Frances C."Fran" Calhan Murphy 1923-1998

MURPHY, CALHAN, FUHRMAN

Posted By: Merllene Andre Bendixen (email)
Date: 2/22/2012 at 22:24:57

Fran Murphy
Estherville – Services for Frances C. Murphy, 74, of Estherville, will be held Thursday, May 14 at 10:30 a.m. at the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church of Estherville with Father Tom Nash officiating. Interment will follow at the East Side Cemetery in Estherville. She died Saturday, May 9, 1998 at Lakeview Hospital, Stillwater, Minn.

Visitation will be Wednesday from 4-8 pm. at Henry-Olson-Fuhrman Funeral Home, Estherville with a parish vigil service at 7 p.m.

She was born Oct. 7, 1923 in Estherville, the daughter of George and Hildegard (Coyne) Calhan. She graduated from Gruver High School in 1940. She attended Drake University in Des Moines, doing her undergraduate and graduate work in education.

She started her teaching career in Halfa Consolidated School and continued teaching in Hansell. In 1950 she was united in marriage to Harold Murphy at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Estherville. Mr. Murphy died in 1955. She continued teaching in Sheffield and Rockford. In 1956, she returned to this area making her home with her parents while teaching in Gruver and St. Patrick’s school.

She was hired by the United States Department of Defense in 1965, to teach children of military personnel overseas. She taught for the Air Force in Japan, Turkey, Germany, Philippines and for the Navy in Cuba. She retired from overseas teaching and returned to Estherville where she taught for two years at the Estherville Middle School. She spent 45 years teaching in the classroom.

She has lived in Stillwater with her niece, Susan Fuhrman Anderson, several months a year since 1993.

She was a member of the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church of Estherville, the Legion of Mary and Altar and Rosary Society.

Survivors include three brothers, Robert Calhan of Clinton, Md.; Leo Calhan of Oak Brook, Ill.; and Jim Calhan of Los Alamitos, Calif.

She was preceded in death by her husband, her parents, one sister and one brother. (Estherville Daily News, Estherville, IA, May, 1998)