Tom Murphy, Veteran Sports Reporter and Editor, Dies

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Tom Murphy, a veteran sports reporter and editor for the Messenger Post
Newspapers of Rochester, N.Y., died this past weekend at age 53, MPN
reported.

Murphy, who went by the nickname 'Murf,' was one of the longest-tenured employees at MPN, which covers Monroe and Ontario Counties as well as the Finger Lakes region. In his 31 years at the company, Murphy contributed thousands of stories and photographs that covered the local sports of the upstate New York region, including reports from the 1980 winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid.

A 1975 graduate of SUNY Geneseo, Murphy began work in the news industry at Wolfe Publications, where he served as sports editor and photographer for the nine weeklies that Wolfe owned. Twenty-one years later, Wolfe Publications was purchased by the Ewing family, which owned the Daily Messenger in Canandaigua, N.Y.

Murphy stayed on and in 1991, he expanded his sports coverage to include a weekly column. His career was one of many accolades, including awards from the New York Press Association and the Monroe County American Legion, as well as the Rochester Press-Radio Club, which twice named him sportswriter of the year. Recently, Murphy was elected to the Frontier Field Walk of Fame, which is an honorary walkway inside the Frontier Field Stadium of Rochester, N.Y. This was fitting, as the baseball diamond was his favorite haunt, according to the MPN.