Richard A. Murphy
Biography & Credentials
Personal History and the Beginnings...
Richard is a fourth-generation Army combat Veteran who dedicated most of his adult life to public service. Between being raised in the Army and his own tours, he lived and worked across the U.S. and at multiple locations overseas. His military upbringing by his father, a Vietnam veteran, and his grandfather, who served in Europe during WWII, sparked Richard's interest in the military and those who served.
Like many veterans of WWII, his grandfather rarely spoke of it. The rare exceptions were Christmas gatherings when his grandfather and six of his brothers, also WWII veterans, would talk more openly about the war, although only in bits and pieces. The fire was lit: Richard had to know more.
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​Now retired from the federal government and living in Carnegie, Richard spends his time discovering untold stories from the war, sharing those stories with families of the war's veterans, preserving them, and talking about them with anyone who will listen.
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Richard in a P-51 Mustang, part of the Commemorative Air Force, in the summer of 2021. Flying in this Mustang was one
of the greatest highlights of his life.
Military Service
Inspired by the WWII heroes in his family and his father, Richard enlisted in the Army Reserves as a Military Police Officer at the age of 18. He rapidly advanced to the rank of Sergeant and was deployed to the Middle East in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm and Desert Shield). He then worked as a senior non-commissioned officer in Military Intelligence and became a paratrooper. He served in Korea and completed his eight years of service with the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), at Ft. Stewart, Georgia.
Richard posing on a captured enemy cannon in Saudi Arabia, summer 1991.
Richard with his grandfather, Allen Murphy, at his graduation from Basic and Advanced Individual Training at Ft. McClellan in May 1988.
Public Service
Following separation from the Army, Richard was a police officer near Atlanta and joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs there in 2003. He took a promotion in 2006 to VA's headquarters in Washington, DC and was an integral part of the joint VA and Department of Defense Senior Oversight Committee to improve inter-agency work across both departments and worldwide. Later he supported various offices across VA and Defense and worked on the interoperability of health information systems, military environmental exposures, and numerous policy and program issues impacting veterans, service members, and their families. Among other accolades, Richard received the Valor Award, VA's highest, for his work at and near the VA hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
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He retired from VA in 2024, adopted Carnegie as his hometown, and now pursues his research and interest in the war full-time.
WWII Research Journey
Following the unexpected death of his grandfather in 1991, right after Richard returned from the Middle East, he knew precious little about his service during the war. In the mid-1990s, he began searching for records that could shed light on these lost years, only to learn that most of them had been lost in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973. Approximately 16-18 million Military Personnel Files were destroyed for veterans discharged from 1912 to 1964 in that fire, with most impact on Army records.
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Given this loss, Richard realized that reconstructing the service histories of his grandfather and other WWII veterans needed advanced research skills and endless hours in archival sources, both paper and electronic. Later, knowing that he wanted to pursue this full-time in retirement, and in addition to his broader interests in the war and the Holocaust, he enrolled in Arizona State University's master's program in WWII Studies and graduated in 2022. Already well-versed in how the Army operates, he chose this program because of its heavy focus on the human side of the war, rather than just the factual histories of major battles, generals, equipment, etc. In 2025, he completed ASU's Holocaust and Genocide Studies certificate program. Richard continues to learn as much as he can through non-credit courses at ASU and through seminars, lectures, and teaching events on the war and the Holocaust provided by numerous institutions in the US, the UK, and Europe.
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Richard believes that understanding the origins, experience, and aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust are increasingly relevant today and, of course, important for history's sake. His passion is the individual people in the war, and he loves uncovering those stories and sharing them with their families and the community. Many of those stories are forever preserved on this site.
Richard delivering a public presentation in Carnegie, PA, about the experiences of Pittsburgh WWII soldiers who participated in the liberation of concentration camps. October 13, 2025.