Martin E. “Pat” Murphy (1893-1964) first visited Palm Beach County in 1922 as a bridge consultant hired to investigate why the Royal Park Bridge had collapsed before it had officially opened. Born to Martin E. and Phillipina Luckhaup Murphy, Pat was the third generation in his family to work in construction. The elder Martin’s father had worked in construction in New York after he emigrated from County Louth, Ireland. He later moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he operated his own construction business until his death in 1875. Pat’s dad continued to operate the construction business until shortly before his own death in 1919. Pat studied civil engineering at Ohio State University before reporting to the draft board for service during World War I. Both before and after the war, Pat worked on various large construction jobs, such as repairing ore docks on the Great Lakes and later building railroad tunnels and bridges in West Virginia. While working on one of those railroad projects, a piece of flying metal landed in one eye causing him to lose his sight in that eye.
By 1927, Pat Murphy had made West Palm Beach his home. He partnered with H. Byron Dudley who owned Dudley Brothers Company, a real estate concern, to form the Dudley-Murphy Company, a general contracting business to help meet the needs of the great boom era of the 1920s. In addition to local jobs, Dudley-Murphy worked throughout the state. Many of the jobs were in areas that law enforcement officers were few and far between. After Dudley-Murphy’s men were repeatedly held up while transporting cash for their payroll, Murphy hired a relative of John Ashley, of the by-then defunct Ashley Gang to protect the shipments. There was never a problem with the theft of payrolls again.
Friends introduced Pat Murphy to Dolores Ann Kimmel (1909-1971) of Wayland, New York, when she and her mother visited the Palm Beaches. Dolores had a degree in dietetics from Mechanics Institute in Rochester. She was immediately taken with Pat. They married in 1935 and built a house on Dyer Avenue in the El Cid neighborhood of West Palm Beach where they were neighbors to Judge Curtis and Marjorie Chillingworth. In quick succession, they had three children, John E. , Martin E. and Dolores Ann.
Dolores helped found the St. Mary’s Hospital Women’s Auxiliary in the 1950s. When not working as a volunteer and between her duties to raise a family, she was an avid bridge player, deep-sea fisher, and gardeneróshe especially loved orchids. Some of her plants are still being tended by her daughter. She also loved to cook and friends and family continue to use her recipes.
In December 1935, Pat started The Murphy Construction Company. The briefest glance through his early bid book reveals a wide variety of construction projects including groins, seawalls, bulkheads, and pilingsóthe heavy-duty construction that provides the underpinnings of every development. Murphy also built bridges, the pump house at the Lake Worth Inlet, and buildings and slips at the Port of Palm Beach. The company expanded to foundations and seawalls for private individuals such as the work done at the Palm Beach houses of the Vanderbilts, the Phippses, and the Kennedys.
During World War II, Murphy Construction continued to work on vital wartime ventures including Camp Murphy, the site in Martin County where the ultra-secret radar training was conducted by the Army’s Signal Corps; Morrison Field, which housed the Army Air Corps Transport Command which supplied troops in China, Africa, and southern Europe; and the Boca Raton Army Air Field, the only base the Army Air Corps used for radar training.
Pat Murphy was a hard-driving businessman working in a demanding profession who built a successful company where many others failed. The Murphy Construction Company continues to be a family run enterprise. Pat Murphy’s sons and grandsons have diversified the family’s business and they now have a real estate holding company, a heavy-hauling trucking business, a concrete-product factory and supplier, as well as the Cracker Boy Boatyards in Riviera Beach and Fort Pierce, in addition to the construction firm. Pat’s son John said that “our company founder’s most important legacy is the ingrained habit of driving hard to finish even the ‘impossible’ jobs on time and absolutely right. We pledge to keep it ever so. “