{"id":43411,"date":"2020-07-02T15:27:14","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43411"},"modified":"2020-07-02T15:27:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:27:14","slug":"communities-honor-audie-murphy-a-true-blue-ne-texas-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43411","title":{"rendered":"Communities honor Audie Murphy, a true-blue NE Texas legend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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BLOGGER’S NOTE: This item was published initially on KETR.org, the website for KETR-FM, the public radio station based at Texas A&M University-Commerce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This much is likely true: When you go off to war and then distinguish yourself by becoming the most highly decorated soldier in your nation\u2019s history, communities are likely to compete for bragging rights to be known as your designated \u201chome town.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, it has been with a young Northeast Texan named Audie Murphy.<\/p>\n

It is not a\u00a0fierce<\/em>\u00a0battle between communities in Northeast Texas. It\u2019s more of a\u00a0friendly<\/em>\u00a0competition. The competitors are Greenville and Farmersville, occupying neighboring Hunt and Collin counties.<\/p>\n

The reality is that Audie Leon Murphy was born June 20, 1925 in Kingston, a Hunt County community about 10 miles north of Greenville. He would be 95 years of age. He didn\u2019t live nearly that long, dying in a plane crash in 1971 at the age of 45.<\/p>\n

Greenville has a museum that carries Murphy\u2019s name. Farmersville, though, celebrates Audie Murphy Day to commemorate his homecoming from World War II in 1945. Indeed, I have learned that Murphy used his sister Nadene Lokey\u2019s address in Farmersville as his home when he processed out of the Army at the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were living in an orphanage\u201d when Murphy came home from the Army, said Lokey, who I visited with briefly at this year\u2019s Audie Murphy Day celebration in Farmersville. Lokey said her brother got \u201ca lot of money through the sale of war bonds\u201d in his honor. \u201cHe then bought us a two-story house over on Washington Street (in Farmersville) and he came and got us out of the orphanage and moved us into the house,\u201d Lokey said.<\/p>\n

What did Murphy do to earn this competition between two cities? Oh, all he did was seemingly win the European Theater of operations by himself. Indeed, the opening line in Chapter One of the book \u201cAudie Murphy: American Soldier,\u201d by Harold Simpson, describes the diminutive warrior as \u201cthe greatest folk hero of Texas since Davy Crockett.\u201d To be mentioned in the same sentence with one of the Alamo heroes, well, let\u2019s just say that Audie Murphy is walking among some mighty tall cotton.<\/p>\n

His battlefield exploits earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. The fight for which he received the Medal of Honor resulted in him killing several German soldiers, taking others captive and saving the lives of his comrades in arms. He took control of a German machine gun and, as they say, the rest is history. He was awarded three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit and the Legion of Honor (France\u2019s highest military honor), the Silver Star, a Presidential Unit Citation \u2026 and dozens of other medals.<\/p>\n

When someone asked him why he had seized the machine gun and taken on an entire company of German infantry, he replied,\u00a0“They were killing my friends.”\u00a0<\/em>Well\u2026 there you have it.<\/p>\n

After coming home, Audie Murphy became a film actor, portraying himself in an autobiographical film, \u201cTo Hell and Back.\u201d He also struggled with what they called \u201cshell shock\u201d or \u201cbattle fatigue.\u201d He married twice and produced two children, both of whom reportedly live in California. The women he married are deceased, according to Susan Lanning, director of the Audie Murphy\/American Cotton Museum in Greenville. Murphy also became a singer, a songwriter and a poet.<\/p>\n

None of Murphy\u2019s emotional troubles dampened the communities\u2019 efforts to claim him as their own, according to Jim Foy, a semi-retired computer software sales professional who helps keep Murphy\u2019s legacy alive in Farmersville.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Farmersville, Texas\u2019 had been inscribed on his dog tags,\u201d said Foy, adding that was just one indicator that Murphy considered Farmersville to be his hometown.<\/p>\n

