Wendell H. Murphy is a former North Carolina
farmer, Democrat politician, and namesake of the Wendell H. Murphy Football
Center.
Wendell H.
Murphy was born in Rose
Hill
, North
Carolina.
In 1960,
Murphy received a B.S. in agriculture from North Carolina
State University
. After graduating from college, Murphy
became an agriculture teacher, but soon Wendell and his dad, Holmes
Murphy, opened a feeding manufacturing operation. The operation
started in 1964 with area farmers in open lots. By 1979, Wendell
and Holmes Murphy had started sow and farrowing operations as well.
The business is now known as
Murphy
Family Farms and is a part of the
Smithfield Foods operation.
In 1983, Murphy was elected to the
North Carolina House of
Representatives as a Democrat. He represented North Carolina's
tenth district until 1988. He was then elected to the
North Carolina Senate where he served
until 1992. During this time, Murphy received a lot of attention
for his work in politics including the Tar Heel of the Week Award
by
The News &
Observer in May 1987 and the
Order of the Long Leaf Pine in
1988. Murphy was later profiled by the News and Observer in their
pulitzer prize-winning "Boss Hog" series. In these investigative
pieces, the N&O illustrated the rise of the hog industry in
North Carolina with the help of politicians, such as Murphy. During
his time in state politics, Murphy sponsored or helped to pass
bills which exempted hog facilities from local zoning laws, from
environmental litigation from neighbors, and gave the industry
generous subsidies and tax-exemptions. However, because NC laws do
not prohibit state lawmakers from working on legislation in which
they have a financial stake, Murphy did not technically break any
laws.
Murphy was also mentioned in the Boss Hog series as having donated
$100,000 in 1988 to Harold "Bull" Hardison's campaign for
Lieutenant Governor. That donation was well over the $4,000 legal
limit that is allowable under law. However, neither Murphy nor
Hardison were prosecuted for this crime because it was discovered
in 1992 after the two-year statute of limitations had expired.
Policy observers have conjectured that the illegal contribution was
in return for Hardison's support of the hog industry in the past,
and for his sponsorship of the Hardison Amendments, which put an
end to a number of environmental regulations that affected the hog
industry.
Critics of Murphy claim that the laws he passed helped to enable
unsustainable growth in the hog industry, which later caused
massive water pollution resulting in fish kills throughout eastern
North Carolina. Proponents on the other hand claim that his
legislation helped to expand the industry at a time when it was
needed to offset the job losses caused by the decline of tobacco
farming.
While in politics, Murphy also helped with
North Carolina State University athletics.
He was a
member of the Centennial
Authority, which helped develop the RBC Center
, the home for NC State Wolfpack men's
basketball along with the Carolina Hurricanes and Carolina Cobras. In 1987, while
serving as senator, Murphy sponsored legislation that gave 1.5
million dollars for the initial planning of the RBC Center. Murphy
then kept working to get funding to the stadium until he eventually
got 22 million dollars donated to the project. For his work with
North Carolina State University athletics, the Wendell H. Murphy
Football Center was named after Murphy in 2003.
Wendell
Murphy now lives in his birthplace of Rose
Hill, North
Carolina with his
wife Linda. He has four children and seven
grandchildren.
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