09/14/2026
Kathleen Murray Moran 🩷☘️💙
Co-Founder, Survivors of the Shield
It is with deep sorrow that we at Survivors of the Shield announce we lost our co-founder on September 11, 2026 — 50 years to the day after her first husband, New York City Police Officer Brian J. Murray of the Bomb Squad, was killed in the line of duty on September 11, 1976.
Kathleen was a mother, an author, a professor of writing and Irish literature, a fierce advocate for the families of fallen officers, and a loving wife to Jim Moran
On September 11, 1976, Brian Murray, 27, died while attempting to render safe a bomb planted at Grand Central Terminal by Croatian terrorists who then hijacked a TWA flight. Kathleen was left a young widow with two small sons. What followed was not only grief, but work. With Mary Beth O’Neill and Susan McCormack she helped found Survivors of the Shield so that line-of-duty widows and children would not face the same closed doors she had: half a pension that vanished if she remarried, little institutional support, and no organized voice.
She did not stop at founding an organization. She helped push the legislation that became Governor Mario Cuomo’s COPS agenda — protecting survivor pensions after remarriage and opening SUNY scholarships and a St. John’s scholarship to the children and widows of officers killed in the line of duty. She worked with mayors, commissioners, the PBA, the Crime Victims Board, and Motor Vehicles so that fallen officers would be recognized and their families would have benefits they could keep. In 2014 she helped see the corner of Charles and Bleecker Streets in Manhattan renamed Police Officer Brian Murray Way.
She earned a B.A. in Journalism, magna cm laude, and an M.A. in English from SUNY Stony Brook. For twenty-five years she taught writing and literature at Suffolk County Community College. In 2017 she published her memoir, Life Detonated: The True Story of a Widow and a Hijacker, a book about loss, unanswered questions, correspondence with one of the hijackers, and the long road toward forgiveness. She appeared on 60 Minutes, NBC, Fox, and other outlets not for attention, but so the “forgotten 9/11” of 1976 and the families who came after it would not be forgotten.
She later found love again with Jim Moran and built a life on Long Island that included their daughter and the two sons she raised after Brian’s death. She organized writing and book groups and remained a speaker and advocate for police survivors.
Kathleen Murray Moran turned the worst day of her life into an organization that still stands. Survivors of the Shield exists because she, Mary Beth, and Susan refused to let widows and children be left alone with a pension letter and a folded flag.
She is survived by her husband, Jim Moran; her children and grandchildren; and by every family SOS has walked beside since 1988.
