John J Murphy came from Loughmark, near Cahirsiveen, Co Kerry. He emigrated to London in the early 1930s after leaving national school. When he died at 96, he headed an international construction empire employing 2,500 people.
He work for various construction companies before taking on sub-contracting work himself. He started building RAF airports during the Second World War. Among the airports he constructed were Dunmore and Weathersfield in Essex and Sudbury in Sussex.
He moved onto motorways in the 1960s and the gas network in the 1970s in both Ireland and England. He was also behind the Channel Tunnel and several of England’s major pipelines, always beating the competition. He went on to win a major contract for the Olympic Stadium, prompting the newspaper headline – “Murphy strikes Olympic Gold”.
An early riser, he shunned publicity, loved sea fishing and was drawn to poetry and story, hard graft and loyal companionship. He avoided the showy millionaire lifestyle.At his funeral in Cahirciveen, the parish priest recalled how Murphy, a hard taskmaster, once rebuffed an engineer. He had joked to the boss that Rome wasn’t built in a day, to which Murphy replied: “Murphy wasn’t around then.”
Up at 6.30am each morning, he appeared on sites and work yards up to a year before his death. He always made sure his men worked on a full stomach - he was known to remark that a man on an empty stomach was no good and couldn’t work.
He never valued certificates. “He looked for a determination to work hard, not pieces of paper. Once he had that, he always returned the fierce loyalty of the men who stood by him,” his daughter Caroline said. When Irishmen came to London to work for him, he saw in them the same lonely journey he had undertaken himself, she said.
In 2001 he received an honorary doctorate degree in law from University College, Cork.
John J Murphy was twice married. His first wife Christina died and he was survived by Bernard, their son. He was also survived by his second wife Kathy and their children, Caroline and James.
He died in London on May 7, 2009.