November 12, 1951 – November 1, 2025
Melanee Dee Murphree, longtime resident of Los Altos, passed away surrounded by her family on November 1, 2025. Melanee was born in Carmel, California to Cecil Murphree and Marietta Nunnally Murphree and grew up in Castro Valley, California along with siblings Marcee, Ludene, Courtney, and Mark.
After high school, Melanee enrolled at UC Berkeley and graduated in 1973 with a BA in Social Welfare. After a number of interesting jobs, she found her true calling while working as a teacher’s aide in a Special Ed class in Walnut Creek, California. She decided to pursue a second degree in Occupational Therapy and become an OT, specializing in pediatrics. She enrolled at San Jose State University and graduated with an MS in Occupational Therapy in 1983.
As a pediatric OT she worked for the Hayward School District, Children’s Health Council of Palo Alto, and had her own private practice for most of her career. She loved working with and helping children succeed in life. Two of her specialties were handwriting and teaching older, fearful children to ride a bike.
While still at San Jose State, she met, fell in love with, and married the love of her life, Gary Neal Robertson. They were married in 1981, settled in Los Altos, California and had two wonderful children, Brenna Murphree Robertson and Brady Patrick Robertson. They spent many wonderful weekends at their little cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the BREADBOX. Later in her life, she and Gary loved to travel and did many international trips by themselves or with various groups of friends, to many exotic places such as Africa, Peru, Viet Nam, Turkey, Patagonia, and Morocco, to name a few.
After retirement, Melanee’s most recent and enduring passion became playing the cello. She had to learn from scratch, which is not an easy thing for an older adult. But she persevered and eventually joined and played in two adult orchestras: TACO (Terrible Adult Chamber Orchestra) in Los Altos and the Mountain View Senior Orchestra. She loved both and loved playing with others.
Melanee was famous among friends and family for her other interests as well, including fruit and vegetable gardening, dancing whenever she could get the chance, making limoncello and olallieberry jam, hiking every weekday with a different friend, and close-sitting.
Melanee’s last chapter, which occurred in 2025 was both difficult and extremely unlucky. It included a breast cancer diagnosis and surgery with a promising prognosis, but followed immediately by the double whammy of a second, very rare and much more aggressive cancer, which was ultimately fatal. All this in the space of seven months.
But during treatment and her physical decline Melanee retained her optimistic outlook and sense of humor and continued to visit with longtime friends and family. She was upbeat about the life she had lived, even knowing that her days were limited.
Melanee is survived by her husband of 44 years, Gary, her children, Brenna and Brady, her sister Courtney and brother Mark, and by her sisters and brothers-in-laws Janice Nixon, Deborah Robertson, James Nixon, and Mike Anderson.
While she will be deeply missed, her legacy of optimism, grace, and joy lives on in her family, her friends, and the new generation that will soon carry her light forward in the world.
