After serving as an Army surgeon in Vietnam at the height of the war, Dr. Thomas E. Murphy joined the medical staff at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in 1970 and through the years worked to make the cardiac department one of the best equipped and staffed in the Chicago area.
“Dr. Murphy pioneered cardiac surgery at St. Francis Hospital, developing a regional referral center that at one time performed more than 1,200 open-heart procedures per year, giving Saint Francis the reputation as ‘The Heart Hospital,'” said Dr. Roberta Luskin-Hawk, regional president and CEO at what is now Presence Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston and Presence Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago.
Dr. Murphy, 80, of Glenview, formerly of Wilmette, a retired chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at St. Francis Hospital, died Friday, Nov. 21, at Presence Holy Family Medical Center in Des Plaines following a bout with pneumonia.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Murphy broadened his efforts by helping to make Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights a cardiac surgery facility where coronary bypasses, valve replacements and other open-heart procedures were performed.
He headed a team of six heart surgeons that in its first year performed hundreds of emergency heart surgery. In 1991 Dr. Murphy told the Tribune, “This will be a great benefit to doctors and patients, as doctors will be able to care for their own patients at their own hospital.”
During that time, he also oversaw the modification of recovery rooms for open-heart patients and helped create education and support program for patients and their families.
“Apart from being a cardiovascular surgeon and pioneer, Tom Murphy was a great man,” said former colleague Dr. Alberto Foschi, who now serves as medical director of interventional cardiology at Presence St. Francis Hospital. “I had the honor of being in the operating room with him for every patient I referred to him.”
Dr. Murphy raced cars at Road America in Elkhart, Wis., and in the Rolex 24 Hours endurance race in Daytona, Fla.; was a skilled fly fisherman who pursued king salmon near the Bering Strait in Alaska; and was a hunter of big game in Africa.
“He was a crack shot, but that spoke more to his ethics as a hunter than anything else,” said Harve Ferrill, who accompanied Dr. Murphy on a dozen or more trips to Africa. “He studied the anatomy of every animal he ever hunted to make it as perfect as possible in bringing it down. His aim was one shot, one kill.”
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Trophies from those hunts, including a zebra, lion, elephant and rhinoceros, adorn the wall of his “game room” in his home.
“The only time Tom sat still was when he was reading,” said his wife of 49 years, Jane, with a soft laugh. “I guess you could say he was a heart surgeon with a lot of outside interests.”
“If a family couldn’t afford to pay for a medical procedure that never stopped him from doing what was best for his patient,” his wife said. “He just wouldn’t charge for his services.”
The son of a surgeon and the grandson of a pharmacist, Dr. Murphy was born and raised in Dixon, Ill. He attended the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., before graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1956.
After earning a medical degree from Northwestern in 1959, he completed his internship a year later at Cook County Hospital, where from 1960 to 1965 he also served his residency. He completed a fellowship in oncology at Memorial Hospital in New York in 1966.
While on his honeymoon, Dr. Murphy received his military draft notice, and soon after was sent to Vietnam to serve as a chief of surgery with the United States Army Medical Corps, assigned to the 91st Evacuation Hospital in Tuy Hoa. He treated troops injured in battle, and many who also had been exposed to Agent Orange.
“He told me the blood and guts training he got while working the emergency room at Cook County served him well in Vietnam,” his wife said.
After returning to the U.S. Dr. Murphy served for a short time as a staff surgeon at DeWitt Army Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Va. Following his military discharge in 1968, he accepted a one-year cardiac surgery fellowship at New York Hospital in New York, and after that completed another fellowship at St. Luke Hospital in Milwaukee.
Prior to his retirement in 2004 as chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at St. Francis Hospital, Dr. Murphy served on the staffs of Northwest Community Hospital, Resurrection Hospital in Chicago and Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.
He was also on the teaching staffs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Chicago, Northwestern University and Cornell University in New York.
Other survivors include a son, Timothy; three daughters, Annie Timons, Kathleen McNeela and Erin Murphy; three brothers, Michael, Edward and Dennis; a sister, Rosemary Keough; and eight grandchildren.
Services were held.