Sandy Hook victims mourned for lives cut short
USA TODAY
Published 6:24 p.m. ET Dec.16, 2012 - Updated 1:01 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2012

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

A happy soul. A good mother, wife and daughter. Artistic, fun-loving, witty and hardworking.

Remembering their daughter, Anne Marie Murphy, her parents had no shortage of adjectives to offer. When news of the shooting broke, Hugh and Alice McGowan waited for word of their daughter as hours ticked by. And then it came.

Police told the couple their daughter was a hero who helped shield some of her students from the rain of bullets. As the grim news arrived, the victim's mother reached for her rosary.

"You don't expect your daughter to be murdered," her father told Newsday. "It happens on TV. It happens elsewhere."

Murphy, the mother of four, was raised in Katonah, NY.

Her parents, Hugh and Alice McGowan, told The Journal News in Westchester, N.Y., that she was a terrific woman who was smart and dedicated.

She was an artistic, fun-loving painter who was "witty" and "hardworking," Hugh McGowan told Newsday.

"She was a happy soul," said her mother, Alice McGowan. "She was a very good daughter, a good mother, a good wife.

"I'll miss her presence," added Alice McGowan. "She died doing what she loved. She was serving children and serving God."