Ella Georgia Murphey
April 1932- January 2021
On January 24th, 2021 the world lost a great woman when Ella Georgia Murphey left us. Ella passed away comfortably in her home in Prosser, surrounded by her family and her husband of 65 years.
Born in Port Orchard in April 1932 to Ella and George Midland, they decided that rather than argue over who got the privilege of naming their firstborn, they would instead both lend a name and she was officially named Ella Georgia.
The growing family moved to Prosser when she was 10, and while many of her brothers and sisters have moved away, others stayed nearby and Prosser became a forever home for Ella. She met and married Victor Murphey in September 1955, and they have built a life together, raising 2 daughters on their 10 acres in Prosser- as well as horses, cattle, cats, dogs, sheep, chickens, and for one memorable spring a clutch of baby pheasants. Also, one large ceramic duck that always sat on the front porch, except when it was being glued back together after Ella knocked it off… again. But Ella was good with glue: as the oldest of a large family, Ella’s house has always been a place for her sisters and brothers to come back together. Everyone always knew her door was always open for a chat, a cup of coffee or a game of cards.
Ella could grow absolutely any plant imaginable. She spent hours every day working outside in her beautiful gardens. However, she was always prepared to sacrifice straight, evenly mowed lines to crazily cut across the yard to ease yet another garden snake from existence (thwack! Thwack! Thwack!). Ella also loved baking and had the ability to scoop every last molecule of cookie dough out of the bowl, which ability curiously, yet consistently abandoned her when hungry grandkids were about.
Waiting to welcome Ella are her parents, George and Ella Midland, her sister Norma, and her brother Junior and Arthur Roy, as well as a multitude of friends and number of homeless cats who somehow went from simple pests, to being fed on the back porch, to being let into the utility room only when it was cold outside (in August), to being contentedly fed gravy soaked kibble in the kitchen- all the while still being called awful creature and darn cat. (Luckily, cats don’t speak English, they speak “gravy-soaked kibble”.) Ella will be well and truly welcomed.
Meanwhile, we are left behind to try to recreate the recipes that are quintessentially her, but have never been written or even made the same way twice, and yet inexplicably can’t be duplicated or recreated by anyone else. The secret she used to make everything taste “right” seems to have been lost with her.
Knowing that without that secret something, nothing will ever be quite the same again, we mourn her truly: her husband Victor Murphey, Daughters Teri & Albert Holmes and Wendy &Tom Dingus, her sisters Patty, Edie, Vi, Georgeanna, Phyllis Ann, her brother Dale, as well as 6 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren.
Ella was a great proponent of the quick goodbye, of tucking us in the car, but then rushing back to the house for a quick wave from the porch or even being forced to quickly duck inside so no one ever saw her get choked up as we left. But no one was ever really fooled. We knew. She knew we knew. And that was enough.
And while we know it was not her way, we openly mourn today. For the loss of her means forever fewer crocus and more snakes; fewer cookies and more unloved cats; fewer kitchen roosters and more mint condition ceramic ducks. So today we mourn our loss- for she was much and we are now less. And yet, we know that we are more than we were because of her. And that will be enough.