Ortner Von Murray Way
TRANSCRIPT
My name is Josette Murray.
Ortner “Von” Murray, who loved to be called Von, is my dad.
Yeah, he had his store for 40 years and it was a retail store, but it was the center of the community. And he thrived on the fact that people came to him for advice, he became a notary. He just liked being of service to the people in the neighborhood.
He mentored a lot of young Black men who did not have their fathers in their lives. So my brother and I shared him with a lot of people in the neighborhood.
If everybody was okay, then he was okay. The store was just a platform, a vehicle, for all of that because there are so many things that people attach to the store that have nothing to do with business.
He loved telling stories and some of the real stories he would embellish.
He would love that I’m telling you this. So my dad was in Israel. And I guess he went out drinking with some of the men that he worked with. And, as he used to say, they’re all trading stories. So he just decided in the moment to tell them that my mother was a nun and that he met her in court, in a case with an adoption or some issue with a minor, and that she saw him and she fell madly in love with him and she left the nunnery.
So he tells a story in Israel, comes back home and probably completely forgets about it. Well, one of the men that was listening to that story came to our house. They are in the basement, my parents are entertaining. My dad left to go get something and the man says to my mom: “So I heard you used to be a nun!”
And she’s like: “Wait, what?”
And he tells my mom the story. And then my father comes back and she says: “You told this man, I used to be a nun?!”
At that moment he was like: “Oh my God, that lie is how many years old? I fabricated this story over drinks.”
And so his answer was: “Well, people tell all kinds of tales.”
He loved holding court and he loved entertaining people. I think he thought it brings people joy to hear people laugh… Yeah…