Daughter of Thomas Bent Murdock and Francina Crawford. Married to Edward H. Pattison in Apr 1919.
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Mary Alice Murdock probably deserves to rank first among Kansas women in the field of journalism. As editor and manager of the El Dorado Republican she is continuing a publication and an influence which were dignified and ennobled by her honored father, the late Thomas Benton Murdock.
She was born at Emporia, Kansas, February 28, 1870, and four days after her birth her parents removed to El Dorado, where she grew up and was educated in the public schools. She worked nearly through the senior year in high school, and finished her education in Mount Washington Seminary at Baltimore, Maryland. She grew up in the atmosphere of journalism and fitted herself into practically every detail of her father's paper. Thus she was a thorough newspaper woman at the time of her father's death on November 4, 1909, and on December 1 following she took an active part in the management of the Republican and largely directed it until April 1, 1910. Then, under-appointment from President Taft, she filled for four years the office of postmaster of El Dorado. On May 1, 1914, Miss Murdock took active charge of the El Dorado Republican, and has since been its editor. The El Dorado Republican has a large circulation over Butler and surrounding counties, and its influence is practically state wide. It is now and has been for the past two years the official county and city paper. The plant and offices gire on East Central Avenue, and Miss Murdock owns the building in which it is published. Miss Murdock is the director of the Carnegie Library, n. member of the Avon Club and of the Episcopal Church.
Through her career as a newspaper woman Miss Murdock has felt that the greatest ideals she could set before her was the example and character of her father.
HER MAY MORNING
It was a year ago—on May 4, 1932—that Mary Alice Murdock Pattison left us, and now May with its flowers and its birds and velvety grasses and all its gladness of life has returned and our hearts are heavy all over again with a longing for her gay presence. This was the season of the year that she loved best, and she revelled in her garden etched with the shadows of the waving trees on stately Walnut Hill. Hers was a spirit attuned with the creative mystery of nature and the fullness of ripening spring brings back her memory with poignant force. These were the days when her "Garden Sass" column sparkled with her joy of life and her deep appreciation of its beauty. What joyous thoughts were left unsaid when she went; how the copy desk would welcome today the few sheets of her little offering, all resplendent with the animation and the vigor with which she infused them.
When she went, this was one of the reflections that she inspired:
"This is May. Her garden is blooming. The bees are at the blossoms. The birds will sing their joyous carols. The fish will ripple the waters with tiny eddies as they dart
to the surface. There will be beauty and peace where she sat—but the garden and her friends will know her no more. Yet for her—it cannot be otherwise—must be some celestial garden where she will spend all the day of eternity in environment of surpassing beauty and peace, with kindred fitness for her rare spirit—the ‘spirit of old-fashioned roses.'"
And may her May morning today be the complete fulfillment of that desire.