By Travis Barton | [email protected]

Murray High School has been around for a long time and so too, have some of their alumni.

With Murray High turning 100-years-old next year, the city has invited all of the oldest living alumni to ride as grand marshals in the July 4 parade. For Art Bishop, who graduated in 1940 and is the oldest living student body president, the invitation is an honor.

“Murray is just such a wonderful city,” Bishop said.

It will be the second time Bishop’s been invited to grand marshal the parade, the first occurring in 1984.

Other than when Bishop was serving in World War II, he has lived in Murray all his life graduating from the University of Utah before embarking on his career as an educator.

Bishop, 94, said growing up he would always go watch the basketball games at Murray High which ended up playing an important role later in his life.

“I was very much interested in basketball as a youngster, I lived not too far from the high school so I would always go play or watch,” Bishop said.

Bishop’s basketball days didn’t stop after he played for the high school. He went on to play for the University of Utah team later serving as an assistant coach for Murray High.

Even after graduating as the student body president, Bishop’s influence on the school didn’t diminish. He served in the Murray City School District for 24 years as a math teacher before becoming assistant principal for six years.

Bishop was originally going into engineering but with no engineering jobs in Utah at the time and a wife, child, single mother and two younger sisters, Bishop decided he needed to stay here.

“So I went into education. I love teaching and I have a great time teaching and being in school activities,” Bishop said.

Bishop went on to serve as an Administrator in the School District Office for 13 years and said he’s seen a grand change in Murray since then.

“At the time I was working in the district offices, we were one of the poorest districts in the state…we got a lot of state aid to finance school buildings,” Bishop said. “But after they built that Fashion Place Mall, Murray’s got all kinds of wealth now, that was a big difference.”

“There were more saloons in Murray when I was a kid than anything else, we only had two banks,” David Webb said.

Webb, who also served as student body president two years after Bishop, graduated in 1942 marrying his wife Betty, shortly thereafter. Webb said they’re going on 74 years now they’ve been married.

“It’s been quite a trip and this wife has stayed right with me and she’s just as lovely as can be,” Webb, 92, said.

Right after high school Webb had been working for out of the area only seeing Betty on the weekends when he visited.

“On one of the times I came down she said, “don’t go without me,” and I said ‘well we better get married then,’ so we did,” Webb said.

After working with Betty’s dad and attending boot camp in Idaho, Webb’s travels went east going to school in Virginia before going through the Caribbean islands and Panama finally staying in Brazil for over two years. That doesn’t include the stops he made later, all as part of the army, he made in the Treasure Islands and San Diego.

Once the war was over, Webb returned to work at the Kennecott Copper Mine before joining the Murray police force for 10 years.

Webb, who lives in St. George now, said it was great to hear he was named a grand marshal for his hometown.

“That’s quite an honor for me…I’m proud,” Webb said.  λ