Inspirations: "Homeless to Harvard"
How
does a homeless Bronx teenager with two drug-addicted parents
end up graduating at the top of her high-school class and
getting a scholarship to Harvard? For Liz Murray, it was the
only way out of a downward spiral that had swept her family
into a hellish existence — and found the teen scrounging
for food and sleeping on the subway.
 "I
was uprooted by my circumstances. I lost everything. Where
can you go if you hit bottom? You can only go up," says
Murray, 22, whose life story has been made into a Lifetime
movie starring Thora Birch and Kelly Lynch.
"Homeless
to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story," set to make its television
debut Monday, tells the story of Murray's childhood in the
South Bronx, growing up with parents who were loving —
but hopelessly addicted to cocaine and alcohol. "I didn't
notice that it was abnormal," says Murray, who was in
junior high when she finally realized that other parents didn't
shoot up in the living room. "They used the drugs openly."
Her
mother developed AIDS when Murray was 10, and several years
later the family split apart. Her father moved into a shelter,
while Murray and her older sister accompanied their mother
to the home of a man they referred to as their godfather.
In truth, says Murray, "he was one of my mother's drinking
buddies from the bar."
By
the time she was 15, Murray had quit going to school and was
spending much of her time on the streets of the Bronx, stopping
in at friends' apartments to wash her hair or do the occasional
load of laundry. "I was always aware of being an imposition,"
she says. Whenever she heard whispering in the kitchen, she
knew her friends' parents were talking about her — and
that it was time to move on.
Then
Murray's mother, Jean, died of AIDS at 42.
"After
my mom passed away, I realized I needed to get myself together,"
says Murray, so she threw herself into a summer job fund-raising
for NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group), ringing
doorbells in the suburbs and earning enough cash to make a
new start. With her father's support, Murray enrolled at a
public high school in Manhattan and crammed four years of
classes into two years — still living on the streets
and studying in stairwells.
It
was Perry Weiner, one of her teachers at Humanities Preparatory
Academy, who spotted Murray's intelligence and drive, and
urged her to apply for a New York Times college scholarship.
But the uniqueness of her situation only struck her afterward,
as she stood in line at the welfare office — anxious
to make appointments scheduled for later with representatives
of the Times and of Harvard. (When Murray asked a welfare
employee if she could move to the front of the line, the woman
shot back: "Take a seat. The lady in front of you has
an interview at Yale!")
Murray
says now that while Harvard proved to be "one of the
most intriguing environments," it was perhaps not the
best match. She left school recently to help care for her
HIV-positive father, whose health is on the decline —
and who likes to refer to Murray as his hero — and plans
to study writing and film at a New York-area college.
Meanwhile,
she has been thrown into the world of professional filmmaking,
helping fine-tune the script for "Homeless to Harvard,"
playing a small role as a social worker, and serving as the
movie's co-executive producer. Murray says she is happy with
the final product and relieved that the film avoided villainizing
her mother (played by Kelly Lynch) and her father (portrayed
by Michael Riley).
Lifetime
executives are also pleased with the movie — and impressed
with the real-life Murray's poise and determination. "This
kid is just incredible," says Lifetime executive vice-president
Meredith Wagner, who helped put together a companion kit on
homelessness that was distributed recently to 40,000 schools
nationwide. "It's a wonderful story about self-esteem
and following your dreams, and it shows that people have the
spirit to achieve things that might have seemed impossible."
For
Murray, nothing seems impossible. After she wraps up a whirlwind
press tour, she'll get back to work on her memoir —
due to be published next spring by Hyperion — and plans
to continue speaking out around the country about the power
of human will.
"I
think, even if you have limits on you, work with what you
have," she says. "People have more control than
they realize."
By
Linda Lombroso, The Journal News, April 4, 2003
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