My friend and member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for New Revenue Joe Murphy has gone the way of all flesh. I am grateful for his help. May he rest in peace.
Joseph Richard Murphy Obituary
If you knew Joe Murphy, you have stories to share, most of which are hilarious. His former students reminisce about his truly original sense of humor and irreverence, but also about his brilliance, preparation, and rigorous attention to detail. His colleagues describe an immensely creative, yet “get ‘er done” collaborative work environment, one which was summed up by one of his favorite phrases: “You can’t be afraid to put a wheel in the ditch!” His daughters speak of his generosity and support, but also describe someone who was “always down for a bit of ridiculousness and who relished the theater of the absurd.” When he left us on December 27 at age 77 after a period of declining health, we lost a true original.
Joseph Richard Murphy was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up on Navy bases across the United States. He attended Davidson College, where he excelled both in the classroom and on the football field and where he developed a cohort of lifelong friends. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in Teaching from Emory University in 1970, and he taught high school in Atlanta before returning to graduate school to receive a Master of Arts in Radio, Television, and Film from The University of Texas in 1975.
Joe spent his university teaching career at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where he taught film, video, audio production, and education courses from 1975 to 2014 and led the Teaching Fellows Program there for ten years. A truly beloved teacher and mentor, he was known for his giant laugh and delight in human eccentricity. He invited his students to serve as crew and subjects for his documentary film projects, experiences that again and again students have described as transformative. Joe independently produced documentaries for over 35 years, and in 1989 and again in 1994, he was awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship by the N.C. Arts Council. He was an immensely curious person and used his signature interactive interview style to produce playful explorations of the ways people in our culture place extraordinary significance on the commonplace, such as their hair, cars, shoes, or food. His generosity and egalitarian ethos shone in everything he did, as he invited interview subjects, students, and friends alike to join him in his good-natured and mischievous take on life. In his later work he used his camera to explore his own aging and his lifelong battle with Type I diabetes. His programs have been broadcast nationally and internationally on public television, including the broadcast of Auto Bond, a documentary about our obsession with our automobiles, on the PBS series, POV. He is best known for a documentary on barbecue and culture, Slow Food: Fast Times, and a nationally aired documentary tribute on the life of Doc and Merle Watson. Segments of his work have aired on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” ABC’s “World News Tonight,” The Learning Channel, and public television stations across the country. In the past several years, he resumed his interest in photography and picked up a paint brush to produce stunning oil paintings, primarily of the architectural landscapes from his extensive travels. His documentaries and other artistic work are available at http://www.murphyvideo.net.
Joe is survived by his wife, Rebbecca Alexander; daughters, Jennifer and Melanie; his grandson, Vann; his brothers, Mike and Johnny, and thousands of friends, colleagues, and former students whose vision of what is possible was revolutionized by knowing him.
Memorials for Joe may be sent to the Joe Murphy Educational Media Endowed Fellowship at Appalachian State University. A party in his honor is planned for Feb. 15 in the Boone, NC, area. Details are not yet finalized.
The Center for New Revenue 
Wow. What a life!