KALAMAZOO, MI -- When retired Kalamazoo Public School elementary art teacher Kathy Murphy of Paw Paw went to Washington, D.C. last weekend, she certainly never expected to get arrested.

A sponsor of a Syrian refugee family, an activist for clean water and a variety of other causes, Murphy just wanted to make sure her voice was among those of thousands of women who gathered in the nation's capitol and other cities around the world to speak up for peace and human rights causes.

It was speaking up, in her classroom voice, that landed her in hot water.

The burden of justice

Murphy was a teen when her older brother, Marine Lance Corporal Patrick William Murphy, died on Feb. 15, 1968, one of 1,536 US forces killed in the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive.

He was 21 years old. He had planned to become an architect.

When Kathy Murphy learned years after his death of the campaign politics between Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson that prolonged the war, costing as estimated 22,000 additional American lives, her political awareness was jarred awake, she said.

"I've always paid attention to politics and who the leaders are," she said. "The players are important."

That's how she wound up attending the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing for President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, on Monday, Jan. 23.Kalamazoo residents head to D.C. for Women's March on Washington

An impromptu invitation

Following the march in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, Jan. 21 Murphy stayed in town to see the sights with her daughter, Caitlin Brown Hoffman, and other friends. After an emotional trip to the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, viewing Pulitzer Prize winning photos from wars, the Civil Rights movement, and other powerful moments in history, she called a friend to see if they could all meet up for dinner.

Her friend, Col. Ann Wright, said she was at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where a committee vote on Rex Tillerson's nomination for secretary of state was to take place.

"She said come on over," Murphy said.

Murphy's group met Wright and joined the line to get into the hearing, donning one of the "No Rex Tillerson" bibs being handed out by Code Pink, an informal group of women activists.

Once inside, they observed as every Democratic senator voted against Tillerson, and every Republican voted for him, Murphy said.

Then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, decided to wait a bit to allow some remaining committee members, tied up by weather, to arrive.

Quiet, please

C-Span cameras continued to record, and as people sat and chatted one of the Code Pink members stood and began to talk directly to the camera, telling her reasons for opposing Tillerson's appointment.

The chairman noticed, and told her to knock it off, Murphy said, and told them to talk among themselves.

The women resumed their conversation about why they were opposed to Tillerson, speaking loudly enough for others in the room to hear them. When one of them asked Murphy if she wasn't from Kalamazoo, the area that had suffered a massive oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, she responded with passion.

Using her "classroom voice," Murphy cited that oil spill and opined that none of the committee members should have voted for Tillerson, former ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO, to be secretary of state.

When she continued that the whole situation was worrisome and said loudly that recent events were "not normal," Corker told Murphy she would have to lower her voice or he would have her taken out.

She replied: "Really? This is serious," and explained that as a teacher for 38 years she was accustomed to talking loudly to a classroom full of kids.

Corker ordered her removed.Kalamazoo River oil spill

She continued to talk as the woman police officer grasped her upper arm tightly and walked her out of the room and down the hall, protesting that they had been told they could talk, and that the officer was hurting her arm.

"We turned the corner and she said, ' OK you are under arrest,' and she handcuffed me," Murphy said.

Sequestered from the other women and her daughter, Murphy was briefly taken out of the cuffs, then cuffed again after discussion of who had jurisdiction in her case.

The whole time she continued to plead her case -- and her cause.

"I'm telling the police officers 'My husband was a Marine, my brothers were Marines, I respect what you are doing -- but this is too much.'

"But to tell you the truth," Murphy said, "I wouldn't have minded it. I agree that I spoke out and I used a louder voice, and if I got arrested for speaking out, OK. It's a misdemeanor. I'll pay."

But in another twist of events, Sen. Corker himself walked into the room where she was being kept to ask for her release.

"You gotta give this guy respect," Murphy said. "He knows I'm not a Republican."

He praised the police, said it was all a misunderstanding, and in the end police uncuffed Murphy and let her go on her way.

The women were all out there waiting for her, and her daughter got her picture taken with Corker.

Leaving Washington

Reflecting on the whole experience, Murphy said she had hoped, after retirement, to enjoy some mellow years, devoted to painting and art.

But in the end, she said, her first arrest was worth the upset and she does not regret anything she said or did.

She's thought about the experience and realized that she can't turn a blind eye. She can't forget that 20,000 more soldiers died in Vietnam because it was not politically expedient to withdraw from the war, and that thought pushes her on.

When in handcuffs, she said, "I was never frightened, just sad about what's happening in my country. When I was crying, it had to do with injustice, that my brother lost his life because people didn't speak out then," she said.

"I think God pulled me back into it."

That night, after her daughter and friends had all left Washington, Murphy took a taxi for one last stop -- the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial.

Once again she located her brother's name among the 58,915 names inscribed on the memorial and shed a few tears.

Before she left, she placed a memento and a note, as visitors have done since the wall was completed in 1982.

The memento -- a pin from the women's march.

The note? "It said I love you very much," Murphy said, "and everything I do, I do in memory of you."

The Foreign Relations Committee's 11-10, party-line vote advanced Tillerson's nomination to the full Senate, which is expected to confirm his appointment as secretary of state.