09/22/2026
In the summer of 1973, a young man stepped off a bus in Washington, DC. He had no job and no place to sleep. But he had a purpose.
His name was Bill Murphy.
Bill grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut, in a real estate family. A comfortable future was waiting for him. But at Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Massachusetts, his faith led him elsewhere. To Bill, the Gospel was not something you read on Sunday. It was something you lived every day.
He chose to leave his comfort in Waterbury and head to DC to live and serve among people experiencing homelessness and communities that were being targeted, stripped of resources, and treated without dignity.
Bringing nothing with him, he was now homeless himself. He walked from church to church asking for shelter. Each one turned him away with nothing to offer.
Then he found Father Horace McKenna, a Jesuit priest who had spent decades standing with DC's most overlooked neighbors. Father McKenna founded SOME (So Others Might Eat) and helped start Martha's Table. He would become a lifelong influence on Bill.
Father McKenna invited Bill in, gave him a warm meal, and sent him to a place to sleep: the Community for Creative Non-Violence.
The shelter gave him a cot for one night. Instead of sleeping, he fixed whatever he could find that was broken. By morning, they asked him to stay.
Over time, this became his new community and the path that would one day lead him to Sharon and to Mary House.
Most of us wait to see the whole road before we take a step. Bill went out not knowing where he was going. He only knew who was calling him.
