Murray High honors one of oldest graduates

Murray High football player Shane Rayhill said his great-grandfather Dave Webb played ball for Murray and also served as 1941-42 student body president.

Webb and his wife, Betty McGhie Webb, were honored during the Sept. 23 homecoming game, driven in a convertible at halftime. Students lined the field, giving him high-fives. At 86 years old, he may be one of the oldest living Murray High graduates.

“When I asked him if he would be willing to stand up and wave to people in the stands, he was so excited,” his daughter Jan Mine said. “If he could have done a jig, he would have. He was raised and lived most of his life in Murray.”

Webb recounts running out the back door of his childhood home at 228 Vine Street at the ring of a school bell, and getting to his desk at Arlington Elementary on time. He said writing with an ink pen and blotter was a challenge for him - he was left-handed and would smear the ink before it dried. When he was in sixth grade, the introduction of the ballpoint pen was “the greatest invention.”

He said times were tough growing up in the 1930s.

“We didn’t have a lot and we had to work for what we had. We were lucky just to eat and have a shirt. Most students ate a bean sandwich for lunch. It taught me work ethic,” he said.

Webb would help take care of the family chickens, sheep and cow, take out ashes and bring in the coal and help his father in the welding shop on the family property.

“He was the first arc welder in Utah, and much of the work he did was done in trade for a sack of potatoes or grain from the fields,” he said.

Even though afterschool work was necessary, Webb was able to play fullback in football, run on the 880-yard relay team at the state meet, and was the agriculture club president and student body president. Besides his math and English classes, he studied agriculture, music, home economics, mechanics and woodworking.

At age 15, his dad gave him a Model A coupe, in which he drove his friend, Tommy Edwards, to see Tommy’s girlfriend, Betty. Later, when Webb realized that Betty took the trinkets he had decorated his car with, he confronted her.

“It ruined my friendship with Tommy, but I took a strong liking to her. She was a smart beauty,” he said of his future wife.

After graduation, Webb did road construction for 35 cents per hour, then took a raise as a boiler-keeper to ensure the road tar was kept hot. They married and lived in a tent alongside the current Wahsatch exit on I-80. Soon after, he was drafted into the war and after his release, served in law enforcement in several capacities as well as a volunteer firefighter for 21 years.

His five kids graduated from Murray High, as did most of his grandchildren. He has five great-grandchildren, and although he now lives in St. George, he said, “Murray is always my home.”