CHESTNUT HILL -- On Nov. 23, 2025, Betty and Terry Murphy, parishioners at St. Lawrence Church in Chestnut Hill for 46 years, were honored for their service with the Cheverus Award. They, and 99 others, received medals from Archbishop Richard G. Henning at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Two days later, Betty Murphy entered a memory care facility. About six years ago, Terry Murphy noticed his wife being more forgetful, struggling with complex tasks. Now, her Alzheimer's was getting worse. The Murphys had spent their careers as physicians at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Brighton. They first met in a busy intensive care unit, but it wasn't love at first sight.

"It was not like one of those Hollywood kaboom things," recalled Terry Murphy, now 86.

As they grew more comfortable working together, Terry Murphy fell for Betty Murphy's beauty, kindness, compassion, modesty, and intelligence.

"She's certainly brighter than I am," he joked. "I certainly married up."

They now have two children and five grandchildren, and will celebrate their 50th anniversary this December.

Betty Murphy, now 79, graduated top of her class at Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, New York, becoming the first graduate in the school's history to attend medical school. She was accepted into Boston University's Six-Year Medical Program, and later became the first female president of St. Elizabeth's medical staff. She and her husband cared for countless priests and religious. Terry Murphy was a doctor for St. John's Seminary for over 20 years. Betty Murphy was physician to the Daughters of St. Paul. She is now her husband's patient. Sometimes she remembers him, remembers the church that played such a massive role in their lives. Sometimes she doesn't. Terry Murphy spoke to The Pilot at St. Lawrence on Sept. 19. Due to her condition, Betty Murphy was unable to join him. She is mostly nonverbal and seldom leaves the memory care facility. Terry Murphy visited her earlier that day. He thinks she remembered him. Once, she asked him, "You haven't been here before, have you?"

"It's devastating," he said.

After a half century of marriage, he knows his wife better than just about anyone else he has cared for. He knows what she wants; he doesn't have to "tease it out" of her like he would a reluctant patient. Betty Murphy's condition has worsened, and she hasn't attended Sunday Mass at St. Lawrence for the last few weeks. The last time he took her, she said, "I love this place."

Terry Murphy loves it, too. He has a tour guide's knowledge of the church's history, excitedly recounting its founding by working-class Irish immigrants. When The Pilot visited, he kept the lights dim, to maximize the glow of the dramatic stained-glass windows. When St. Lawrence was threatened with closure, Betty Murphy led parishioners in a 24/7 vigil, which lasted for nine months. In 2004, the Archdiocese of Boston allowed the church, now part of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Brookline, to remain open.

Terry Murphy serves as a lector, runs coffee and hospitality after Mass some Sundays, and heads the team that waters the flower beds.

"I know those are little things, but they are the glue that keeps this little society together," he said.

He and his wife were "taken a little aback" when they found out they had won the Cheverus Award.

"It's not like we do spectacular stuff," he said. "We just do little things."

He doesn't want to be treated like a "living saint," though some of his patients, based on his recollections, could be described as such. Once he was caring for a priest who was "suffering terribly."

"He was Christ-like in his forbearance and his dealing with his earthly suffering," he remembered.

"If you haven't done it," the priest told him, "read the Book of Job."

Terry Murphy did so, and Job's message, that "suffering is part of life," has stayed with him. He often thought of Job while caring for patients. Now, he thinks of him as he cares for his wife. When treating clergy and religious, he saw how their faith kept them courageous. He said he never had a bad patient among them.

"The warmth of these people, even in duress, was immense," he said.

Whether he is serving his wife or anyone else, he tries to put himself in the position of the suffering patient before him.

"That's true in everything, right?" He said. "It's the Golden Rule."

Terry Murphy was born in Salem and grew up in Nahant, the smallest town in Massachusetts by area. Within Nahant's single square mile, he had an "idyllic childhood" surrounded by his extended family. He attended Harvard College as an English major, then turned to medicine. His Catholic faith inspired him to live a life of service.

"Reaching out to the marginalized and the people who are the invisible people has always been a concern of mine," he said.

He spent several years as a physician at the Pine Street Inn. The staff, who were mostly devout Catholics, was small, forcing him to take on many roles. He treated homeless people suffering from frostbite, skin infections, and pneumonia.

"They had full lives before tragedy struck, and they didn't live on the streets all their lives," he said.

After getting his medical degree from the University of Virginia, he returned to Boston. His decades-long career at St. Elizabeth's was briefly interrupted when he was drafted. He spent a year in Vietnam as a combat surgeon with the First Cavalry Division.

"It was harrowing," he said. "You talk about seeing people in distress, you can imagine."

His stories from Vietnam are "raw, and difficult to talk about." It was one of the most important years of his life, after an "insulated" upbringing in Nahant.

"I think it's also dealing with kids from all over our country who didn't have the education and didn't have the advantages I had as a child, who I was taking care of," he said.

After riding from Vietnam to Japan on a plane full of wounded soldiers, he loaded onto an ambulance a young man -- "a boy, really," he recalled -- paralyzed from the waist down due to shrapnel hitting his spinal cord.

"Hey Doc," the soldier told him. "Don't look so sad."

He sees similarities between the soldiers and the priests he would later work with.

"They're people who do very hard work under sometimes harrowing circumstances," he said.

Returning to the U.S. made him even more determined to help the less fortunate.

"It's frustrating," he said of medicine. "It can be depressing. It can be frightening."

And yet, he found it "immensely satisfying."

"I've had a very full life," he said, adding, "Being intimate, in the right sense of the word, with people's inner lives is a privilege. People let you in, and of course trust you with that. It is an immense privilege to be put in that position, and I don't think a day has gone on that I haven't thought of how blessed I am to have had this line of work."