Happy birthday Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Happy birthday Madalyn Murray O'Hair. April 13, 1919-date unknown 1995.

I first heard of O'Hair while in college. She lived in Austin and I was going to school in San Marcos as a freshman at Texas State University. I use to listen to her radio show and even taped a few on a recorder I had. I would love to find those tapes today.

I wondered why this energitic woman was so big on keeping religion out of goverement and was curious about how determined she was on this.

I listened and moved on forgetting all about her and even paying little attention to her death in 1995.

Years later as I began to look at how relentless a small group of Christians were at dissolving the barrior of seperation of church and state I realized how much O'Hair had done for this country.

As the founder of the american atheists she created a support group for those who have no God(s). She fought for seperation of church and state early on and may well have kept it them from steam rolling their un-american agenda. She dedicated her life to portraying atheists as something other than the "spawn of evil". For this I remember her and am indebted to her.

Happy birthday Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

*anybody got anything they want to say about her* ?

I'm not an atheist, and therefore not supposed to comment, but for anyone who doesn't know about her, I have found a brief résumé about her :-


O'Hair was one of the litigants in the case of Murray vs. Curlett, which led the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1963 decision, to ban organized prayer in public schools. The decision made O'Hair the country's most famous atheist and such a controversial figure that in 1964 Life magazine called her "the most hated woman in America." O'Hair founded the group American Atheists in 1963 and remained its leading spokesperson until 1995, when she and two of her adult children vanished after leaving a note saying they would be away temporarily. The trio appeared to have taken with them at least $500,000 in American Atheist funds; one private investigator concluded that they had fled to New Zealand. Eventually suspicion turned to David Roland Waters, an ex-convict who had worked at the American Atheist offices. Police concluded that he and accomplices had kidnapped the O'Hairs, forced them to withdraw the missing funds, and then murdered them. Waters eventually pled guilty to reduced charges and in January 2001 he led police to three bodies buried on a remote Texas ranch, which proved to be O'Hair and her children.

Extra credit: The children who disappeared with O'Hair were Jon Garth Murray, her son, and Robin Murray O'Hair, her granddaughter by another son, William. O'Hair also had adopted Robin Murray, making her both her daughter and her grandchild... O'Hair's son William announced his conversion to Christianity on Mother's Day in 1980 and became an outspoken evangelist for his new faith... A rumor continues to circulate online that the FCC is planning to ban religious broadcasting based on a petition by O'Hair; that rumor is not true.

Last year I placed and Ad in the local newspaper praising her for the removal of prayer in public schools. I said that prayer in public school had already placed enough hypocrits in our society.:woohoo: