Word: madalyn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...March 1989, long after Madalyn Murray O'Hair dropped from fame but before she dropped from sight, she enjoyed one of the sweet contradictions of life as America's foremost atheist: she played the preacher at Scott Kerns' wedding. Kerns was something of a favorite of O'Hair's; for a while he led the Texas chapter of her American Atheists group. And so Madalyn invited the couple up to her handsome tan shingle house on Greystone Drive in Austin. The event took place in the library, and was attended by friends, a photographer and Madalyn's son Jon Murray...
...Dean Koontz and Stephen King sat down with a bottle of Scotch and tried to figure out the most bizarre ending to this family they could," says William Murray, Madalyn O'Hair's estranged older son, the one who converted to Christianity, "whatever really happened was probably more bizarre than that." Hyperbole is a Murray-O'Hair family trait, but the assessment is not totally astray. One day in August 1995, Madalyn, then 76, along with Jon, 40, and Robin, 30, vanished from the house on Greystone Drive, reportedly with breakfast still cooking, and were never seen again. Tax returns...
...public saga of Madalyn Murray O'Hair began in June 1963, when the U.S. Supreme Court removed prayer from the public schools. The suit on which the decision was primarily based had been brought by a Philadelphia Unitarian named Ed Schempp. But it soon became apparent that a secondary litigant, whose case had merely been attached to Schempp's, was the one who most desperately wanted the mantle of the era's foremost separator of church and state. Madalyn O'Hair was a heavy woman with a strong voice and jaw who even in repose resembled, as author Lawrence Wright...
...controversies like this, however, that Madalyn O'Hair lived for. "I love a good fight," she said. "I guess fighting God and God's spokesmen is sort of the ultimate, isn't it?" She fought them at colleges, was the star of the first episode of Phil Donahue's pioneering talk show, and continued to file lawsuits, all at a near pathological level of pugnacity, for 32 years. Not all atheists feel the need to criticize, let alone mock, religion. But O'Hair reputedly toppled bingo tables in churches. Watching a female orangutan on television, she snipped, "The Virgin just...
That is exactly what she did, even as she slipped from public view. Madalyn Murray O'Hair's organizational and financial heyday occurred in the mid-'80s. Having worn out her welcome with authorities in Maryland, where she filed her original suit, and then Hawaii, she arrived in Austin in 1965 and established the Society of Separationists, later adding Atheist Centre in America and several satellite groups. By the late '80s, there were eight. Each had a five- or six-person board, and each board was dominated by Madalyn, Jon and Robin (she was Bill's daughter...