to enlist in the Navy. Doris and Gordon then moved in with her parents at 920 Campus Ave. for the duration of the war.

After the war, Doris and Gordon joined Glenn in Honolulu for15 months before returning to the mainland. Glenn soon found a job as Superintendent of the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District near San Diego and the family moved once again, eventually buying a house on Grossmont hill east of La Mesa where Doris and Glenn developed a beautiful garden with the advice of landscape architect Roland Hoyt. Once Gordon left for college in 1960, Doris resumed her library career at San Diego State College (now SD State University) as a cataloger and later as head of the Catalog Department.

In 1988, after Doris’ eyesight began to fail and Glenn needed several surgeries, they left their much-loved hillside Grossmont home for Fredericka Manor in Chula Vista, where she lived until her death, February 21, 2014.

Memorial gifts to University of Redlands

or A.K.Smiley Public Library in Redlands, California http://www.akspl.org/contribute/.