Pain grows for CT family of woman missing in Japan. Birthdays, anniversaries and holidays pass in her absence.

Kirk Murad of Storrs met his wife Pattie Wu-Murad on his first day at Pratt & Whitney in 1985. They were both engineers and someone introduced them. Five years later, they were married.

Last month, Pattie Wu-Murad went missing while setting out on a hike in Japan. Since then, multiple search and rescue teams, police, volunteers, and Murad and two of their children, have spent thousands of hours scouring the area on foot and with helicopters and drones, but no trace of her has been found.

Last week was Kirk’s birthday. Mother’s Day was Sunday. Friday is their 33rd anniversary. Their daughter Rachel’s birthday is next week.

“It’s a tough month,” Kirk said Tuesday night from Singapore. “It’s usually a month of celebration, but what I don’t want to happen is the people around me thinking they can’t celebrate. Everybody cares so much. I don’t want other people to feel what we’re feeling, just keep living.”

Wu-Murad, 60, was retired from United Technologies and was an experienced hiker who had traveled all over the world. She set out on the morning of April 10 to hike 11.2 miles on the Kumano Kodo Trail in a mountainous area of central Japan. The hostel owner pointed her to the trailhead, and that was the last time anyone reported seeing her.

Murad had spoken to his wife, who had been in Japan since early March, hiking and visiting friends, the week before. She told him she might not be able to contact him because she was in a remote area, so he thought nothing of it when he didn’t hear from her for a few days. He got a call from the U.S. Embassy on April 14 telling him she was missing, and the local police had been looking for her and he immediately rushed to Japan with his daughter Murphy and son Bryce.

A GoFundMe page set up by Murphy raised over $190,000, and the Murads were able to bring American search and rescue teams over to Japan and pay a Japanese SAR team, Mountain Works, which is still looking for Wu-Murad. The American search and rescue teams had to go home and, eventually, Kirk, Murphy and Bryce left, too, because they couldn’t afford to stay in the country. They wanted to put their remaining money toward search and rescue.

Kirk and Murphy are now in Singapore where Murphy lives and where they have friends. They talk to the Japanese rescue team every day and are trying to figure out what the next steps will be in the search.

“The other day, I just went out and walked nine miles — no destination,” Kirk said. “I’ve been walking a lot. I’m just trying to stay busy so I’m not thinking about it. People don’t know what to say to me. I say, ‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything.’ I pre-empt it sometimes. Just being there is good.”

When Kirk met Pattie in 1985, they were both dating other people but became good friends.

“I knew right away there was something magical about her, something charismatic about her,” he said. “She had a great smile. Very attractive.”

Eventually, they were both single. Pattie made the first move at a Super Bowl party in 1988, Kirk recalled, because he was too shy. They were married two years later. On their first anniversary, she was pregnant with Rachel.

Kirk left Pratt & Whitney in 1993, and Pattie stayed with various divisions of United Technologies until she retired in 2020. The next summer, she began hiking voraciously. She went to help her sister in New Hampshire with a restaurant and she hiked every day. She continued when she came home, hiking 10-15 miles a day on different trails around Mansfield and in other parts of the state. She and Kirk hiked many places, including Peru. She went to El Camino to hike that fall, an ancient trail in Spain.

“It’s a really popular hike; it goes back into the Middle Ages,” Kirk said. “She liked the history of it, the spirituality of it. I don’t think either one of us is very religious, but it was more she wanted to get in touch with her spiritual side and she just loved meeting people from other cultures. She talked about doing the Appalachian Trail, but she said, ‘We’re always with Americans, let’s see if we can meet other people,’ so she wanted to go overseas.”

Kirk, a former principal at Windham Tech and former girls basketball coach at E.O. Smith and Windsor, wasn’t ready to retire. He is still working in the Norwich school system, so Pattie went by herself to Japan. She had planned her trip for a while.

“She has no problem going anywhere, she’s fearless,” Kirk said. “I’m always worried about what can go wrong, she always thinks about what’s great about the activity.”

When she was away, though, he always had trouble sleeping. Since April 14, he has not slept much at all.

On Mother’s Day, he and Murphy went to a movie and he talked to Bryce and Rachel.

“They didn’t say much about it,” he said. “I don’t even know what to say to my own kids about it. I just try to keep the lines of communication open. There’s no playbook.”

Friday will be another tough day.

“I don’t know if I’ll hide in my room and stay away from people,” Kirk said. “I haven’t looked that far ahead yet.”