Carolyn Frances Murphy

Carolyn Frances Murphy, 71, of Towamencin, passed away on December 10, 2016, at Lansdale Hospital. Carolyn was born in Illinois to Emma Jane and Walter Kemp Correll, who were both educators like herself. “Buck” was a successful high school football coach and has been enshrined in the Illinois Football Hall of Fame. Emma was a high school Latin and English teacher, and instilled a love of learning in her. Carolyn graduated from Auburn High School in Rockford, IL, in 1963. She then attended the University of Colorado and majored in German Education, with a minor in Russian, graduating in 1967. She was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. She took a job teaching German for a year in Palos Park, outside Chicago, before moving back to Colorado after marrying her late husband, Paul, who was attending the Colorado School of Mines. After he graduated, they moved to Nashville for a short time before arriving in Lansdale when Paul took a job with DuPont. Shortly after arriving in the early 1970s, she became active in the local AAUW chapter – and remained so ever since. In 2014, she received AAUW’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Carolyn taught exploratory German and Linguistics for seventh graders for many years, before moving to North Penn High School in the early 1990s, teaching German there until she retired in 2009. Carolyn was very active in international exchange programs, taking many groups of high school students to Germany and mentoring foreign students who attended North Penn. She was a great proponent of public education, and was elected to the North Penn School Board in 2011. She was serving her second term, and enjoying every minute of it. Carolyn had many close friends in the Lansdale area, and they were a great source of support and care as she battled cancer for the past several years. She loved all of you. She enjoyed entertaining, giving gifts, and playing games, especially her beloved bridge. She was a member of several book and literature groups, and a devotee of Masterpiece Theater. She rooted for all Chicago and University of Illinois sports teams, and faithfully followed the North Penn Knights. Carolyn lost her husband, Paul in 2013, who she missed terribly, and is survived by their only child, Michael. He lives in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife Lissa and three sons, Owen, Luke, and Peter, whom she adored and always referred to as “her boys.” Funeral services will be held Saturday, December 17, 2016, at 11 a.m. at the Gwynedd Square Presbyterian Church, 837 Sumneytown Pike, Lansdale, where she was a member. The family will meet with friends and family before the service at the church beginning at 10 a.m. She will be interned in Bement, Illinois. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in her memory to The Educational Foundation of the North Penn School District, http://www.npenn.org/foundation.