Word: madalyn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America's most famous atheist take the money and run?" asked one newspaper. "Is Madalyn Murray O'Hair...now enjoying a South Pacific exile?" Former colleagues confirmed that the O'Hairs had long considered New Zealand a safe haven in case America got too inhospitable. In fact, Jon visited in 1994 to inquire about the family's moving. However, his host and ideological comrade, John S. Jones, claims that Jon never applied for residency, and representatives of New Zealand's major areligious organizations all deny an O'Hair presence. Moreover, says American Atheists' Johnson, "I have their passports right here...
Except perhaps literally. Madalyn suffered from chronic heart disease and diabetes and, like many activist atheists, feared that at her demise, religious relatives might commandeer her body and give it a Christian burial (or, as Kerns remembers her putting it, "stick a crucifix up my a__"). Faced with a sudden health crisis, the matriarch could have arranged to die unmolested and given Jon and Robin permission to jump ship. Such a blessing might have been welcome. "Jon told me numerous times that he was pretty fed up with the whole goddam thing," says Via. "If he had the opportunity...
...fact, the pot may have been richer. Rumors have long circulated that Madalyn had stowed away millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts. Elder son Bill Murray guesses "tens of millions." He says that as long ago as 1978, Madalyn kept multiple secret accounts around the world, at least one of which contained hundreds of thousands of dollars (declared funds from estates in 1995 came to a relatively paltry $340,000). Withers, the Murray-O'Hairs' legal inquisitor, supports the hidden-money theory, volunteering that a Murray-O'Hair phone log that he had access to featured numbers of Swiss...
...Madalyn Murray O'Hair is no longer an essential national figure--either to the public at large or to America's closeted or activist atheists, most of whom long ago shifted their allegiance to her successor organizations. But her absence leaves what the theologically inclined might call a Madalyn-shaped hole at a building in Austin. There is an air of melancholy these days about the American Atheists general headquarters on a stretch of Cameron Road. Instead of a business name (the building is unmarked), the large sign above the fenced-in parking lot reads FOR SALE. American Atheists' officers...
There is a certain hollowness to the words. Not far off lies Gallagher, a terrier who is the only remaining member of Madalyn's cadre of nippy dogs. He too seems to have lost his bite. It is all he can do these days to wander mutely over and drape his head mournfully on a visitor's knee...