Liz Murray, who went from homeless to Harvard, to speak Tuesday

Published 5:22 pm Thursday, August 27, 2015

eguevara@tylerpaper.com

By the age of 15, Liz Murray was living on the street and without her parents. Her mother had died of AIDS and her father, who was a drug addict, lived in a homeless shelter.

Within four years, she graduated high school and enrolled in Harvard University, and her story was spreading across America through a story in the New York Times, a Lifetime movie and the release of her own book, “Breaking Night.”

Now Ms. Murray, 34, shares with people around the world how her journey “from homeless to Harvard” can help them see the possibilities in their own life and the opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others. She is scheduled to speak Tuesday at Leadership Tyler’s Leadership Live event at the Green Acres CrossWalk Conference Center. 

“I think we underestimate how powerful we are when it comes to changing the lives of other people,” Ms. Murray said during a recent phone interview.

In a world with so many problems, it’s easy for people to become desensitized and turn inward, she said. But, if every person just did something, change could happen.

Ms. Murray should know. In one generation, with the help of mentors, she changed the destination of her own life and is seeking to change others.

The daughter of two drug addicts, it was routine for Ms. Murray to see her parents shooting up cocaine and heroine in the house. That didn’t mean she liked it or that her parents were proud of it.

“In our household, there was quite a lot of shame for what they were doing,” she said.

Her mother used to show her the track marks on her arms, scars left from years of injecting drugs. But Ms. Murray recalled one day when her mother showed her her arm and told her, “Don’t do this.”

“In some ways, I think that prepared me better,” Ms. Murray said, of seeing her parents do drugs and choosing to avoid that life.

“I was repulsed by it,” she said.

She never remembers her parents working – they lived on welfare checks and used a lot of the money to buy drugs, she said. But that didn’t stop them from wanting more for their daughter.

“People would be amazed how much is possible for young people when the adults around them lift them up, help them set high standards and believe in them,” she said. “My parents used drugs, but they always told me I was smart and gifted and not to waste my potential, and that stuck. I also had an uncle named Arthur that gave me the same message.”

Ms. Murray’s mother had an eighth-grade education and her father was a graduate student studying psychology when he became a drug addict and dropped out.

She said she never resented her parents for the way they lived. Her mother was legally blind and schizophrenic, she said. Her father also was mentally ill.

“It was so clear to me that they were sick,” she said.

She talks freely about her love for them, and she actually took a break from Harvard to care for her father when he was dying. He died of AIDS in 2006, 10 years after her mother succumbed to the same disease.

The death of her mother  turned the tide in Ms. Murray’s own life. In an online video she said, “I realized basically that my time is limited, and I just said you know if I keep going like this I’m gonna end up wasting my life, too.”

At that point, she started knocking on the doors of high schools. She was almost 17 and had been out of school for about three years. So when a high school admitted her, she finished in two years.

She applied for college and scholarships and had interviews with the New York Times for a scholarship and Harvard University on the same day. She received the scholarship and university admission.

Though she took a break from Harvard to care for her dad before his death, she ultimately earned a psychology degree from the university in 2009.

Today, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her family and commutes to New York, where she is studying psychology at Columbia University.

She said she is interested in helping children and youth who come from the environments she did.

“There’s a saying, ‘People will grow into the conversations you create around them,’” she said. “If you create a conversation of high standards, children will grow into that possibility. In my case, it was my parents’ love first, their praise, my uncle’s love and respect for education and then later my teacher, Perry. We all need that. (There) is no difference between myself and other people coming up from poverty. None. Any kid can learn and grow. The adults around them need to support their growth, and they will get there.”

Leadership Tyler Executive Director Smittee Root said Ms. Murray’s story is not only about her own empowering decisions and her own leadership, but also about the leaders who invested in her. These factors made her a great fit for this year’s Leadership Live event, Ms. Root said.

She said they’re hoping that attendees are “inspired or motivated by what she accomplished (and) in some small way … go apply that to their own leadership stories or their own roles in their professional or personal (life).”

Twitter: @TMTEmily

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SEE LIZ MURRAY SPEAK

Who: Liz Murray

What: Leadership Live

When: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Green Acres CrossWalk Conference, 1607 Troup Highway, Tyler

Tickets: $55, Purchase online by Monday at leadershiptyler.org. Lunch will be served and the new Leadership Tyler Core Program Class 29 members will be introduced.