Death
On May 28, 1971, Murphy was killed when the private plane in which he was a passenger crashed into Brush Mountain, near Catawba, Virginia, 20 miles west of Roanoke, Virginia in conditions of rain, clouds, fog and zero visibility. The pilot and four other passengers were also killed. The aircraft was a twin engine Aero Commander 680 flown by a pilot who had a private-pilot license and a reported 8,000 hours of flying time, but who held no instrument rating. The aircraft was recovered on May 31, 1971. In 1975, a court awarded Murphy's widow and two children $2.5 million in damages due to the accident.
In 1974, a large granite marker was erected at 37°21′52″N 80°13′33″W / 37.364554°N 80.225748°W / 37.364554; -80.225748 (Audie Murphy’s headstone) at 3,100' elevation, near the crash site. A close friend, Captain Carl Swickerath (whose own burial site is now directly in front of Murphy's), represented the Murphy family at the dedication.
On June 7, 1971, Murphy was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The official U.S. representative at the ceremony was decorated World War II veteran and future President George H. W. Bush. Murphy's grave site is in Section 46, headstone number 46-366-11, located across Memorial Drive from the Amphitheater. A special flagstone walkway was later constructed to accommodate the large number of people who visit to pay their respects. It is the second most-visited grave site, after that of President John F. Kennedy.
The headstones of Medal of Honor recipients buried at Arlington National Cemetery are normally decorated in gold leaf. Murphy previously requested that his stone remain plain and inconspicuous, like that of an ordinary soldier. An unknown person maintains a small American flag next to his engraved Government-issue headstone, which reads:
MURPHY
Texas
Major Infantry
World War II
June 20 1924
May 28 1971
Medal of Honor
DSC – SS & OLC
LM – BSM & OLC
PH & 2 OLC
Key to abbreviations:
- DSC: Distinguished Service Cross
- SS: Silver Star
- LM: Legion of Merit
- BSM: Bronze Star Medal
- PH: Purple Heart
- OLC: Oak Leaf Cluster
An Oak Leaf Cluster signifies a subsequent award of the same decoration. First Lieutenant Murphy was one of very few company-grade officers ever to be awarded the Legion of Merit. That decoration is usually awarded only to officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel and above.
Questions arose about the nature of the plane crash that claimed Murphy's life. In April 1971, Murphy had sought the release of his friend, Teamster Union president Jimmy Hoffa, from federal prison on conviction in 1964 of jury tampering. (Murphy had tried to persuade Edward Grady Partin of Baton Rouge, the Teamsters business agent who had provided immunized testimony against Hoffa, to recant his earlier claims.) Following Murphy's death, Arthur Egan, who had worked with Murphy in the bid to get Hoffa freed, said he suspected that the fatal plane crash was not an accident. However, Hoffa was freed seven months after Murphy's death and no forensic evidence has arisen to suggest the plane crash was in any way connected to the Hoffa case or not the result of an accident.
Read more about this topic: Audie Murphy Legacy, Later Life
Other articles related to "death":
... It has been claimed that the Vatican altered some of the details of the discovery of the death to avoid possible unseemliness in that he was discovered by ... Yet this, along with inconsistent statements made following the Pope's death, led to a number of conspiracy theories concerning it ...
... The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 ... theories as to the etiology of the Black Death, recent analysis of DNA from victims in northern and southern Europe indicates that the pathogen responsible was the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which causes the ... The Black Death is thought to have started in China or central Asia, before spreading west ...
... On April 25, a response to Komarov's death by his fellow cosmonauts was published in Pravda "For the forerunners it is always more difficult ... Soyuz module that were identified by the cosmonaut corps and that Komarov's death should teach the establishment to be more rigorous in its testing and ... His flight and his death will teach us courage." In May 1967, Gagarin and Leonov criticised Mishin's "poor knowledge of the Soyuz spacecraft and the details of its operation, his lack of ...
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown,
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears!
What sights of ugly death within my eyes!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows for the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)