He wanted to be a priest, not a college president. But in the quarter-century that the Rev. Terrence Murphy led the University of St. Thomas, he transformed a humble St. Paul college for men into a university that became one of the most entrepreneurial Catholic schools in the nation.

Murphy, who worked at St. Thomas for 50 years, died Wednesday morning at age 83 after a long fight with cancer.

He served longer than any other St. Thomas president, holding office from 1966 to 1991. At the time of his death, he was chancellor.

The Rev. Dennis Dease succeeded Murphy as president.

"Mild-mannered and eminently likable, Terrence Murphy distinguished himself as a wise and extraordinarily successful educator, a remarkable entrepreneur and a true visionary," Dease said in a prepared statement.

Murphy was often described as humble, unselfish and devoted to friends and family. For years, he ate most Sunday dinners with his mother in St. Paul. But he was also a scholar whose thesis focused on obscenity and censorship laws, and he was a canny higher education strategist who knew how to charm donors. Under Murphy's leadership, the all-male, financially shaky and mostly undergraduate College of St. Thomas became a multicampus coeducational university with 13 graduate programs and a nationwide reputation for creativity.

Harry Flynn, archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, called Murphy "the second founder of the University of St. Thomas."

"It was under his tenure that St. Thomas reached the prestigious stature that it now enjoys," he said in a statement. "He was an educational visionary and always grounded by the Catholic identity which so marks, and should mark, every Catholic university."

Murphy often said he never wanted to be a college president. When he was named to the post in 1966, he told reporters that he didn't think it was appropriate for St. Thomas, then a liberal arts college with 2,200 students, to add graduate programs. "New Leader Won't Change St. Thomas" proclaimed a headline in one of the Minneapolis papers.

In fact, Murphy transformed St. Thomas. By the time he left the presidency in 1991, enrollment had quadrupled to more than 9,100 and included women as well as men. The annual budget had zoomed from $3.5 million to $84.4 million. Three campuses outside of St. Paul had been added, and classes were offered at nights and on weekends for working adults.

'Ideas, not visions'

"I never sat down and said, 'I have this big vision for the college,' " Murphy told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1990. "I wanted to hold fast to fundamentals -- the college's liberal arts character and its Catholic character. ... I had ideas, not visions. And the college evolved."

Charles Keffer, a former St. Thomas provost who worked with Murphy for 18 years, said Murphy was motivated by the idea that St. Thomas needed to serve the community.

"He looked at opportunities as they presented themselves and explored them," Keffer said. "I think initially ... he didn't think of himself as someone who could cultivate donors and do what you'd call gladhanding. But over the years, in his own quiet way, he was very good at getting relationships with people that paid off for St. Thomas."

'Movers and shakers'

Though St. Thomas was established as a Catholic college, the school is somewhat unusual in that it is not affiliated with a particular religious order. And the school owns its own property. Those characteristics give the president and board the freedom to chart their own course.

In 1999, St. Thomas' evolution was used as a case study in higher education change by scholars at the University of Michigan. The study pointed out that at Murphy's urging, St. Thomas' Board of Trustees became more active. Murphy was also smart in his selection of trustees, the report said, pulling together "the best governing board in the state. ... Monsignor Murphy has been able to continually attract board members who are willing to take risks and frankly, who are rich ... A fair number of board members are alumni. The result is that St. Thomas has a board which is made up of movers and shakers of the region who are dedicated to improving the institution."

Stability, then growth

Murphy spent his first years as president trying to stabilize the college's finances. Faculty members and others were encouraged to propose programs. In 1974, the school added a master's program in business administration. That first year, 79 students enrolled. Four years later, there were 650.

Change became the norm. The school started New College, which offered undergraduate classes at night to serve nontraditional students. After failed overtures of merger with the nearby all-female College of St. Catherine, St. Thomas officially became coeducational in 1977. Extended campuses were set up in Chaska, Owatonna and downtown Minneapolis. More professional programs were added. Budgets were solidly in the black. At the end of Murphy's tenure as president, the College of St. Thomas became the University of St. Thomas, reflecting both the school's physical growth and its new emphasis on graduate programs.

David Laird Jr., president of the Minnesota Private College Council, knew Murphy for more than 30 years. Though Murphy never disguised his ambitions for St. Thomas, his determination to build the college never compromised his amiability and low-key nature, Laird said.

"There was a comfort and a diplomacy to his approach that for some people is very disarming," Laird said. "But he never lost sight of what his goal was, and he understood that getting to a goal took hard work and persuasion."

True to its roots

Despite St. Thomas' close ties to business, Murphy always said the school remained rooted in Catholic values. "I think a young person could easily aspire to a life of service and at the same time want to be in business and be successful," he told a Star Tribune reporter in 1985. Businesses that are concerned only with profit, he said, "are not going to last very long."

Born in Watkins, Minn., Murphy was ordained in 1946 as part of a remarkable St. Paul Seminary graduating class that included John Roach, later archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and James Shannon, who preceded Murphy as St. Thomas' president and later led the Minneapolis Foundation. Murphy was close friends with the two men, both of whom died last year.

He earned a master's degree in political science from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. After working as a parish priest in Belle Plaine and St. Paul from 1946 to 1949, he spent five years as an Air Force chaplain.

He joined the economics and political science faculty at St. Thomas in 1954, became dean of students in 1961 and was active that year in the fight to pass Minnesota's first fair-housing bill. For 19 years he was staff chaplain for the Air Force Reserve. In 1975, he became chief of chaplains for the Minnesota Air National Guard. He was appointed a brigadier general by Gov. Rudy Perpich, the first chaplain in Minnesota to reach that rank.

In 2000, St. Thomas named the original campus building built in downtown Minneapolis Terrence Murphy Hall.

Funeral arrangements are pending. Survivors include brothers Thomas of West St. Paul and Vincent (Ben) of Vadnais Heights and sister Lucille (Sue) Frey of Roseville.

Mary Jane Smetanka is at smetan@startribune.com.