Artist, graphic designer and beloved raconteur William "Bill" Murphy died of lung cancer at his home Monday in Santa Fe. He was 78.

"He loved telling favorite stories, and he loved hearing other people's stories," said his friend Dan Anthony, manager of Glenna Goodacre Ltd. And every time the stories were repeated, Anthony said, "We laughed just as loud."

Murphy was also a talented mimic and often used that aptitude to relate an account of the Christmas Eve Mass at St. Jean Baptiste, a fancy Roman Catholic Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan he attended with his new wife, Barbara Beasley Murphy. Women were in fur coats. The clergy were gowned in their most ornate robes. The sanctuary was filled with poinsettias. The air was heavy with incense. Then the priest stepped into the pulpit and in a thick Brooklyn accent, which Murphy could duplicate perfectly, announced to the congregation, "Joy to the world! Jesus Christ is born!"

Betty Martin, a fellow member of the John Sloan Memorial Sketch Group, said, "He brought a lot of fun into our lives. He always made you feel better, in spite of what (else) was happening."

Martin especially enjoyed a cartoon Murphy drew depicting two nuns walking down a street outside of a savings and loan carrying a sign reading, "Jesus saves."

"It was subtle, but you had to laugh," Martin said.

Murphy's wife and several of their friends related a story about him waking up from an operation at what was then St. Vincent Hospital. Barbara Murphy said she commented to their friend, Bob Ewing, that her husband hadn't made her laugh that day. But later, as he was lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling from his hospital bed, Murphy remarked, "If this is heaven, I'm really disappointed."

Murphy was born in Philadelphia to William and Marie Nugent Murphy and graduated from the University of the Arts. He had started painting New Mexico scenes as early as 1952, using photographs by Ansel Adams and Laura Gilpin.

His uncle, Monsignor John Nugent, was the father confessor of Mother Katharine Drexel, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and (in 1887) of the St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe.

Stationed in the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, he helped create a museum out of the old fort with other artists.

In New York City, Murphy worked as a cartoonist for Esquire and Playboy magazines. He illustrated books published by Grove Press, Simon & Schuster, Delacorte and others, and produced 40 educational films for the American Medical Association. He also painted a mural for the opening of John Kennedy's presidential campaign at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

In 1988, Murphy took the advice of his son, Stephen, who had died two years earlier of leukemia, to "do something you love for the rest of your life" and moved to Santa Fe. He joined the sketch group, became active in the Museum of New Mexico Foundation and made many landscape paintings and drawings, often in the open air.

He decorated gourds for charity, contributed paintings in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe for a "Fabulous Fakes" exhibition in New Rochelle, N.Y., and in 2008 had a one-man show of his drawings at the Artists on Santa Fe gallery in Denver.

Ewing, former director of what was then called the Museum of Fine Arts, met Murphy when both were studying at the Mexico City College School of Fine Art after their military service and have been friends for more than 50 years. "I feel blessed to have known him," he said. "He was a man of many, many talents."

Ewing takes credit for stopping Bill and Barbara from breaking up when they were courting. The couple had been squabbling about something, he said, when they met Ewing in New York's Central Park and stopped to talk. Murphy started mimicking speed walkers, causing everyone to laugh, and "they went off together and everything was fine."

In addition to his wife, an author of books for young adults, Murphy is survived by his daughter, Jennifer Mammoli of Corrales and her husband, Andrea Mammoli, as well as his sister, Marie, and brothers, John and Francis.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at St. Bede's Episcopal Church with a reception following. There will be a celebration of his life at Casa Esteban, his home, in June.

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.