Overview:
Rob Murphy as a compassionate educator and mentor whose humor, generosity, and belief in people transformed countless lives, including the author’s, both professionally and personally.
It was Rob Murphy’s daughter I met first. She was a student at Free Union School, where I was filling in for the final three months of the 1997/1998 school year. Without knowing who I was other than this guy who had suddenly begun appearing each day on campus in March, she’d greet me every morning with a big smile and wave. I learned her name was Colleen, one of three Murphy daughters. I’d eventually meet her mom Jennifer who spoke of an all-boys boarding school about twenty minutes north of Free Union in Greene County, VA. Her husband Rob was a fundraiser for the school. They lived on campus as did many of the faculty and staff.
One evening during a Free Union community event, Rob accompanied Jennifer to the campus. One doesn’t forget meeting Rob Murphy for the first time. Ask anyone to recall his or her first conversation with him. You’ll learn that his quick laugh puts a smile on your face, and he genuinely cares about what you have to say. After explaining to him how much his daughter’s smile and wave meant to me each morning, I gave him an earful about my recent multiyear break from teaching, my divorce, and my needing some income as a single dad of two young children. I also pointed out that I was a high school English teacher trying to learn the ways of 1st and 2nd graders at Free Union.
It was likely way more than he expected to hear during an initial conversation with someone, but he took it all in. I learned soon enough that my story did, in fact, matter to Rob. His interest in people’s stories is one of the qualities that made him an effective admissions director and fundraiser. He told me to think about contacting Blue Ridge School that summer if I didn’t plan to return to Free Union.
Little did I know at the time that it registered to Rob that I taught English. I did contact Blue Ridge that summer and was hired to teach in the school’s Learning Center. I saw Rob nearly every day and thanked him many times for telling me about Blue Ridge. Rob had a plan of which I was unaware. He wanted me to work for him in the school’s Advancement Office. That happened the following year. While the school allowed me to keep one foot in the classroom door, I was named Annual Giving Coordinator. Rob wouldn’t admit until years later that he had his eye on me from the first time I had spilled my confessions to him. “You were an English teacher. You could write. I needed someone in the office who could write.”
I will be forever grateful for Colleen’s smile and wave each morning, for Jennifer’s mentioning Blue Ridge School to me one afternoon, and for Rob’s taking the time to listen to my current state of affairs one evening and having the idea that I might make a difference at that boarding school. All three of them were game changers for me, and Rob would become the best boss I ever had.
Rob recognized the importance of having fun while you worked. He was an excellent strategist. The only times we in the Advancement Office dreaded were when Rob was traveling. That would give him time to think of what needed to be accomplished in the next few weeks. He’d call from the road, “Hey guys. Listen. We need this and that and the other done by Friday. Then by Tuesday, please finish this and start that and think about how we’re going to organize the other.” We were always relieved when he returned to the office. During those times, he made working feel not so much like a job. He was quick to laugh. He was self-deprecating to a fault. I’d learn later that he is Irish, which explained a great deal of his humor and other habits.
On the evening of September 3, 2025, I delivered a six-pack of twelve-ounce bottles of Tell-Tale Heart IPA made by Baltimore-Washington Beer Works to Rob and Jen in their Greene County home. Rob was at that time four years into retirement. Jen had also retired from teaching four years before. As a side note, their daughter Colleen was then thirty-three and teaching ESL in the Greene County Schools. I have to fight back tears when I think about how many years I’ve benefited from the Murphy family’s care for me.
Rob’s impact in independent school education began in 1979 in the Admissions Office at Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia. During that time, he came to know Dr. Ed McFarlane, who was the Athletic Director and a Division Head at Davis & Elkins. That connection would prove beneficial years later. Rob then became Admissions Director at St. Margaret’s School in Tappahannock, VA, in 1985. Jennifer recalls that the Headmistress of St. Margaret’s School cried when Rob left. Rob then served as Director of Admissions at Christ Church School in Christchurch, VA, from 1989 to 1992. At each stop, he filled the important role of populating the school with mission-appropriate students. He did so with compassion, always keeping in mind what was best for the student.
