HUNTINGTON BEACH : She Gave It the Old College Try--Again

Eileen Murphy today will finish what she started 57 years ago--she will receive her college degree.

Murphy, 76, fell in love with the varsity quarterback and dropped out of UCLA in 1938 during her junior year.

But her three daughters, all UCLA graduates, talked their mother into returning to school at age 74 as a way to keep her out of jail, one of them said jokingly. Murphy became active in a number of causes after her husband died in 1988 and was arrested five times for protesting U.S. military aid to El Salvador, the daughter said.

Murphy, who will receive a degree in history, chose Cal State Long Beach over UCLA because it’s an easy bus ride from her home and she would add to the pollution if she drove to Westwood.

She said schoolwork is easier the second time around and that she has received all A’s and Bs.

She did notice that students have changed a little. She saw some of them dancing on table tops at a campus snack shop.

“I was surprised, but I figured out why they were dancing when I realized that I got in the wine line instead of the coffee line,” she said.

Murphy said that today’s students are wonderful and that she has spent a lot of time studying with them.

Murphy said that when she and her husband, Bill, would talk about her going back to college, he would always ask if she would nail the degree on the wall.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” she said this week, “nail it on the wall.”

Her husband gained fame in 1935 when he quarterbacked the Bruins to a 7-6 victory over Stanford, Murphy said.

Former President Herbert Hoover, who was at the game, attributed UCLA’s victory to “the strategy of the quarterback,” Murphy said.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, Bill Murphy was principal at Hoover High School in Glendale for 17 years.

Murphy said that now that she has completed her studies, she will devote more time to the effort to save the Bolsa Chica wetlands from residential development. Murphy is secretary of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust.

Her daughter, Florence (Flossie) Horgan, a Bolsa Chica ally, said her mother is “one of the most courageous, intelligent and risk-taking people there is. She is a role model to all of us.”

Another daughter, Victoria Morland of Cardiff, rejoiced that her mother will receive “what she inspired all the rest of us to get, a college degree. And those of us whose graduations she has attended over the years, her children and grandchildren, will take off from work and school . . . so we can be there.

“I wonder if she felt at ours (graduations) the tremendous pride we’ll feel at hers. I think I’ll ask her during the party.”