Judith Murphy; Community Leader, Prominent Volunteer

Judith Harris Murphy, widow of former UCLA Chancellor and Times Mirror Co. Chairman Franklin D. Murphy and herself a prominent community leader, died Thursday at age 80.

Murphy died at UCLA Medical Center, said her daughter Martha Crockwell.

Known as a vigorous and successful fund-raiser, Murphy lent her organizational and other volunteer talents predominantly to Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles YWCA.

In 1981, she helped establish and served as president of the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Guild, a financial support group. She was also an honorary head of the organization’s 25th anniversary fund-raising dinner to build additional Planned Parenthood clinics.

Capping her work with the YWCA of Los Angeles, Murphy joined Caroline Ahmanson in 1987 to co-found its Presidents Circle, an organization of past officers that raises money for YWCA projects.

Murphy was also active in the Junior League of Los Angeles, which gave her its Spirit of Volunteerism Award in 1989, and in the Neighborhood Youth Assn., which honored her with a dinner in 1991.

The indefatigable volunteer was frequently cited for her hands-on work in various causes, including a Bread and Roses Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1990.

Murphy and her husband, who died in 1994 at age 78, supported arts institutions in the Los Angeles area.

She helped raise money with a thieves market sponsored regularly by the UCLA Arts Council, and was honored along with her husband at a 1991 celebration in the UCLA Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden for her lifetime support of the arts.

The couple were active in the Heritage of the Music Center, a group of founders and early supporters of the Los Angeles County Music Center, and she was a key volunteer in the women’s support group, the Music Center Blue Ribbon 400.

Born in Kansas City, Mo., Judith Joyce Harris traveled east to attend Vassar College. She married Franklin Murphy on Dec. 28, 1940, in their native Kansas City a year before he earned his medical degree.

During his career in education administration, she was the hard-working first lady of two major campuses, the University of Kansas in the 1950s and UCLA in the 1960s.

Murphy is survived by three of the couple’s four children, Crockwell, Carolyn Speer and Dr. Franklin Lee Murphy, and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Joyce Dickey, died Dec. 21.

Funeral services are pending.