LYNN – Ginger Murphy, who spent most of her life working at Union Hospital, walked its corridors Thursday clutching a Kleenex and accepting hugs from overjoyed coworkers surprised to see her return a week after she retired.”She’s the best around,” said hospital environmental services worker Tom Conlon.Murphy spent 42 years working at Union. Count her years as a teenage candy striper and kitchen worker beginning at the age of 14 and her association with the hospital tops the half-century mark.”My mother liked to say she turned my high chair around and I saw Lynn Hospital and Lynn Hospital Nursing School,” she said.Murphy graduated from Classical High School in 1967 and attended the nursing school before focusing, with her late husband, Robert, on raising their two children, Beth and Tim. She looked for a job at the Union Hospital in 1973 to supplement her husband’s income.”I started at $2.25 an hour – 30 hours a week. I thought that was great,” she said.Over the years, then decades, Murphy worked in many departments throughout the hospital and received promotions into supervisory positions.”When they had departments they didn’t know what to do with, they would say, ?Let’s give them to Ginger,'” she recalled.The 65-year-old Lynn native built friendships at the hospital that spanned her career. Murphy and nurse Karen Lennon have known each other since they were 14.”I love her to death. She was excellent at what she did,” Lennon said.Like her colleagues, Murphy juggled long hours and night shifts to balance work and family. Even as she shouldered increased responsibilities at Union, Murphy tried to work as much as possible with patients.”I was the happiest when I was with patients. I loved my work and I hope I’ve made a difference in a lot of people’s lives,” she said.She said she disliked office work and the responsibility of being “on call” to respond to hospital emergencies. Increased computerization ultimately spurred her to consider retiring so her work could be done by a younger, more technology-savvy colleague.Murphy’s husband died in 2011 following a long illness. The grieving that followed took precedence over planning for retirement. She recently reconnected with former Callahan Elementary School classmate Joseph Cahill. The pair are engaged, and future plans include traveling and spending time with Murphy’s grandson, Robbie, a Quincy resident, and granddaughters Haylee and Sydney, English High School students.She is no longer working, but Murphy isn’t slowing down. She walks four miles a day and frequents the Torigian Family YMCA in Peabody. She loves Lynn and said Union Hospital is inseparable from the city around it.”This place was my second home. I’ve had the ride of my life,” she said.