MARY MURRAY

MURRAY--Mary. Mary "Polly" Luckett Murray, 85, passed away on July 16, 2019, with her daughter at her side. She was born in New York City on November 12, 1933, the daughter of Edward Hobbs Luckett and Mary Gardner Sayles Luckett. Polly spent her childhood with her brother, Bill, and sister, Nina, in the towns of Irvington and Tarrytown, New York, along the Hudson River. Each summer, they lived in a house in Hyannis Port, and later told stories of a childhood spent on sailboats and playing baseball against competing neighborhood teams. Perhaps her fondest memories were her family's summers at the beach in Bay Head, New Jersey. Throughout her life, she was at beaches near where she lived from May until September, and most enjoyed it when there was a strong wind and whitecaps. Polly attended The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and then Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1954. During college, she travelled to Europe by boat, and worked for the World Health Organization, while in Copenhagen. In 1954, she married I. Gillis Murray and they moved to Queens, New York. From their small apartment there, she rode the subway every day to Manhattan, where she worked at FAO Schwartz. They later lived in Essex, and then Lyme, Connecticut, and had four children, Alexander "Sandy," David, Caroline "Wendy," and Todd. In the 1960s, they had a summer house in Truro, Massachusetts, near Provincetown. Much like her childhood and teen years spent in Hyannis Port, Polly's children grew up on the Connecticut and Rhode Island beaches of Old Lyme, Watch Hill, and Misquamicut. During the 1960s and 70s, there were almost uncountable evenings spent watching the sun go down, with the smoke of mosquito coils drifting past and eating cold macaroni salad, and a Grinder, and sodas at The Mile Creek Beach Club in Old Lyme. Polly was a talented painter. In 1954, she was awarded a Skinner Fellowship for Art by Mount Holyoke, and used these funds to study under the American painter Robert Brackman at The Art Students League in Manhattan; and, later, when he established his school there, in Noank, Connecticut. In 1955, she completed a Graduate Fine Arts Fellowship at Yale-Norfolk Art, in Norfolk, Connecticut. Her work was displayed at The American Folk Art Museum and The Shippee Gallery in New York, The Essex Art Association, The Old Lyme Art Association, and New Haven Paint and Clay Club, among other galleries. Polly was foremost a mother to her four children. She worked tirelessly to ensure that they all were raised with her profound sense of ethics, the importance of caring for others, and that they had the support they needed to succeed in school and in life. She will be remembered as the person who discovered Lyme Disease, and for her book The Widening Circle (St. Martin's Press) that described how she brought the initial cases of Lyme Disease to Yale University. On November 20, 1975, Polly had contacted the Connecticut State Health Department. She reported that her children had been diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and that her husband and son had had strange but similar rashes, and she knew of others in the area with similar symptoms. Polly Murray showed Dr. Allen Steere, then a Fellow in Rheumatology at Yale, a list she compiled of dozens of friends and neighbors in Lyme and East Haddam who had unusual symptoms. She reported the occurrence of arthritis in 12 children in Lyme; of these, four lived on the same street. Dr. Steere then began by calling each family and eventually confirmed the list of 39 children, and 12 adults. This initial report by Polly was the sentinel event leading to the recognition of what was first called Lyme Arthritis, announced in The New York Times in 1976. Polly was awarded an Alumnae Honorary Degree by Mount Holyoke for her work on Lyme Disease. She also received an award from the NIH and lectured medical students at Case Western Reserve University and Columbia University. In 2014, she received a standing ovation at the Tribeca Film Festival, for her work on Lyme Disease. Mary was predeceased by her brother, William Stone Luckett, II, and his late wife, Diana Ward Luckett, and her sister, Nina Luckett Anderson, and her late husband, Dr. Harrison Clarke Anderson. She is survived by her four children: Alexander Gillis Murray, and his wife, Jessica, of Quincy, MA, Dr. David Kingman Murray, and his wife, Thao, of Miami, FL, Caroline Sayles Zeidner, and her husband, Kenneth, of Westfield, NJ, and Dr. Todd Ingalls Murray, and his wife, Inajara, of Great Barrington, MA and seven grandchildren: Pramila Karki Murray, Santosh Gillis Subedi Murray, Kai Murray, America Murray, Isabelle Amelia Zeidner, Chloe Helena Duarte Murray, and Andreas Gillis Murray. In August, there will be a graveside service at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, NY, where she will be buried next to other members of her family. Family and friends will also gather at a memorial service for her at the Griswold Inn on South Main Street, Essex, CT. The Inn was a place that Polly had dinner many times since first moving to Essex in 1956. Throughout those many years, she particularly loved hearing the Dixieland bands that played there. There will be a live Dixieland band playing after her service. In fact, the Inn is right across the street from where Polly first lived in Connecticut in a small house there overlooking the cove. Please contact pollymurray32@gmail.com for further details about the services.