Joan Patricia Murphy

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Joan Patricia Murphy (born Joan Patricia O'Malley) was an American Democratic politician who served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners, representing the 6th district in the Chicago area. She was born in South Boston, Massachusetts, around 1936 or 1937. She studied at State Teachers College, now the University of Massachusetts Boston. Murphy started public service as Crestwood's clerk (1965–1969), then clerk and later Supervisor for Worth Township. In 1986 she ran for the Cook County Board but did not win the general election. After the board shifted to single-member districts, she ran again in 1994 and lost. She finally won election to the 6th district in December 2002 and was reelected in 2006, 2010, and 2014, serving until 2016.

As a commissioner, Murphy chaired the Labor Committee and the Finance-Labor Committee, and she served as vice-chair of the Finance-Real Estate Committee and the Zoning and Building Committee. She also sat on many other committees. Murphy led the effort against mandatory unpaid furloughs for supervisors. She died on September 18, 2016, in Crestwood, Illinois, from breast cancer, at age 79. She was married to Donald Francis Murphy from 1973 until her death, and they had four children.