Oral history with Mr. Richard A. Murchison

              Oral history with Mr. Richard A. Murchison
F341.5 . M57 vol. 671
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Biography
Mr. Richard A. Murchison was born December 18, 1932, in Akron, Ohio. His parents, Emily Jones Murchison and Charles Lee Murchison, were both born in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Mr. Murchison's father is deceased, and his mother, age ninety- seven, maintains her own home in Red Banks, Mississippi. Mr. Murchison is married to Elizabeth Maxine Trigg Murchison. They have three children: Melanie Ross of Louisville, Kentucky, and Emily Carole Gaudreau and Richard, both residing in Hattiesburg. Mr. Murchison has one son from a previous marriage, Alan Lee Waller of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Mr. Murchison moved to Red Banks, Mississippi, in 1941, to live with his mother He attended public school in Marshall County, graduating from Byhalia High School in 1951. He graduated from Mississippi Southern College in 1959, where he received his commission in the U. S. Army. He served in the Army during the Vietnam conflict, one year as an advisor to a South Vietnamese unit and one year in an American unit, the Americal Division. He received a number of awards from both the U. S. Army and the South Vietnamese government for valor and meritorious service.
In 1978 Mr. Murchison retired from the Army and became the personnel director for First Mississippi National Bank. He is currently employed by Union Planters Bank of Southern Mississippi at the Petal branch.
In 1996 Mr. Murchison revisited Vietnam and returned to the places he had served and conducted military operations during the Vietnam conflict. A fifty- six- page account of this return trip, written by Mr. Murchison's nephew, Matthew Kline, is on file in the USM Department of Archives.
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