50 Years of Friendship

When students enroll at Cal Poly, many are hoping that their time here will jump-start their careers. Others hope to form deep and lasting bonds of friendships during their time on campus. Rich Murray (Electronic Engineering ’79) and Kirk Branner (Computer Science ’79) were lucky enough to do both things together. The two have been close friends for nearly 50 years, and their friendship started during their very first days on campus in the fall of 1975.

They met in their WOW group during their first week at school, and as it turned out, their dorm rooms were just a couple doors down from each other in Fremont Hall.

Branner (left) and Murray (right) in their dorm room freshman year.

“Once we bonded as friends that freshman year, we decided that if we could, we would want to continue rooming together and go from there,” Murray explained.

The next year, they roomed together in Tenaya Hall and continued living together when they moved off campus for their junior and senior years.

“We would study together and do our own thing,” explained Murray. “But then if I had a track meet, Kirk would be there. And when he went to state championships in ping pong, I was there for him.”

After graduating in 1979, they both received multiple job offers and ended up going their separate ways, with Branner moving to Colorado to start a job with Bell Labs, and Murray moving to San Diego to work for Hewlett-Packard. They stayed in touch though, as they always wanted to work on something together professionally.

In 1981 they left their steady jobs and took a chance to help launch Encad Inc., a San Diego computer startup. At Encad, they co-invented the world’s first wide-format color ink-jet printer. The company grew from 15 employees to 500 in about three years and went public in 1991, going on to become a $500 million company that was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. For 20 years the two worked side by side running engineering for the company until it was acquired by Eastman Kodak in 2000.

Branner as best man at Murray’s wedding in 1979.

Up until recently, Murray taught a computer engineering capstone class at Cal Poly, where he and his students often interacted with Branner on industry projects at his current role with the irrigation company Rain Bird.

The two have remained close in their personal lives as well. Branner was the best man in Murray’s wedding in 1979 to his wife Katy, whom Murray met in a physics class at Cal Poly. Murray was the best man in Branner’s wedding to his wife Rose in 1982. Their families lived near each other in San Diego and their children grew up together. They would tailgate at Chargers football games and go skiing together near Lake Tahoe.

Friends and family often joke that they know each other so well that they sometimes finish each other’s sentences. They both recognize that any relationship worth having requires a certain level of commitment and effort, through all of life’s ups and downs.

“Real friendships, they’re hard,” Murray said. “We’ve been there for each other through the good times and the bad times. Those friendships, they take work, but it’s worth doing.”

“Rich is my brother from another mother,” reflected Branner. “I would say our friendship is beyond friends. It’s more like family.”