From Kathy:

I met Tom when the band I was in at the time was looking for a new banjo/Dobro player.  Our mandolin player hosted a party/jam so we could "check him out".  Obviously he passed muster.

We went on the perform in Kathy Boyd & Phoenix Rising for almost 20 years.  

Traveling with Tom was always an adventure.  He took delight in simple things, such as seeing how many days in a row he could wear the same shirt.  If you saw the photo of him on the side of the road with a green shirt and mismatched pajama bottoms in the slide show - that's the shirt!

Somewhere along the line a chaplain position came open at the hospice I worked for.  He applied, charmed the socks off the person/people interviewing him, and a new career was born.

He was the consummate chaplain.  Playing banjo so it sounded like a harpsichord, becoming whatever a patient/family needed, and taking just as good of care of the staff.  He came to his retirement party dressed as Santa, and signed every book we brought because he always wanted a book signing.

It is said that no one truly dies as long as they live on in people's memories.  He will most certainly live on in mine.

From Tom's brother, Michael Murphy:

We all who have stood close to Tom’s flame understand that we have lost a remarkable man.

Of all things in my life, Tom was the most remarkable.

A tether to the world for me that can’t be replaced.

I met Tom when he was 10 years old, already a practicing magician, and I was 12, a semi-feral refugee from a bad place.

We met on a YMCA trip...being hauled around the rocky mountains for ten days in the back of a truck with 30 other juveniles. Instilling a love of nature that would last us both a lifetime.

For no explainable reason we formed a bond. A friendship.

So, when my circumstances were about to leave me without a home, Tom invited me into his.

That can happen?

It did.

Even then, he was the Tom that most of you know.

Can you imagine growing up with someone like Tom as a brother?

We became brothers not out of biology, but out of choice.

A brother chosen, rather than inherited, is a different kind of bond.

And we were tighter than most brothers

Little did I know that was the first step in a 65 year journey together.

We had fun in high school

Our circle of friends had all had run-ins with their parents, at one time or another...but not Tom.

He was the golden kid who never stepped wrong with the grown-ups.

Normally with teenage boys this would have provoked more than a little teasing...but we all gave him a pass...he was that good at being good.

One of the things that explains Tom is his Dad. Our dad. Tom senior.

Quiet love. Steadfastness. The rock we could all rely on.

And Tom was his greatest student.

Of course, that is also also where he picked up the “stuff your garage to the ceiling” trait.

And his mom, the momest mom one can imagine.

Her greatest pleasure was feeding people.

I think Tom’s nurturing nature came a lot from her.

And he did nurture everyone around him.

I can’t really speak to the love he gave to others. You know who you are.

But I have to speak about love... because that was Tom’s most primary component.

Yes, He was an artist...a musician and poet of great accomplishment

He was a scientist...on the trail of understanding consciousness itself

He was a philosopher, always questioning what he knew.

He was a performer and a story-teller...and he was very good at all those things...and at so many other skills and talents.

But his most tangible attribute...and the spirit which most moved in him...

was his compassion for his fellow human.

A man who understood with his heart, as well as his mind.

A therapist who understood that love heals.

His unstinting generosity of spirit made him a champion of love.

I marvel that his obvious and authentic caring for others...could make something so intangible as love...so tangible.

A word about love:

The thing about being a social species is that we are made to be incomplete by ourselves. We are not made to be alone.

How does that work? How does our DNA make sure we are social rather than single?

Lonliness is the mechanism our DNA uses to provoke us to reach out to each other,

to remind us that we need each other, no matter how annoying that can be.

Loneliness is the stick.

Love is the carrot..

And Tom was a champion of love.

A pleasure shared is twice enjoyed.

For the things shared that only Tom could reflect, that door has been permanently closed.

I am immensely sad at the loss of my brother Tom

His spirit will finally settle down somewhere in me, where it will remain a continuous occupant

until I bring our shared journey to an end.

I was unable to attend the Celebration of Life as I had hoped, but have been thinking of Tom and his family all day and ever since I learned about his passing. 

I first met Tom around the year 2000; I was in graduate school working as a counseling intern and Tom was one of my first managers. I was so fortunate to have him as a mentor and guide.

Tom and his family attended my wedding in 2001 (Lucille was a young girl in a flowered dress, and Pascal was a newborn! Looking for pics because I know I have some). You all felt like family. You were, though I'd known you all for barely a year.

My most vivid, powerful, and most sacred memory of Tom came several months after my wedding. My own father was critically ill, very suddenly. After my father's passing, Tom was one of the first people I spoke with outside of my family. I shared a dream I had the night of my father's passing.  Our family dog, who had died years prior,  came bounding toward me in the dream and jumped up on me affectionately (this big loving moose of a dog loved greeting his people this way). It had knocked me back in my dream, and had jolted me awake...just as the phone rang. It was the call to inform me that my dad had passed. I told Tom that it was as if our family dog had come to get my father. I don't recall his exact words in response, but whatever he assured me that it was real.  And it gave me so much comfort. I think about that talk every year on the anniversary of my father's passing, and it still brings me comfort.

I am so grateful that my life crossed paths with Tom's. We were all so blessed to have known him.

Probably sometime in 1975-6, shortly after I moved to Oregon.  I had met Tom and we had laughed together once or twice, but we didn’t know each other all that well.

Utah Phillips was playing a concert in Eugene, and I had a first date that I took to the concert.  Sometime before the concert started, we ran into Tom and I introduced him to my date (I can’t remember her name and you’ll see why shortly…). After I introduced them, Tom turned to me and, in all seriousness, said “Is this the nymphomaniac you’ve been telling me all about?”  Then he smiled and walked away.

After a moment of shocked silence, my date (aghast and flustered) asked what I had been telling him about her, while I had to try to keep it together from breaking out laughing and, at the same time, tried to explain to her that I hadn’t told him anything about her and that he was joking.  But there was no getting around what he said (very much like “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”).  

There was no second date!

And while I have managed to “get” Tom a few times since, I have never been able to top that.  He still owes me.  Maybe next lifetime….

In case you didn't receive the link to Tom's music.

https://open.spotify.com/play…