James "Jim" Roland Murdoch

James Roland (Jim) Murdoch passed away peacefully on March 21, 2021, at his residence in Commonwealth Senior Living at Georgian Manor, Chesapeake, Virginia.  He was 99 years old.  Born September 26, 1921, in the farming and fishing community of Wildwood, in the coastal county of Carteret, North Carolina, Jim’s life covered an expanse of time and world changing events scarcely imaginable today.

A private funeral service will take place in May at Munden Funeral Home in Morehead City, NC. Interment will follow at Gethsemane Memorial Park in Newport, NC.

Born with a responsibility and work ethic inherited from his Scot forebears, Jim was running his father’s country store, mill and gas station at the age of 10.  Long before the dream of TV, locals would gather at the store to gossip, exchange news and listen to the radio, a communications miracle many homes did not possess in the early 1930’s.

Jim and his family were fortunate to be part of a self-sustaining community that survived the devastation wrought in 1929 by the Great Depression.  No amount of resilience, though, could prepare Jim, or any American, for the life altering events triggered by the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Already possessing a love and skill for flying, Jim enlisted in the US Navy and became a Naval Aviator on March 21, 1944.  Within a short time, the young North Carolinian farm boy was piloting a B-26 Marauder in the Pacific Theater, bombing Japanese naval targets.  He was 23 years old.

With the war’s end, Jim returned home and married his local love, Elsie McCain, in 1945.  Deciding to make the Navy his career, Jim and Elsie ultimately ended up in Atlanta, Georgia, where he put the GI Bill to good use by obtaining a degree in engineering from Georgia Tech.  He carried a love for the mighty Ramblin’ Wrecks throughout his life.

As a Naval officer, Jim’s career allowed he and Elsie to travel the world.  During those exciting years, the young couple also found time to have two daughters, Denise and Debra, of whom it would be hard to overestimate his pride.

His final tour led him to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he retired from the Navy in 1969.  It was then he began a second career with the Newport News Shipbuilding company, thoroughly enjoying the life of a problem solving engineer.  He retired from his second career in 1991 to take care of Elsie, who was in poor health.  She passed away in 1994.

As the fates would have it, Jim would be blessed to meet another woman to fall in love with and marry: Iris Vergakis.  The two of them spent many happy years travelling and visiting their large collection of children and grandchildren.  Iris passed away in 2013.

No account of Jim’s life could do him justice without mentioning the fact that the man could fix or build anything.  Literally, anything.  Cars?  He built VW’s from the ground up.  TV’s?  Built them from kits.  Anything.  Perhaps equally impressive was his capacity to learn new things.  Late in life, he went from being a non-musician to a finger-snapping, Lawrence Welk-loving, keyboard player.  Just as remarkable, he learned (though with some trepidation) to embrace the computer and the internet.  Quite a leap for a man who had clear memories of manually tuning the old RCA radio in his father’s store 70 years earlier.  Jim was a perfect example of what people mean when they refer to the Greatest Generation.  He was the real deal and he will be greatly missed.

Jim is survived by his brother, Gerald and his sister Janice.  Also his daughters Dee, Debra and her husband Jack and his grandchildren Sean and Katie.  He is also survived by Iris’s children Jeannette Hamilton,  Ron Vergakis and his wife Linda and Leigh Anne Parker and her husband Alan.  Those, of course, are in addition to Iris’s many fine grandchildren.

SPECIAL THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Staff of Georgian Manor who loving cared for our father these past two years.

Westminster Hospice Nurses and staff for providing our father comfort in his last months.

And for all the friends and family who provided support – too many to count!  Thank you!

In lieu of flowers:

Disabled American Veterans

PO Box 14301

Cincinnati Ohio 45250

or

Westminster Hospice Foundation

3181 Shore Drive

Suite 201

Virginia Beach, VA 23451

Attention: Tammi Shaffer

Please note”Hospice” in the memo if you write a check

Visit  www.wcbay.com/foundation

Family and friends are welcome to submit online condolences at www.mundenfuneralhome.net

Arrangements by Munden Funeral Home & Crematory in Morehead City, NC.