Shortly after Michael Mulgrew became president of the UFT in the summer of 2009, the new Retired Teachers Chapter leader, Tom Murphy, reached out to him with a proposal.

“Tom said the retiree chapter is a great political force,” Mulgrew recalled in presenting the Charles Cogen Award, the union’s highest honor, to Murphy during the UFT’s Teacher Union Day commemoration on Nov. 3. “He said he wanted us to have a national reputation and suggested that our retirees should become the daytime army of the United Federation of Teachers.”

From that point on, UFT retirees were on the front line of any political fight — not just in New York City, but throughout the country.

“Under Tom’s leadership, UFT retirees volunteered across the United States,” Mulgrew said. “Whether they were doing phone banking or spending two or three weeks at a time in other states working on different political issues, that is what Tom Murphy has built.”

Although Murphy’s union activism spans some 60 years, it didn’t come naturally at first.

“My first year as a teacher, in 1964 at Markham JHS on Staten Island, I didn’t join the union,” Murphy told those assembled at the New York Hilton Midtown.

Murphy said he “was not born into union consciousness” but rather acquired his appreciation for the union through “an educational process.”

“I thought the chapter leaders were wimps,” the former social studies teacher said. “PA systems had just been installed in schools and these guys cowered in a corner to whisper at a chapter meeting because they thought the principal could listen through the PA system.”

But Murphy — whose Irish-Catholic upbringing emphasized good works, tolerance and social justice — saw the way the UFT’s efforts were benefitting its members that first year. And when he reported to work the following September, he joined the union — and immediately was elected the school’s UFT delegate.

In 1967, he began teaching at Tottenville HS and — influenced by John Soldini, who would become the union’s vice president for academic high schools — Murphy became the school’s chapter leader in 1986. Always interested in politics, he served as the union’s Staten Island political director. In 1990, then-UFT President Sandra Feldman appointed him political director for the union, a position he occupied for the next 16 years.

“Whatever I learned about political action, about engaging and dealing with politicians and advocacy for union principles and issues, I learned from Tom Murphy,” said UFT retiree Vincent Gaglione, a former UFT borough representative and political action coordinator. “He was not an in-your-face political director. His personality and personal style were low-key, forthright, honest and instructive.”

Those traits also characterized his 15-year tenure as chapter leader of the Retired Teachers Chapter, which ended in June. He called his time leading the chapter and transforming it into a powerful political force “one of my great joys and achievements.”

“An easygoing manner, a quiet voice, a gentle humor never at anyone’s expense — these are the qualities he exhibited,” said Gaglione. “It’s why we respected him and why we learned from him.”

Gaglione said Murphy’s style never changed, “whether addressing politicians, staff or union members. No one ever came away from Tom Murphy feeling insulted or disrespected, only more knowledgeable.”