When you grow up in Farmersville, Illinois, you know early you might be destined for a rural life. The one-stoplight town of 500 about 25 miles south of Springfield is surrounded by cornfields and coal mines. It's a place where folks have more than one job to make ends meet, and John Murphy was no exception. He worked his 200-acre farm on the outskirts of town and handled orders at a Springfield stockyard. John also owned the town's only funeral parlor and operated Farmersville's only ambulance service. John Murphy and his family lived in the same home that housed the funeral parlor and preparation area. The kids helped out on the farm and, as his six boys and two girls grew up, he brought some of them into the other businesses. John's son Dennis recalls driving the town ambulance to traffic accidents and death scenes at age 16.

"It was just a normal part of our lives," recalls Dennis Murphy, now a professor of agricultural engineering at Penn State. "I had seen my share of suffering and loss people killed in accidents, classmates losing their fathers but I think it affects everyone differently. I think it taught us to be emotionally strong in the face of adversity."

While Murphy does not quite come out and say it, his close encounters with the hazards and occasional tragedies of rural life probably ordained his career choice at an early age, although he did not realize his destiny until much later. His father's example of stoic hard work is certainly ingrained into Murphy's formidable work ethic as well. "He loves his work so much that I believe he doesn't really view it as work," says Dennis' wife, Chris, a home care aide for Brookline Home Care and Hospice in State College. "He'll often work at our home computer after dinner. Even when he stops working to watch television, he usually tries to read at the same time."

While he enjoyed farming and respected his father's determination to build a business, Murphy did not stick around Farmersville after 1967, when he was one of 67 graduates from the area's small high school. He didn't have a career path mapped out either, although he knew he was not going to be a teacher. After a year of junior college, Murphy lit out for Illinois State University. "I knew I wanted to get a four-year degree and I knew I was interested in agriculture, but I was just stumbling around taking classes."

Then he came to a crossroads. "In my senior year, I had to choose between two classes, Soil Science 2 and a new course called Agricultural Accident Prevention," Murphy recalls with a smile. "I decided my background driving the ambulance was not much different than studying safety, so I took the safety class. I literally fell in love with the concept of doing this work."

That class, the first agricultural safety course ever offered at a university or college, also was Murphy's first step into the field of safety. During the early 1970s, occupational safety and health was an emerging field, but most students pursuing degrees in the discipline focused on industrial specialties. Farming then, as now, consisted largely of family-owned operations that were, in effect, small businesses. "A few Midwestern states had agricultural safety specialists in their extension organizations, most of whom had backgrounds in agricultural engineering," Murphy says. "Those of us interested in pursuing jobs in agricultural safety had nowhere to go, so we went into industry."

Murphy went on to earn a master's degree in occupational health and safety from Illinois State University in 1973. He then entered the industrial marketplace as a safety inspector for Crum and Forster Insurance Company in St. Louis, Missouri. He spent four days a week driving to factories, construction sites, restaurants, and retail stores to assess hazards at a salary he diplomatically describes as "very low." Still, Murphy looks back on that job as the most valuable experience he's ever had. "I thought I learned all about safety in college, but you have to go out and see how the real world works," he says. "I found out how to spot and identify hazards. More important, I learned how to tell a business owner or an individual how to correct problems in a diplomatic way."

"Dennis has a subtle way of telling people how to correct a safety hazard that allows them to reach the right decision," says Sam Steel, managing director of the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety and a former Penn State extension safety project assistant. "He's that way with those who work for him, too. He allows you to make a mistake, but he will correct the details you miss and expect you to learn from the experience."

By 1975, Murphy was looking for better opportunities. He accepted a job as a fire and safety engineer at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. Much of his work involved delivering safety workshops to different departments at the huge nuclear energy research facility, which employed nearly 5,000 people. Argonne was a fertile learning ground for Murphy, who had never taught organized groups before. "I was able to learn how to design and present an educational program to small groups, and I discovered a way to present safety issues that was comfortable for me and effective for those taking the workshop," Murphy says.