Farmersville stages an annual Audie Murphy Day every June 15 to commemorate the war hero\u2019s return home from World War II. The city had a \u201csmall event\u201d this year under the gazebo on the downtown square, Foy noted, explaining that the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the city\u2019s usual blowout in Murphy\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s celebration marked the 75th year since Murphy came home from the war. \u201cAudie landed in Houston in 1945,\u201d Foy explained, \u201cthen he flew to San Antonio, where they had the biggest parade they\u2019ve ever had to honor his return. Then he drove to Farmersville, where they had a huge event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foy acknowledges that Greenville has claimed Murphy, too, adding that \u201cthey have a real nice museum over there. He was born in Kingston, moved to Celeste for a time. He moved around quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farmersville also has a small museum full of \u201cWorld War II memorabilia and other artifacts from Murphy\u2019s life,\u201d said Foy. The museum usually is open the first Saturday each month but has been closed since the coronavirus pandemic broke out. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to get it open again soon,\u201d Foy said.<\/p>\n

Foy calls the rivalry over Murphy\u2019s legacy as \u201cfriendly. We haven\u2019t had any fist fights \u2026 yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanning sees the \u201crivalry,\u201d such as it is, a bit differently from Foy \u2026 no surprise there. Lanning said Murphy lived briefly in Kingston, briefly in Greenville but spent most of his formative years in Celeste. \u201cHis parents were sharecroppers,\u201d Lanning said, \u201cand they were quite poor. They moved around a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanning also noted that Murphy hated his first name and went by his middle name, Leon, as a boy. His military service more or less forced him to use his first name, Lanning said, which would draw puzzled looks from his friends back home, she said, many of whom had never heard the name \u201cAudie\u201d when referring to their old pal.<\/p>\n

She said that Murphy \u201cdidn\u2019t live in Farmersville but would visit his sister (Nadene) there. So, my guess is that Celeste can make more of a claim to Audie than either Farmersville or Greenville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanning prefers to suggest that since Murphy was born and came of age in Hunt County, that he is a\u00a0Hunt County<\/em>\u00a0favorite son and doesn\u2019t just belong to one community. She did note that Greenville had a \u201cbig parade for him when he came home\u201d from World War II, just as Farmersville did.<\/p>\n

Murphy\u2019s schooling ended in the fifth grade, Lanning said. His lack of formal education did not deter Murphy from developing a significant social conscience. Lanning said that Murphy\u2019s struggle with PTSD after World War II prompted him to talk openly about it. \u201cHe was one of the first GIs to talk about\u201d the stress of combat, she said. Lanning said Murphy often spoke to veterans\u2019 groups and visited vets in Veterans Administration hospitals to talk about what was known then as \u201cbattle fatigue,\u201d Lanning said.<\/p>\n

Even though he appeared in about 40 films, mostly under contract with Universal Studios, Murphy\u2019s fortunes \u201cwent up and down,\u201d Lanning said. \u201cThey even made a \u2018GI Joe\u2019 doll\u201d in Murphy\u2019s likeness, according to Lanning.<\/p>\n

And so \u2026 Audie Leon Murphy\u2019s legacy and memory live on, likely for at least as long as there are those around who honor the exploits of a hero who \u2013 just as heroes tend to do \u2013 dismisses what he did as heroic. As Murphy himself once said,\u00a0\u201cThe true heroes, the real heroes, are the boys who fought and died, and never will come home.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Audie Murphy\u2019s fellow Northeast Texans surely would disagree.<\/p>\n\n

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BLOGGER’S NOTE: This item was published initially on KETR.org, the website for KETR-FM, the public radio station based at Texas A&M University-Commerce. This much is likely true: When you go off to war and then distinguish yourself by becoming the most highly decorated soldier in your nation\u2019s history, communities are likely to compete for bragging … Continue reading Communities honor Audie Murphy, a true-blue NE Texas legend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[503,2977,3764,5302],"class_list":["post-43411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-military-news","tag-audie-murphy","tag-medal-of-honor","tag-ptsd","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43413,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43411\/revisions\/43413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}