My Ancestry

(1a) Randall Bruce Murrow

Born 13 May 1947, Alva, Woods Co., OK

Died 20 Dec 1969, near Vinita, OK

Buried in Alva, OK, Alva Municipal Cemetery

Parents

Notes:

Randy graduated from Dacoma High School in 1965 and from Northwestern Oklahoma State University in 1969. He attended law school at the American University in Washington DC, and was killed in an automobile accident early on the morning of 20 Dec 1969 enroute to Alva to attend his brother's wedding. He was moving back to Oklahoma and was transferring to the University of Oklahoma Law School at the time of his death.

The Randy Murrow Memorial Scholarship, established by NWOSU faculty members upon learning of his death, has assisted dozens of NWOSU students and has memorialized other members of the Murrow family, including Aaron Luther and Mildred Myrtle Murrow (Randy's paternal grandparents), Samuel S. and Oneita Riggs (great-uncle and great-aunt), and Dolores Murrow (his mother).

Randy was an extraordinary singer and was quite a Bible scholar - in fact, he could preach a sermon with the best of them (sometimes in seriousness, sometimes in jest while mimicking certain gospel preachers), talents which he put to use in our church in Dacoma.

One of his passions was photography. His "good" camera was a Kodak Instamatic 500 (which is still in my collection of cameras -- and for which, unfortunately, Kodak has stopped producing film). One of his favorite photos is shown below -- he titled it "Storm Over a Sleeping Village." He won an award in the Sunday Oklahoman photography contest one year (not with this photo, however).

He was active in FFA in high school and raised champion New Hampshire hogs. He was an active debater in college and excelled in public speaking. He was the first Northwestern student elected to two successive terms as the President of the Student Senate. He was an ardent Republican and campaigned hard for the election of A. L. "Lute" Murrow, our grandfather, as state representative for Woods and Woodward counties in the 1960s. On many occasions, he and some of his friends were selected as pages at the state capital. In his college years, Randy campaigned for the election of Richard M. Nixon to the U. S. presidency. He didn't live to see the Watergate affair drag itself out over the next several years.

Randy wrote his autobiography as an assignment for one of Zelma Snyder's classes. It is dated 26 February 1964, the spring semester of his junior year in high school. I discovered the document when I was going through some of my grandmother's belongings in October 2000. CLICK HERE to read Randy's autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) -- Randy was a student of history and had recently read Hitler's autobiography by the same title.

While attending American University, Randy worked as a night guard at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. When I visited him in August 1969, he took me on a "tour" of the capitol building that the typical tourist never got to see!

PHOTOS:

1. Brothers, c1950

2. Randy, age 9, grade 3, Dacoma Public Schools