Sergeant John Murphy served with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy in WW2. He had is vocational calling while serving there and a monument was dedicated in Lizzano Pistoiese in his honor. His obituary from the Washington Post tells his storyMonsignor John J. Murphy, 74, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who served as director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the 1970s and early 1980s, died Sept. 15 at a nursing home in Brockton, Mass. He had heart ailments. Monsignor Murphy spent 36 years in the Washington area, beginning in 1955 as an associate pastor at St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Silver Spring. He briefly served as associate pastor at St. Ann's Parish in Washington before he was named assistant director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington in 1959. He then became the administrator of St. Michael and served as its pastor from 1968 to 1973. From 1973 to 1981, he served as director of the National Shrine. In 1981, he was appointed pastor of St. Joseph Parish on Capitol Hill, serving there for 10 years until his retirement in 1991 for health reasons. Monsignor Murphy was a native of Dorchester, Mass. He served in the elite 10th Mountain division of the Fifth Army in Italy during World War II. After the war, he studied at a seminary for the Society of African Missions and then entered St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, where he received bachelor's degrees in philosophy and sacred theology. He was ordained in 1954.