Survivors keep Terri's mission to aid children Saturday, June 13, 1998
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
To clients sitting in the small foyer of the Glenmore Avenue accounting firm, it seems that the owner, Therese Murdock, has just stepped out for a moment. Her business cards are neatly presented on a table. Awards and diplomas line her office walls. Every tasteful detail of the room indicates a woman who manages her business well, along with her life.
And that, for 41 years, is what Terri Murdock did.
Terri MurdockSoft-spoken but determined, she married young, raised two children, entered Xavier University at age 29, graduated valedictorian and started her own accounting firm in 1991. She was smart and thorough, which made her a good businesswoman.
But there was another side to Terri Murdock, which made her a good human being. Throughout her life, she thought, prayed and worked for people who faced harder times than she. In particular, she never forgot children. Hers. Other people's. Those she knew, those she didn't.
On a mission
It was children she was stumping for on March 17, on the road between Ada and Dayton, Ohio. As past president of the Cheviot-Westwood Kiwanis -- the first woman to hold the office -- she had led her club to contribute $48,000 to a service project to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) in children.
It became more than a club project to her, in part because it was a tragedy that seemed so preventable. She learned that a miniscule amount of iodine -- roughly one ten-thousandth of a gram a day -- could save children from everything from goiter to mental retardation. It could be added to salt, a substance used worldwide.
Her husband, Mark Goertemoeller, a fellow Kiwanian, had awakened from sleep four nights in a row with an increasingly detailed idea: A 1,000-mile walk from Cheviot to Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla. -- a place dedicated to children and the future -- to raise more than $10 million for IDD.
Mark, an accountant in his wife's firm, would put in the miles. Terri would manage home and work.
So that Tuesday in March, Terri was on the road, one of dozens of trips she had made asking fellow Kiwanians to open their hearts for children. She was right in the middle of it all -- a successful career, loving family, an ambitious good deed. In two days she was to be named lieutenant governor of the southwestern Ohio district of Kiwanis. This was to be her last road trip.
And then, right in the middle of it all, with so much to be hoped for and so much to be done, there was a terrible traffic accident. Terri Murdock was killed.
It could not be. Not taken so abruptly, in the middle of everything. Not the generous, determined woman whom friends called "the rainmaker" because, her husband says, "she was the one who got it done."
HOW YOU CAN HELP
To contribute, send checks payable to: Kiwanis International Foundation
Cheviot-Westwood Kiwanis
P.O. Box 58222
Cincinnati 45258.
Without Terri as organizer and enthusiastic promoter -- who carried pictures of her own children to inspire others to give -- the cause seemed lost, the walk abandoned.
But Terri Murdock's life held one more sterling lesson.
Because she had not held back from giving her all, neither could her family and friends. Mark, now needed desperately at work, would walk the first and last legs. Daughter Aimee, daughter-in-law Emily Goertemoeller and Terri's close friend, Tina Wolfe, would walk the others.
They plan to leave Aug. 18 and arrive at Epcot Center Sept. 26. And they know that the woman who got things done will be with them each mile of the way.
Terri Murdock admired people who were "honest, intelligent, took pride in themselves -- and would use their heart for others," Aimee says.
Those around her say that is who Terri Murdock was, how she lived and what her legacy forever will be.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.