Inducted in 2002
Soldier, US Army
Recipient, Medal of Honor

Robert Charles Murray was born on December 10, 1946 and spent his young years on Marion Avenue in the Bronx, just a block from where fellow Hall of Honor inductee Maurice Cunniffe had grown up a generation before.

Bob’s father, James Murray, who had spent some time at the Prep during his high school years, was a maintenance man. His mother, Frances Vail Murray, an alumna of St. Mary’s High School in Katonah, New York, was a homemaker. The Murrays, a devout family, would take their family just down the street to Our Lady of Mercy Church, an old Bronx parish whose first home had actually been Fordham's very own University Church.

After attending his parish grammar school, Bobby made the short trip east along Fordham Road to enter the Prep in September 1960. During his Hughes Hall years, the Murrays would move to Dante Avenue in Tuckahoe, New York, into a home that had been in the family for years. Bob's Prep career would continue, though his commute from Westchester would be just a bit longer than his stroll from Marion Avenue. 

At the Prep, Robert was a class officer all four years and devoted time to the sodalities as well as the Sanctuary Society. He graduated with honors in 1964, a year after his older brother, James, Jr., who would later serve as chairman of the Prep Board of Trustees. A third brother, Peter, would become a Prep alumnus in 1968. The Murray boys also had three sisters: Patricia, Frances and Margaret.  

After his Prep years, Robert Murray stayed on at Rose Hill, graduating Fordham University in 1968. As told by Arthur Centonze, lifelong friend and classmate from Bob’s grammar school, Prep and undergraduate days: “We hung out as kids, played neighborhood basketball and baseball, and traveled together to the Bahamas during the spring of our junior year at college along with his brother. He was a good friend, an inspiring friend. He believed that practice, dedication, and self-sacrifice would pay off in the end.”

Maintaining the highest of academic averages throughout his college years, Murray was accepted by Harvard Business School, and after his Fordham graduation, he headed to Massachusetts to begin work on his MBA. When he received his draft notice — undergraduates were entitled to a deferment; such was not always the case for graduate students — he decided to put his Harvard plans on hold and to serve his country at the height of the Vietnam War. As pointed out by Vietnam War historian Edward Murphy in Vietnam Medal of Honor Heroes, given Murray’s education, he likely could have applied to OCS, Officer Candidate School and pursued a non-combat commission. Instead, he chose to join as an enlisted soldier. 

By mid-1970, Murray was a staff sergeant in Company B, 4th Battalion, 31st Regiment, 196th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division. On June 7, 1970 near the village of Hiep Duc in the Republic of Vietnam, Robert C. Murray would prove himself a man for others by laying down his life for his friends. He was only 23 years old. 

In August 1974, Vice President Gerald R. Ford presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Robert C. Murray’s family at Blair House, in Washington, DC. The citation reads as follows:

Staff Sgt. Murray distinguished himself while serving as a squad leader with Company B. Staff Sgt. Murray's squad was searching for an enemy mortar that had been threatening friendly positions when a member of the squad tripped an enemy grenade rigged as a booby trap. Realizing that he had activated the enemy booby trap, the soldier shouted for everybody to take cover. Instantly assessing the danger to the men of his squad, Staff Sgt. Murray unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own safety, threw himself on the grenade absorbing the full and fatal impact of the explosion. By his gallant action and self-sacrifice, he prevented the death or injury of the other members of his squad. Staff Sgt. Murray's extraordinary courage and gallantry, at the cost of his life above and beyond the call of duty, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

Years later, Arthur Centonze would recall a conversation at a small dinner hosted in his Bob’s honor just before he shipped off on November 6, 1969:

We discussed the pros and cons of the country's involvement in Vietnam as many young people did at the time.  Bob said two things that still stick in my mind after all this time. One was that he wanted to be as prepared as possible. The other was that he thought he could make a difference.

He was certainly as prepared as possible for his tour of duty, volunteering for Special Ops training with the Rangers after basic training. And there can be no doubt that he made a difference in a most extraordinary way for those men whose lives his heroic and selfless actions saved.

Robert Murray is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. His memory, however, will live on — in the hearts of generation after generation of the Murray family, at Fordham and Harvard, and even on the very street where he lived.  On Veteran's Day 2012, the Village of Tuckahoe in the Township of Eastchester renamed a section of Dante Avenue near Bobby’s boyhood home Staff Sergeant Robert C. Murray Way.  

The Fordham Prep Archives proudly houses a copy of that street sign.