Jim Murray

By Amy Boytz

Jim Murray

Jim Murray, winner of the men's 80/85+ round robin, does a lot more than play squash. At 81 years of age, he still spends half of a normal workweek participating on various boards and helping within his community. He has eight sons and 22 grandchildren, over half of which live in or nearby. And he still manages to play squash two to three times each week at the Albemarle Racquet Club, which he and six others helped found more than 20 years ago.

Murray lives just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, on an 850-acre farm. Forty-eight years ago, he and his wife of 50+ years, “Bunny,” moved out of Long Island, New York, to try their hand at beef cattle farming. They put in four long, difficult years but unfortunately, making a living out of the farm “turned out to be a fantasy,” he says. Murray then spent four years commuting back up to New York, where he took a job in a management consulting firm. He worked for a few years teaching at the University of Virginia's school of commerce. Murray also served nine years in the Virginia State legislature.

It was there in Virginia where Murray first started to get into squash at all seriously. Then in his 40s, he was playing the hardball game. While in Virginia's legislature, he found another squash-playing friend: Bobby Scott, who since that time was elected to Congress. “Occasionally he comes to Charlottesville and I'll get a call like at 10 o'clock at night after he comes out of a meeting. And he'll say, 'How about squash?' And we run down to the squash court and open it up and bang away at squash from 10-11,” Murray says, chuckling. Murray has entered the US nationals for nearly 20 years, collecting a couple of wins. He doesn't even bother to enter the hardball nationals anymore. “I've done better in the softball than the hardball,” he says.

Murray is the chairman of the electoral board of Albemarle County, he's on the board for the local free medical clinic, as well as that of the community action agency, which runs anti-poverty programs. He is a CASA: a Court Appointed Special Advocate, who works with previously abused and neglected children living in foster homes. His job is to spend time with the children and then file reports for court meetings, solely assessing the child. “I take them out and let them visit museums, send them books,” Murray says of some of their activities.

Though Jim Murray doesn't work much on the farm anymore, the farm property is now prospering above and beyond what it achieved in those first four years. About six years ago, one of Murray's sons restructured the family farm. Now, instead of beef cattle, Panorama Farms is one of the most renowned organic farming material outlets in the area. (“The composting business doesn't need any advertising or anything else—the word of mouth is such that they can't keep up with the demand,” Murray says.) Panorama Farms takes 3500 tons of leaves yearly from the city of Charlottesville and turns them into “Panorama Pay Dirt,” a soil amendment—“the same kind of material you'd find on the forest floor after about 10 years—a beautiful black, odorless material that grows things like mad.” Also the farm, another of Murray's sons started a mountain bike club, Panorama Trails, featuring 25 miles of trails for bikers to tool around the property.

Murray has two undergraduate degrees, one from Georgetown in English (1941), and one from Yale in Metallurgical Engineering (1943). Coming back to the Yale campus for this year's squash nationals was great fun for him, though he admits he snuck away from the squash courts frequently. “I have to admit Yale has a magnificent art gallery, one of the best little gems in the country,” Murray explains. “And so I must say I probably spent a little more time in the art galleries than I did watching squash!”

No matter, Murray still managed to squeeze in enough squash to take home a trophy. In the men's oldest age group, he won three of five round robin matches, placing him in a tie with Edward Hobler of Florida. In the match versus Hobler, Murray won in five. “I couldn't be on the same court with a lot of these guys I play today, back when they were young. I think the key to my moving up a little bit on the ladders is I've stayed in pretty good shape,” says Murray.