Shovel-swinging sweetheart earns global attention

WILLOW — Call it the thwack heard 'round the world.

Dorothea Taylor, 86, was largely unknown outside of Alaska before Jan. 20 when she thumped a moose with a shovel while it attacked her dogs and — she later learned — her husband, George.

Now search online for “Alaska Dorothea Taylor” and more than a dozen pages of links come up, most from news outlets around the world that picked up the story of the octogenarian couple from Willow and their near-fatal moose encounter.

“Media from all over called,” said George Murphy, 82. “But they aren’t interested in talking to me, they just want to talk to Dorothea.”

Murphy, who sustained seven broken ribs and gashes to his head and leg, was released from Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage on Friday, and friends gathered at the Eagles Quest Lodge in Willow on Saturday to celebrate Taylor’s 86th birthday and Murphy’s recovery from the moose attack that nearly ended his life the week before.

“They told us some friends just wanted to meet us for coffee,” Taylor said. “But when we got there, the whole parking lot was plugged up. I’ve never seen so many people there.”

It was a reunion of sorts with George, Dorothea, their two dogs, their friends and that now-famous shovel. Even the cake at the party was decorated with a shovel.

Taylor said so many friends at the party signed the shovel that she may need to get two or three more shovels to hold all the signatures.

“But I don’t hire out,” Taylor joked about her shovel swinging skills. “I’d just as soon never use those services again.”

Well, she needs a new shovel now anyway. She said she harnessed all the strength in her 5-foot-tall, 97-pound frame on the final blow she landed against the moose’s rump, which cracked the shovel.

“I hit it with everything I had,” Taylor said.

Murphy says he has no doubt the actions that day of his bride of more than 40 years saved his life.

“She saved me all right,” he said. “That damn moose was trying to kill me.”

But Taylor is quick to credit others who she says are the real reason her mate is still by her side.

“The people at the fire department, they are the ones who saved him,” Taylor said. “He lost 75 percent of his blood. If it hadn’t been for them, he wouldn’t have made it even to Wasilla.”

Willow medics responded quickly after Barry Stanley at Denali Flying Service called 911. A helicopter was deployed from LifeMed to transport Murphy from the scene to Anchorage.

What started that Friday morning as a routine outing to exercise the couple’s two golden retrievers — Fellar and King Tut — turned deadly when a nearby moose turned on Murphy and stomped on him several times before his shovel-swinging sweetheart came to his rescue.

“We’ll never be able to thank the whole community for all their help,” Taylor said.

One friend returned to the accident and searched through the blood-covered snow for Murphy’s sunglasses. And another friend recovered his hearing aid from a snowbank.

“It was absolutely incredible,” said their niece, Rebecca Roberts, of the outpouring of help from the community.

Murphy is a longtime Alaska pilot who still flies the 1948 Aeronica he bought back in 1966 when he and Taylor first met on Kodiak Island. And Taylor is a retired schoolteacher with a doctorate in education and experience in one-room schools around the state.

News traveled quickly through their network of friends in Alaska. More than 300 people stopped by Murphy’s room during the week he was hospitalized, Roberts said.

“People would come in like five at a time,” she said.

Some were old friends the two hadn’t seen in 15, 20 or as long as 40 years, Taylor said.

One couple came carrying a plate of cookies.

“We saw your picture in the paper and we just had to meet you,” Roberts said of the visit. “We baked this plate of Snickerdoodles for you.”

Then there was the man who came to the hospital carrying a weathered, half-rotted board with faint lettering.

“Do you recognize this?” he asked Taylor.

Of course, she said. “It’s the sign from the front of the Teachery where I lived on Raspberry Island.”

The man was part of a crew hired to relocate Port Wakefield on Raspberry Island after the 1964 earthquake changed the water levels on the island by several feet, which put the fish processing plant underwater at high tide.

He’d picked up the sign at that time and had saved it for her for 47 years.

“I can just very faintly read ‘Teachery’ on it,” Taylor said. “A lot of people had stories to tell. It was nice.”

The two say their friends and family have gone above and beyond to help them while Murphy was hospitalized and during his recovery.

Friends watched their dogs, did their laundry and came over to start the heat going so their house would be cozy when they returned Friday, Roberts said.

Taylor said the community’s support has been incredible.

“We all take care of each other. We help each other a lot more than they do in other places,” she said. “But my goodness, people have taken care of us royally.”

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.