Aileen Murphy, 68, knows she’s the focus of the Mirror’s Senior Lifestyles section this month, but a good chunk of our interview is relishing in the stories of other seniors who live at Village Green Retirement Campus.

A World War II veteran here, an English tea ceremony there.

They’re stories Murphy collects for her every-other-month publication called Newsy Notes, a popular newsletter booklet she started in December 2013.

“The people around here are absolutely amazing,” Murphy said.

Amazing like the man who hopped trains from Missouri to work on the West Coast. He wasn’t a hobo, but he had to learn the tricks of the trade, such as which train stations had patrols – if they did, he would have to jump off the train before it pulled into the station, Murphy recalled.

Or there’s the woman who remembers her first time riding a horse. It required a rock that was kept on the saddle to hit rattlesnakes with.

“I could just see her on the Texas… ‘whatevers’… with those rattle snakes,” Murphy said, laughing.

A self-described ghost writer for the approximately 200 Village Green residents, Murphy said there’s no shortage of stories. Still, getting people to open up about their rich histories is a different matter.

Many don’t think their trip to South Africa to visit their brother is worth writing about. The same for their prize-winning cat or the fact that they own a piece of the Berlin Wall.

Murphy thinks otherwise.

“There is such a wealth of stories here, it’s incredible,” she said.

Murphy recalled another story, this one of an enlisted man who was at his Army base during World War II. He remembered being asked if he or his fellow soldiers wanted to volunteer to be roommates with an African-American man.

Murphy said he said, “Sure, why not?”

Next thing he knows, his roommate introduces himself: “Hi, I’m Sammy Davis, Jr.”

Davis, of course, would later turn into a famous dancer, singer, actor, musician and impressionist in the 1960s.

“I’d like to eliminate the stereotype of an 80-year-old sitting and staring at a wall,” Murphy said of the seniors at Village Green. “They’re an inspiration, they are.”

While Murphy has written about her transition from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest in Newsy Notes, she hasn’t written much else about herself.

When asked about her fun stories, she lists the time she got to dance with Lawrence Welk on “The Lawrence Welk Show” or that other time photojournalist Ken Burns replied to her letter.

She’s proud of the volunteer work she’s done teaching English as a second language, helping disabled children ride horses and training three guide dogs with Guiding Eyes for the Blind.

Her longtime involvement in Girl Scouts – from when she was a Girl Scout herself, winning the gold Curved Bar, to being a Brownie leader for her daughter, a scout trainer and eventually an area coordinator – is also work she holds dear to her heart.

It’s right up there with her 25-year career working part-time in the music department at a community college on the East Coast.

But she one day hopes to be an author.

Her book, she said, would be about Roman Catholic saints who were children.

When she taught religious studies to children in her church, St. Vincent de Paul, she recalled them not having many saints to relate to because they were nearly all adults. Her book would detail martyrs, such as the little Catholic girl who was hidden from society because she was blind.

Until then, she’s content putting together Newsy Notes with writers Margaret Dimick, Peggy Ewanoski, Arlyne Kagen, as well as Dan Caster (who formats, types, prints and folds Newsy Notes).