In 1992, Blue Ridge School began a search for a Director of Admissions. Dr. McFarlane was by then the Head of Blue Ridge. Ed and Rob spoke, and of course, Rob filled that position in 1992. I mention Ed McFarlane in the introduction to my gratitude tour as someone I’d visit if he were still alive. Ed passed on August 26, 2017.
By the time I met Rob in 1998, he was Head of Advancement. He was my beloved boss for the next thirteen years until he left Blue Ridge School in 2011 to raise money for senior living facilities in Central Virginia. Rob and Jen raised three daughters on the Blue Ridge campus. Rob had served the school in multiple capacities for nineteen years. I wasn’t the only one who missed him. He had established many meaningful relationships among students and their families. Fortunately for me and others who lived near Blue Ridge, he still made himself available for reunions.
While visiting with Rob and Jen, he admitted he didn’t understand why I wanted to include him among those educators I wished to thank on my gratitude tour. First, I told him, I owe him and the Murphy family for putting my teaching career fully back on track after encouraging me during my three months at Free Union. Second, I told him, he believed I had skills outside the classroom that could help a school such as Blue Ridge survive in challenging economic times. Third, I told him, he was as responsible as anyone for my financial survival during those first few years after my divorce. Fourth, I told him, and this required some convincing, he was as important to education in his own ways as was any Head of School, classroom teacher or coach I’d ever known.
I’ve always seen Blue Ridge School as a blue-collar school in an independent school world that is often perceived as white-collar. Rob is a blue-collar guy through and through. Alumni adored him. He spoke their language. Other constituency groups admired him, too, for his unwavering support of the students. At a boarding school, everyone fills many roles, including weeknight and weekend duty in the dorms. The students loved Rob’s playful personality, too, and looked forward to his time on duty. He was particularly effective with those students who were struggling academically or behaviorally. I recall more than once Rob reminding me of important truths when I would complain about an out-of-order student. “If we don’t love him, someone else will.” If I pushed back by saying the student got on everyone’s nerves, he’d say, “I know he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”
When Rob and his family left Blue Ridge, my heart for advancement work left with him. The school had reached a point where they really needed those in that office to be full-time advancement. I was no longer going to have the opportunity to teach an English class each year. When the school hired Franklin Daniels as the new Head of Advancement, I really wasn’t quite sure how I’d convince him and the school to allow me to return to full-time teaching. I waited. I didn’t have the nerve to ask my new boss to help me out of my current position. That resulted in my not teaching at all the first year after Rob left. I wasn’t happy. When I approached Franklin in the spring of that school year, he was surprisingly completely open to the idea and told me he’d go to bat for me so that it could happen the following fall. He also admitted he had talked to Rob as a way to learn more about the giving culture of Blue Ridge. Before they could broach that topic, Rob had told him, “Get Dan back in the classroom as fast as you can. That’s where he wants to be.” Even after leaving Blue Ridge, Rob advocated for me, so I owe him thanks for that as well.
On March 21, 2026, my wife Merf and I attended a milestone surprise birthday party in Rob’s honor put on by Jen and their three daughters. What struck me was that among the many guests who attended were Rob’s childhood friends, high school buddies, friends from his Blue Ridge days, and friends from his fundraising days in senior living facilities. Throughout his life, Rob has collected people who think the world of him. We were instructed by Jen to show up with roasts for him. We tried. We really did.
My story was about a period during which I thought I might have to leave Blue Ridge, the entire state of Virginia, in fact, just a few months after I’d begun working for Rob in advancement. He could tell I was upset, so he said we should take a walk. After explaining that my custody situation might force me to leave within just a few weeks, I held my breath for what would surely be some form of anger or at least disappointment. Instead, he hugged me and told me I had to do what was best for my family. That’s when I learned that Rob was my boss in workplace parlance only. No one works for Rob. You just become his dear friend. And then he soon becomes like a brother to you – an older brother.
I wasn’t the only one who struggled to roast Rob that evening. It was a joyous evening during which he received the same love he has always given to others. What came out of all of our mouths were stories of his sense of humor, his kindness, his generosity, and especially his gift to education.
