Nora Marlo Murphy was born June 16, 1941 to Muriel and Northam Murphy in Monterey, California. Nora’s birth father was wounded in the Pacific during WW2 and died when she was very young. Her mother remarried a young war veteran, Roy Neely, and the family, including her brother Michael, spent years moving between California and Alaska.
Nora was a happy, bright student who loved reading the classics and was voted valedictorian of her graduating high school class. For her graduation present, Nora’s father, a pilot, taught her how to fly and perform aerobatics. Nora’s journey of faith started at the age of six when she announced to her parents that she would be attending the church down the street.
Later, Nora went to Columbia Christian College for high school and then Abilene Christian College where she met her husband to be, Gordon Oliver Ellis from Smithville, Ontario. They married in 1961 and in 1964, moved to Port Arthur, Ontario to help seed a church. Nora and Gordon brought three children into the world: Gordon Oliver, born in Texas in 1962, Roy Franklyn, born in Port Arthur in 1965, and Romy Marlo, who arrived in May 1969.
Nora always considered childrearing to have been her most important life work, and she was a dedicated and tender mother. Style was serious business to Nora and she brought her Californian fashion sense with her when she arrived in the Lakehead. For the ever-elegant Nora, there was no such thing as too many shoes or bangles.
Nora’s homemaking sk.