Longtime UC Carillon Operator Dies

Margaret Murdock, a petite woman who for 60 years beat on the levers and pushed the pedals that sent music clanging out over the University of Berkeley campus, died Monday in Sacramento. She was 91.

An assistant carillonneur, she activated the mechanism that triggered Sather Tower’s bells, some of which weigh more than 4,000 pounds.

Until she retired in 1983, she played three times each week the melodies of her choice, saluting a sunny day with “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or a groundskeepers’ strike with “Work, for the Night Is Coming.”

When the tower bells were increased from 12 to 48 in 1972 making the 307-foot Sather Tower a true carillon rather than a chime, the keyboard was named in her honor.

Miss Murdock, who was born in San Francisco, earned a degree in economics at UC Berkeley in 1918, the same year that Sather Tower was dedicated. Later she earned a master’s degree and became an education credentials counselor at the school. She retired from that job in 1959.

In 1978 she became the first woman to receive a Berkeley Citation, the campus’s highest honor.

A puckish woman with a wry sense of humor, she recalled in a 1979 interview the time some tuners were adjusting the bells.

“They asked me to play something for the test so I played a doxology (“Glory to God!”). People called in wondering if the Legislature had passed the budget.”