Who is Caren Delet' Murphy?

I get asked this quite a bit.  My answer...I dunno...I love a good Urban Legend!  And that is exactly how this story started out.  I taught Speech and Drama for years and if you do a good job with that your trunk must be full of good stories.  Mine is!  I saved this particular story in the deep recesses of my brain and I bring it out EVERY Halloween.  I love it and who knows it MIGHT be TRUE!!!  Mama & Daddy would know best.  Here's the story I tell to my dear class.

Us older 5:  (front) me, Charlotte, Frank Jr.
(back)  Lenora, dog Daddy won at fair, Caren

There were 7 children born to Frank & Juanita Murphy:  Charlotte Ann, Caren Delet', Debbie Lynn, Lenora Kaye, Frank Jr., Elizabeth Faye and Sandy Elaine.  We grew up in the country...and I mean the country.  The only people that lived on the road I grew up on was us and our grandmother.  At one end of our road there was a turn around spot and at the other end there was a graveyard.  When I was growing up, our family tended to that graveyard.  I've spent many hours raking and mowing the graveyard.  Quite a bit of our family is buried there, the dead ones that is.  Anyway, we ran and we romped all over that road and those woods.  We also played on the railroad tracks between our house and our school, Swartz Elementary.  Lenora even skipped school one time because she walked to school on the tracks and played too much along the way...or something like that.   Back to my original story.  My dear sister, Caren, was a little over a year older than me and a little under a year younger than Charlotte.  She also enjoyed walking to and from school, but not as much as Lenora and me.

All the Murphy Girls:  Elizabeth and Sandy (front)
Mama, Lenora, me, Charlotte and Caren (back)
Just a few days before that fateful October day...

 One day however, she missed the bus and decided to walk home.  It started raining.  It was one of those deep, dark, damp, chill you to your bones rain.  Caren was a little frail thing anyway and if she had called Mama or Daddy they would gladly have come and picked her up, but she CHOSE to walk home in the rain.  Well being frail and sickly, sure enough Caren caught pneumonia and she only lived a week after that fateful day.
A couple of years after Caren's untimely departure, on a Sunday afternoon, my parents were taking a nap when a cute young man knocked on our door.  I answered, as was my habit when cute young men knocked on my door.  Anyway, he asked for Caren.  I thought he meant my friend Karen Jinks, who lived just a few country roads down.  I told him he had turned off the main highway too soon.  He needed to go back and get off on Morgan Hare Road.  He argued, "No I dropped her off here just yesterday."  I told him I thought I knew who lived here and Karen lived a few roads on down the line.  He then saw our 8 x 10 school pictures hanging on the wall, all 7 of us there in a row.  He pointed to dear Caren and said emphatically, "HER!"  I stumbled, I stuttered, I fumbled, and then said, "Caren is ddddeeeaad."  I got him out of the house quickly so as not to disturb my mom and dad.  They would have been deeply disturbed.  He spoke of Caren as if he had just seen her.  He told me how he had seen her walking home the day before in the rain.  He had picked her up and gave her a ride home.  He swore he had dropped her off at our front door.  She was so cold that he had given her his black leather jacket and she had told him he could come the next day and pick it up.  So here he was.  I swore back at him that my Caren was indeed dead.  To prove it I got in his car and rode back to Springhill Cemetery where there we both got a surprise.  Indeed he saw Caren Delet' Murphy's grave, but I saw hanging there on her tombstone his black leather jacket.

Caren today...perhaps...

Many of my friends have seen or heard from Caren since this time.  Some don't seem to remember her.  All I can say is the memory of dearly departed is so sorrowful sometime we do the best we can...
The journey is but a wisp of wind, enjoy it while you are here!