RPCV Jim Murray named winner in Humor contest with story of elderly woman
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FLIGHT HUMOR CONTEST: St. Paul man's true tale nets humor contest prize BY TONI COLEMAN Pioneer Press
Students in Brazil, Turkey and China can tell you Jim Murray can't crack a joke. They endured his attempts for years while the St. Paul man was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English.
"I would laugh, but they didn't," Murray recalled.
Undaunted, Murray didn't give up. He had the last laugh this week, when he was named one of three winners in the national Flight Humor contest sponsored by the University of Dayton's Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. (The late Bombeck, a syndicated columnist, graduated from the school.) Workshop officials organized the contest to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ohio natives Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight.
Murray's winning entry for the funniest true passenger story went like this:
"On a flight from Anchorage to Tokyo, the flight engineer went back into the passenger cabin. An elderly woman passenger stopped him and asked him what the temperature was. 'It's 70 degrees, madam,' he replied, adding, 'But outside it's 30 degrees below zero.'
'Young man,' the woman demanded, 'What were you doing outside?' "
Seven humor columnists from Ohio, North Carolina, Texas and Japan judged the 200 entries. In Murray's case, their choice shows good humor is timeless: Murray, 72, heard the story from the flight engineer involved 50 years ago when he worked for Northwest Airlines as a licensed flight dispatcher.
The prize? Murray, who manages a Crocus Hill apartment building, gets a T-shirt from the University of Dayton, which he says he might wear under his clothes.
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