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Wade through a Southern jungle, and you'll find the five dilapidated houses within a few dozen steps of one another.

There's a collapsed roof, a collapsed floor, broken furniture, broken boards, empty liquor bottles, sun-bleached beer cans and an old Rolling Stone magazine, circa 1991.

It looks like a homeless camp. But it's not. It's one of Guilford County's most historic sites. It's the birthplace of Edward R. Murrow, the father of broadcast journalism. And it's downright embarrassing.

How did it get this bad?

Murrow's family still owns it. But no one has really lived there since a chimney fire in 1985 destroyed the 18th-century clay-and-plank farmhouse where Murrow was born 100 years ago last April.

Since then, Mother Nature has taken over, and neglect has reigned.

Hike the site beside N.C. 62 and Davis Mill Road, and you'll bob and weave like a prizefighter. Vines and bushes choke the pasture land where Murrow once hoed corn for a 50-cent piece.

It would be easy to point fingers. But Murrow's distant relatives who own the 2.4-acre property have gotten older and have health problems. Plus, they don't live in the community, and they don't visit.

But Trudy Murrow Sillmon does.

She's 71, the youngest daughter of Joshua Edgar Murrow, the uncle of Edward R. Murrow, who kept the place Southern Living immaculate.

Sillmon grew up there, playing baseball in the front yard and swimming in her backyard, in Polecat Creek, toward what she calls the "Big Rock."

But when her dad died, her mother sold the property to the family of William Murrow Sr. William was her dad's cousin, Sillmon says. William's elderly children own the property today.

Sillmon went by her old homeplace last week - her son, David Jr., lives nearby - and every time she goes, she remembers what it was. She hates what it has become.

"It makes me so sad," says Sillmon, whose 80-year-old sister, Mary, still lives in a house beside her family's former property. "So, we try to block it out of our minds. We can't do anything about it.''

We'll remember Murrow next week. UNCG and the Greensboro Historical Museum will roll out a series that aims to show us over three weeks how Murrow used TV and radio as a weapon for truth and decency.

Then, on Oct. 14, we'll see UNCG dedicate a new historical marker that will honor the place where Murrow was born.

Back in 1990, the first historical marker went up beside Murrow's birthplace. A year later, the sign was stolen. This time, though, the marker won't go beside Polecat Creek. It'll go a mile west, near Uncle Buck's General Store, at the crossroads of N.C. 62 and Randleman Road. Why? Two reasons: better visibility and a request from the property owners.

Michael Hill, who runs North Carolina's highway marker program, says the family doesn't want to draw any attention to that spot.

Who would? It's awful.

Maybe somebody could buy it, clean it up and turn it into a park. And maybe we can be reminded all the time how a boy with the booming voice first learned right from wrong - right here.

According to his biographers, Murrow learned those beliefs from his Quaker mother, Ethel Lamb Murrow. She had him in a pew, every week, just up the road at Centre Friends Meeting, the church of his ancestors.

But here's the BIG question: Would Murrow really care what happens with that patch of property? Barry Miller, the person behind the Murrow celebration at UNCG, says probably not.

Murrow left his home beside Polecat Creek at age 5, before World War I ended, and moved cross-country, to Washington state, with his family. But that's not it, Miller said. It's something he found in his research. It's a quote from Murrow.

"A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow," Murrow once said. "There's nothing tangible about yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air 10 or 15 minutes, and then boom - it's gone."

"He understands that nothing is permanent," said Miller, director of communications and external relations for UNCG's University Libraries. "So, it's up to us. It's up to us to remember."

Yes, it is.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com