Divorce in Idaho

It was announced on April 19 that on April i Margaretta Fitler Murphy, 36, of New York, had obtained an Idaho divorce from Dr. James Slater Murphy, 41.

Ordinarily, that news might have been worth a few lines in a few local papers. But not now; it was splashed all over Page One. For as most everyone knew, "Happy" Murphy had long been rumored to become the second wife of New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller, 54. As the New York Mirror headlined: ROCKY:

SHE'S FREE.

The Bridal Gown. Happy was born to a wealthy, well-connected family. Her father, William W. Fitler, left a $4,000,000 estate when he died in 1947. Most of it came from a family ropemaking firm founded by Happy's grandfather, Edwin H. Fitler, a onetime (1887-91) mayor of Philadelphia. Her mother, Margaretta Harrison Fitler, was the great-granddaughter of General George G. Meade, the Union commander at the Battle of Get tysburg. Happy's Main Line parents were divorced in 1936. Her father remarried once before he died. Her mother remarried twice, is now Mrs. George E. Bartol Jr., of Wynnewood, Pa.

Happy went to the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pa., graduated in 1944, earning a record of average scholarship and her nickname ("because she just made everybody happy," recalls a classmate). In December 1948, she married Dr. "Robin" Murphy in a big society wedding in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer called Happy "pulchritudinous," "superbly lovely" and noted that she wore a bridal gown "brought from Belgium by her great-great-grandmother and worn by every bride in the family since then."

Happy's husband, a graduate of Milton Academy and Princeton, was then a fellow at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. His father, Dr. James B. Murphy, had been for nearly 40 years a cancer research scientist with the Rockefeller Institute. Because of this relationship, Robin was close to the Rockefellers, had spent a good deal of time as a youngster with David Rockefeller, and even now lives in a town house adjacent to David's town house in New York's East Sixties.

Family Ties. Robin Murphy walked in his father's footsteps, wound up in 1958 working as a virologist at the Rockefeller Institute. He is still there. The Murphys, who have four children, bought a home near Nelson Rockefeller's Pocantico Hills estate in New York's Westchester County, a summer place near Rocky's Seal Harbor, Me., home. Happy's own family had been Main Line friends with the Philadelphia Clarks. Their daughter was Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, tall, reserved former wife of Nelson, mother of his five children. She divorced the Governor in Reno, Nev., in March 1962, after a surprise announcement that the couple was separating after 31 years of marriage.

Happy worked for Rockefeller as a volunteer in 1958, during his first campaign for Governor. A bit later, he hired her for his personal staff, a job she held until 1961. When the Governor was divorced, there was a whirlwind of reports that Happy would soon split up with Robin. It took more than a year.

Last week's divorce announcement came from an attorney for Dr. Murphy. Margaretta and her husband, he said, had discovered "irreconcilable differences."

She went to Sun Valley, Idaho, in February, whiled away the state's six weeks residence requirement skating and sunning. When her lawyer went into Idaho's Camas County district court, he filed a petition based on grounds of "grievous mental anguish." The court approved the split, and all documents concerning the case were promptly sealed--unavailable to the public.

"No Comment." The news unleashed a horde of reporters at the heels of the Rockefellers, Murphys and any other available friends "close" to the situation.

Dr. Murphy, approached by a New York Mirror reporter as he left a cab by his home, blew up: "Good God! What is wrong with you people? Let me alone! I will not say a word to any newspapermen. Go see Mrs. Murphy."

But at week's end Happy was nowhere to be found. And Nelson Rockefeller's calls were taken by a harried press aide, who said: "There is no comment. Draw no inference from that as to the future.

I am simply saying today that there is no comment."

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