Murphy helps a young volunteer at the annual Farm Safety Fair check his reaction time using a test simulator that mimics being snagged by a spinning PTO shaft. The event was held at University Park in 1998.

Murphy had started his career just a few months before a 1974 legislative mandate that every state extension service hire an extension agricultural safety specialist. By June 1975, major universities in every state had begun advertising to fill newly created safety positions. "I had kept in touch with agricultural safety by attending workshops and training sessions, so when these state extension positions opened up, I was ready," Murphy says. "I had been to Pennsylvania only once before applying to Penn State, but it was the largest school that still had an opening."

Murphy came to the University Park campus in the summer of 1976 as an instructor, stepping into a program featuring a pesticide safety effort (see "Playing It Safe With Pesticides", page 16), several county extension safety programs, and a statistical research project tracking farm injuries in the state. He was ready to start offering training and information, but where to begin? Tractor safety? Farm injuries? Murphy had a plan. "I had attended a National Safety Council in-service training session on how to get started as an ag safety extension program leader," Murphy recalls. "The first thing they told us to do was organize a statewide advisory group to identify who is interested in safety, who the influential leaders in the state are, and what safety issues have the highest priority." Eventually, Murphy's group became the Pennsylvania Agricultural Safety Council, and he has used that group as a model for approaching issues again and again, including establishing a Key Leaders Group to help formulate Pennsylvania's landmark Farm Safety and Occupational Health Act of 1994.

Over the past quarter-century, Penn State has developed one of the top agricultural safety programs in the nation. The way Murphy tells it, he has grown along with the program, always working on new demonstrations and training seminars or refining successful publications. In 1979, he earned his Ph.D. in agricultural education from Penn State and was promoted to assistant professor. Now a full professor, he oversees most of the College's safety programs. He also published Safety and Health for Production Agriculture, considered the definitive textbook for agricultural safety and health professionals. Murphy's hard work also has established him as one of the top five farm safety experts in the country. John Tacelosky, chief of the division of health and safety in the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, worked closely with Murphy in formulating farm safety legislation. He remembers clearly when he realized how influential Murphy's work has been. "When I started working with him, Dennis suggested I attend a workshop at the National Institute of Farm Safety," Tacelosky says. "I went there thinking I could make contacts and come back with some great ideas to share. After a day, someone asked, 'Why are you asking us all these questions when you have the top expert back in Pennsylvania?' That's when I realized how valuable Dennis has been to this state."

"Dennis really put ag safety on the map in Pennsylvania," Sam Steel says. "I think his work has helped raise the quality of the College and of the University."

"When we are traveling to conferences, I do get the feeling that the people there are really impressed at meeting him," Chris Murphy adds. "We laugh at that kind of reaction, because he's really an unassuming guy who is very reflective. He's very quiet, but not because he has nothing to say. He likes to take the time to collect his thoughts before saying what he thinks."

Although he is exposed to sometimes grim statistics and anecdotes about safety, Murphy isn't a Type-A personality when it comes to keeping safe in his private life. He and Chris ride horses as a hobby and he works out regularly. Still, he does admit that he takes safety into account every now and then. "Well, I do own the top-rated lawnmower for safety and we bought a Chrysler because they were the first to have dual airbags," he says. "I also put off buying my truck until models with airbags were available. Chris likes to bicycle around town and I don't do that because I don't think it's very safe. But I don't let my safety expertise prevent me from enjoying the good things in life. Safety isn't about stopping activities, it's about doing things the right way."

Murphy admits that he is proud his achievements have helped advance agricultural safety and health. But like his father, Murphy knows nothing grows be it a business or a crop without hard work. "I was certainly a lone wolf when I started," he says. "Now there are more students entering the field every year. Penn State's farm safety program has grown, but I'd like to see every county schedule safety programs every year. There is a lot left to do."

— John Wall