Annie Laurie Murphy

Annie Laurie Holman Murphy, passed from this world to eternal life on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at the age of 97. She was born on September 10, 1909 to Oregon Fulton Holman and Agnes Bowmer Holman in Cedar Park, Texas.

She moved to San Antonio at the age of 20, during the height of the depression. Here she began her working career to help support her family during those difficult years. Ultimately, she retired in1969 from Kelly AFB, where she had worked for many years as a librarian maintaining regulations in the Supply Division.

She met Lorraine Mannery Murphy, her husband of 43 years, in 1937. She and her husband owned and dwelled in an apartment house on Locust Street for several decades. In that house, she was Mom to countless tenants, many homesick soldiers and their families, many single ladies, starting life over after divorce, and, many young people just starting an independent life. She became the Ann Landers of Locust Street, for she offered so many comforts, support, and a healthy dose of common sense advice. Some regularly ate Sunday dinner with her family and on special occasions, like Thanksgiving, her apartment was full of tenants and even neighbors, who she knew would be alone. On those special occasions, she would rise at 4:00 a.m. and cook until late afternoon preparing a feast - everything fresh and from scratch.

Former tenants maintained contact with her for years, and even decades, after they had moved on, returning to reminiscence, share memories and bear testament to the beneficial impact she had in their lives.

In 1940, she gave birth to her only child, Michael Mannery Murphy, with whom she maintained a special relationship for 67 years. She loved to travel and was able to indulge this passion by visiting Michael during his military career, visiting him in Panama and Germany, and in various states of the union. She also traveled with him throughout Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Portugal. And, she was able to spend an extended period in England, traveling through the British Isles and Ireland with her sister, Helen Beck. She hosted many bachelor dinners for her son Michael during the years of her visits to various Army posts.

She was a long-serving member of Alamo Heights Chapter of the Eastern Star and the Alamo Mission Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Magna Charta Dames.

She was prceded in death by her parents, and her siblings, Mary Frances McCardy, Owen Fulton Holman and Bobby Ray Holman.

Annie Laurie is survived by her son, Michael Mannery Murphy and her daughter-in-law, Lucia De La Garza; and by her siblings, Charlissa Naomi Cahill, of Corpus Christi, Texas; Helen Holman Beck, of Denver, Colorado; and Agnes Bowmer Moore, of Redding, California; her sister-in-law, Lucille Witten Holman, of Round Rock, Texas; and by her much loved cousin, Luman Holman and his wife, Rosemary, of Jacksonville, Texas; and her devoted caregiver of many years, Maria Guzman.