Healdsburg holds elaborate memorial for beloved native son Walter Murray

Elmer Walter Murray's last ride through Healdsburg turned heads, prompted questions and stopped traffic Saturday. He took it in a horse-drawn, orange-red carriage trailed by cars and trucks in a procession bracketed by police cars with lights flashing,

“What's the parade?” a man asked. “Someone's getting married,” a passer-by exclaimed.

It wasn't a wedding procession. But there was plenty of love as those whose lives Murray had touched and altered sent him gently, memorably, on his way.

Murray, who went by Walter, was born in Healdsburg, raised in Healdsburg and lived his whole life in Healdsburg. He died Jan. 27 in Healdsburg, in the home where he had lived for 100 of his 103 years.

On Saturday, people who will not forget him carried out the funeral he had planned.

It started in an empty lot on North Street, where Murray's casket was loaded into the carriage pulled by two black Percheron draft horses crowned with white feathers. The mood was reflective, a touch melancholy, and busy, as people hustled to get things in order so as to get to the Seventh-day Adventist church in time for the 2 p.m. service.

Gina Riner, 59, who helped manage the day and would ride in the carriage, met Murray when she was 47. He was at a senior center luncheon where she was the guest speaker on the topic of how to research the history of one's house. They bonded over Italian food - he loved pasta salads and French bread - and history, of which he had seen so much.

“He was 91 years old and I never thought I would have the most profound friendship with an old man,” she said. “It's unbelievable to me that he's dead because he was so vital, he was alive, he was relevant. And we had a ball.”

A man in a suit and a somber mood stopped to talk. Augurio Vielma, now 47, knocked on Murray's door when he was 22. It was a year after he arrived in the United States from Mexico and he was looking for a job. He was Murray's gardener from that day on.

“Always, every day, I would say, ‘Buenos días, buenos días.' And always, he would reply, ‘Good morning,'?” Vielma said. He laughed at the memory.

“He was like my father, because I didn't have parents here. He was like my father,” he said.

From the empty lot, the procession wound around Healdsburg's central plaza and north along Healdsburg Avenue. It seemed that every other person it passed snapped a photograph.

Then it stopped at a Craftsman home with a double-pitched roof. Murray's parents built it - the story goes that they helped him drive the first nail - and they moved in when he was 3. Out front waited two men, Larry Bertinelli of St. Helena, who held a guitar, and his cousin Tom Petersen of Willow Creek, in Humboldt County, who held a concertina, Murray's favorite instrument.

Murray asked for them to be there, Petersen said.

Bertinelli, 67, who came to know Murray as a child many years ago because Murray was dating his aunt, strummed and sang a soft song: “If you miss the train I'm on, you will know that I am gone / You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles …”

Then Petersen, 70, said, “I know this is a funeral, but this is a happy song. It was one of Walter's favorites, he always wanted me to play it.” As he played a sprightly Italian folk song, the concertina's bellows exhaled with a sigh.

“He was as much a true uncle to us all as any of the other uncles,” said Petersen, who recalled meeting Murray when he was 10 and Murray was 38. Petersen was visiting his aunt at her Petaluma home and Murray was there.

Murray questioned him eagerly about life, about school.

“He acted as though my unexpected appearance at 630 Galland Street was one of the greatest bits of good fortune to come his way,” Petersen said. “And that's how it's been ever since.”

The procession moved on to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, where Murray's casket was carried inside.

The pastor, Jimmy Painter, delivered a prayer.

“We thank you, Lord, that for a short time in earth's time, something precious was here.”

Elmer Walter Murray was born Dec. 24, 1912, the first year that a woman registered to vote in Sonoma County, according to the Sonoma County Historical Society. He could tell stories of cowboys driving cattle through town.

He started raising and selling rabbits when he was 8 years old. He took over the Sunset Laundry from his father when he was 18 and ran it for 40 years. He was a beekeeper and he bred and sold red factor canaries for 70 years, a venture he downsized only as he neared the century mark.

He dated Bertinelli and Petersen's aunt, Mary LaFranchi, for 28 years. In 1971, when he was 58, he married Helen Stenquist, who died in 1993. He had no children.

“He had a great sense of what it means to establish oneself in a community and really give back to that community,” said Amarica Rafanelli, 18. She met him when she was 8, through Gina Riner, and he helped her with a school report about Healdsburg.

He became part of her life. She played guitar for him. He introduced her to his treasured canaries.

“We're going to miss Walter,” Rafanelli said. “He was quite instrumental in defining what Healdsburg is today.”

Staff Writer Jeremy Hay blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach him at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.