Meet the 85-year-old shoebox lady in Limerick who is giving children hope

Sigi Murrihy in her workshop in Caherdavin Park, Limerick. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

Sigi Murrihy is 85 but she still remembers the doll in the pink dress. It was the last year of WW2 and seven-year-old Sigi — displaced with her mother from their home in Freiburg, Germany — was staying with relatives in the mountain village of Prevorst.

“I had left an old doll with a porcelain face, Helga, at home in Freiburg. We couldn’t bring it. We brought only the most needed bits and pieces,” says Sigi, recalling how lonely it all felt.

And then one day, sitting at a big round table, an older cousin handed Sigi a brown paper bag. “He said ‘open it’. And I did, and out came a little doll. It had a pink dress with little pouches. It was really an egg warmer, but it was great for me because I could fill the pouches with little stones I’d find.

“To me it was like Heaven. I went to my mother and I said: ‘we don’t have to go home anymore — I have this doll’.”

Sigi Murrihy, after been hounored by the German Giovernment with the Bundesvetdienst-Kteuz Medal for her work for Children. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

Years later, long after she’d married Limerick man Patrick Murrihy and had three children and become a grandmother, Sigi was in a charity shop when she spotted a doll that straightaway reminded her of her egg-warmer doll. She already knew about Team Hope’s Christmas Shoebox Appeal and immediately thought: “Oh, I could do a shoebox with that doll.” That first year, she filled two shoeboxes, the following year four boxes, then it climbed to 64, then 100, and in 2019 Sigi — known as ‘the shoebox lady’ in Limerick —  filled her biggest amount: 230. Last year, a Covid year, she put together 110. “When I have a box full, when I look at it, I think of a child who never had anything like this. And I hope when they open it, they get the same joy I got when I opened the brown paper bag and saw the little doll.” This year, Team Hope’s goal is to collect 200,000 gift-filled shoeboxes for children facing poverty in 13 countries across Eastern Europe and Africa. And, as the Ukraine-Russia war rages on at the other end of Europe, Sigi Murrihy can understand better than many the suffering of those caught in the conflict.

She recalls spending daytime hours in a bunker 15 minutes from her home for most of 1944. “There were benches in the bunker, where people sat. I would crawl behind those legs and suck my thumb.”

Seeing what’s happening in Ukraine now brings it all back for Sigi. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

On the night of November 27, 1944, bombs rained down on Freiburg. Along with the inhabitants of the other apartments in their building, Sigi and her mother sheltered in the cellar. The attack, lasting about half an hour, killed 3,000. “We were all lying on the cellar floor on our tummy. People were praying. I didn’t understand what was happening — I just knew it was something bad.

“I heard someone say ‘I can hear one coming’. The bombs made a funny sound, a mix between a whistle and a kind of deep sound. You heard it for a few seconds — and then the bang when it hit.”

Earlier that evening, she and her mum had accompanied Sigi’s dad to the tram that would bring him to catch the night train out of Freiburg — his job was outside the city. “When he went to buy his ticket at the station, he was told the railway track had been bombed. He got back on the tram and sheltered in a cellar in the centre of the city. The house he was in got three bombs, but the cellar held.” Seeing what’s happening in Ukraine now brings it all back. “When I see the ruined houses, I remember our return to Freiburg just before the war ended, going through the ruins, looking for bits of timber. My father was very handy and, out of pieces of timber we found in ruined buildings, he built an oven you could cook in. It also heated the room.”

The effects of war are deep and random, and Sigi — who was left with a fear of loud noises — recalls very bad thunderstorms in Freiburg during her teen years. “I said ‘please God, let me live somewhere where there aren’t thunderstorms’.”

Her prayer was indirectly answered when she took six months leave from working as a secretary in a Freiburg diamond factory to improve her English. She got a hotel job in Eastbourne in the UK, where she met Limerick man Patrick Murrihy. Each wanted to learn the other’s language. “A deal was struck! He had a German penfriend, so he wanted to learn German. And if during the day at work I found something in English I didn’t understand, I’d write it down and ask him that evening.”

A cinema trip — to see Journey to the Centre of the Earth — was the start of their romance. “He did meet the German penfriend once — and I was kind of nervous, but he decided for me afterwards!” says Sigi, who married Patrick 58 years ago. They settled in Caherdavin, Co Limerick. “I’d marry him again in the morning,” she adds.

A very active Sigi Murrihy in 1963. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

The day before I speak with Sigi, she’d taught a gymnastics class to 46 people at her Active Retired Club. Following our chat, she was heading to an art class. And she’d already filled 30 shoeboxes for Team Hope and started on a further 30.

“Most people around here know I do the shoeboxes. I got a voucher from Lidl for €60 and with that I bought toothpaste, little t-shirts. Gleeson’s, a shoe-shop in Limerick, collects empty shoeboxes for me. Edward, who works there, brings 20 at a time out to my house. A lady called Mary Tuite helps me cover the boxes with Christmas paper.”

It feels good to give, says clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne. “Volunteering generally boosts our serotonin levels, our feelgood hormones. We get a real sense of satisfaction and wellbeing. And that ‘helper’s high’ happens for both adults and children.”

Getting children engaged with the Shoebox Appeal can give them a great sense of purpose, a feeling of doing something tangible, says Coyne. “A lot of the time we hear very bad news, particularly this year. It can be scary for children to hear what’s going on in the world. Filling a shoebox brings a sense of ‘there is something I can do, and we as a family can do together’.” In a very rushed world, filling a shoebox can also feel like a beautiful slowing down for a child, she says. “They have to take time to think about the gifts, to select them and then to wrap the box.”

Meanwhile, in Caherdavin, there are certain items Sigi always makes sure to include in the shoeboxes. “A piece of clothing — and a toy. For a boy, I have some lovely cars and some trains too. And for a girl? A girl should have a doll.”

• Team Hope Shoebox Week runs from October 31 to November 6. Date to drop off your gift-filled shoebox, including your €4, is Tuesday, November 8. You can also opt to build a box online. For inspiration on what to put in your shoebox and where to drop it off – including Dealz and Toymaster stores nationwide – visit www.teamhope.ie