I read with dismay of the refusal of the General Services Administration’s Emily Murphy, a Trump political appointee, to release $6.3 million to Joe Biden’s team that will give them access to resources, administration officials and information.

My great-aunt, also named Emily Murphy, was a proud naturalized American citizen. She was an Irish nurse who had worked in London during World War I and later in Dublin before emigrating from Ireland to New York, where she worked for 40 years. She lived modestly (although purportedly having received stock tips from one of her wealthy private patients), was generous to her extended family and retired back to Ireland in the late 1960s.

Emily loved this country and the life it gave her. In the village where she lived in her later years – to which her small Social Security check was sent – she would say at Sunday Mass: “God bless the United States of America!”

I cannot imagine a greater contrast between my great-aunt and the GSA’s Emily Murphy, whose unprecedented actions today are impeding the orderly progress by which an outgoing administration makes way for the incoming one.

Perhaps today’s Ms. Murphy could take her cue from the Irish emigrant who revered the gift of this country: Stand up, and act like a citizen and a patriot – not a politico.

Ellen D. Murphy
Portland

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