A Murray Man

My name is Tom Murray and I am originally from Iowa. I grew up by a meat packing plant down in Northwest Iowa in town called Storm Lake. It was a town of about 8,000 people. I grew up in what people call a Irish Catholic family, which is a little dysfunctional. I was the oldest of ten children and it was chaotic; had many fights but we all love each other. Although I grew up in a family of ten, I didn’t take on too many responsibilities, nor did I feel the need for attention.

Being the oldest, I always slept with the baby in my room. That was one of the few responsibilities I had. My mother believed in letting babies cry themselves to sleep, but I would get up in the night to pat the baby on the back and ease it to sleep. Being the oldest didn’t make me crave attention either. I didn’t crave attention because my mother was a talker. Due to her gift of gab, she found something to talk about with anyone. As soon as someone walked in the room, she would ask questions and take immediate interest in you. She was relentless and would talk until she was fatigued. My father on the other hand was the opposite. He seemed mute, at least when he was at home. In retrospect, I may have had three to four conversations with him in his life. I would have liked more attention from him. I do believe that part of his deal was the era. A man in the ‘50s and ‘60s, wasn’t supposed to show emotion or feminine qualities. I guess being a good communicator was considered a feminine trait back then. Now, times have changed to the point where men can laugh, talk and share their concerns. Despite my odd relationship with my father, he influenced my move to Minnesota.

Movin' on up to Minnesota

University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

My father and his brothers went to the University of St. Thomas, then it was called the College of St. Thomas. Since I knew of the school, I checked it out. It was a nice area and it was organized, so I pursued my higher education at St. Thomas. While there, I didn’t have much of a social life. Getting good grades and graduating were my main focus, not partying or going out with friends. When the time came, I graduated with a teaching degree and began teaching. I spent almost 33 years being a part of the Minneapolis Public School district.

Teaching was quite a challenge at first because I started off as a substitute teacher and the days I worked were mental health days for the regular teachers. Therefore, often times there would be no lesson plan, and I was trying to bring organization to a chaotic environment. After six weeks of substitute teaching, I quit and applied to work at St. Joe’s Home for Children as a cottage worker. The position was to supervise a group of children sometimes during the day and sometimes at night. When I went in for the interview, he told me he wanted to hire me as a Minneapolis Public School teacher instead. I hadn’t known of any full time openings. Where I started off was St. Joe’s Home for Children and that was very rewarding work because the students there, those young people, were like sponges. They had been sometimes kicked out of their homes, run away from their homes, and they were desperate for any kind of adult attention they could get and I learned that if you could give them positive attention they would respond very dramatically. That’s a lesson I’ve learned or that I’ve tried to put in practice at locations that I worked at. If you can get the student to develop a relationship with them, let them know that they can trust you, you can ask them to do just about anything and they’ll do it for you because all of us crave attention, especially youth that are going through difficult times in their life and really need somebody to trust.

I had a sort of a begrudging realization is after that position, in the Minneapolis Public Schools, because I was a young person, every year I would get laid off and I had four really good jobs that I liked a lot and they were all in the, what’s called the hospital agency. So I worked in St. Joe’s, Fairview Riverside - in a drug dependency program teaching there, University Hospital, all these were wonderful positions but every year I would get laid off and an older teacher would take my position because the district was scaling back from about 70,000 students to they’d settled in about 40,000. For a variety of different reasons, the district was getting smaller, the teachers were getting older so I couldn’t get a stable position. At one point a long long time ago I just decided to test the waters and I got a position selling beauty supplies and I was the worst beauty supply sales person of all time. I only lasted a year and a half. I didn’t sell any sun tanning beds, I very rarely sold a perm or a color, which was what we were supposed to be selling all the time. I sold a lot of other things like chairs, books, knick knacks and other products but I didn’t sell the big ticket items. After a year and a half, I was very kindly released and went back to the Minneapolis Public Schools. I said to myself, “Alright whatever you have I’ll do it.” It wasn’t like a bright light that went off it was more like a stop sign or brush with reality that would made me realize I need to get back into teaching. I was lucky enough to obtain a  position again in the public schools.

"They came from rough situations, but were beautiful beings..."

Once I entered the district again, I worked hard and communicated the best I could. In thirty three years, I only missed two days on the job. One of them was when my wife and I had a miscarriage. It occurred while I was positioned over at Franklin Middle School1, they used to call them junior highs, and I stayed home that day. The other day was when my mother died. That occurred when I was working over at Henry, we had an open house that night and I came back for that but that was when I missed that day. Otherwise, I was, I came to work everyday and  I always came in a suit, that was sort of my trademark. Nowadays I’ll see people on the street and they don’t even recognize me because I don’t have a suit on. Communication was important to me, therefore I  returned every phone call that I got. Unfortunately in this day and age, people don’t often return phone calls, even principals and administrators. You can call them up and leave a message, and I think their motto is: “if you don’t get a hold of me I’m not going to call you back”, so you have to keep calling and calling. Well, I always returned every phone call to everyone. Also, I communicated online, on the website I created for Henry, and I communicated with large groups of people by just speaking to people, being friendly, developing relationships, responding to their issues and concerns.

Building a Bond

My thirty-three years of experience in the Minneapolis Public School district has allowed me to bond with different communities. I especially bonded with two: the African-American community and the Hmong community. When I was at Franklin, for the most part I think the school’s demographic was about 60 or 70 percent African American and all of the students that I had in my classes were African American. One time I got a grant for $500 to develop or to fund high interest reading materials for African American students, and I remember how difficult it was to find books and magazines, that would be interesting for my students. I really developed some sympathy for my students. I saw what it was like to be an African American young person going through this culture and not have anybody or a society that appreciates things that they're interested in, their music, their culture, their concerns and worries. Living on the north side of Minneapolis, and not be able to turn to sources that will help them through this, was very eye opening for me. Also, I think African American students have like radar and they can sense injustice or unfairness before any other group of people. There have been times in my career when I think they could sense things that were going on with me and they would just come right up to me and say, “You’re having a hard time because of ‘this’”, and it was one of those things where I couldn’t say “yes” or “no” but they just knew. They knew in their belly that something was wrong and they knew what was wrong. That always impressed me about that population of students.

The Hmong community over at Henry, at one point I think we were forty-five percent, it might had gone down the last couple of years, but just about half the school was Hmong. When I first learned of the Hmong culture, I learned to speak a few words and the  the elders and parents could be so appreciative. I was invited to cultural activities with the Hmong and developed relationships with those families. A lot of those relationships has turned into very strong family relationships where I still keep in contact with students and families from several years ago. Both of the two communities that I am the most invested in most, has been the most rewarding to me.

Another rewarding aspect was the students. A guy named, Mayor  R.T. Rybak,

Mayor R.T. Rybak

would look at the students at Henry and he would say those students are the most educated, most prepared students. I know of anywhere and he would explain from his perspective was that there was so much diversity at Henry. He’d ask those who spoke a second language to raise your hand. Then half to seventy-five percent of the hands would go up. Then he would ask everybody who’s parents spoke a second language or has a friend with a second language and all the hands would go up. That just points that the students at Henry were the most, well, prepared students getting into this global economy. I always thought the students at Henry were the strongest students I had ever seen, the fastest, the funniest, the most elegant, the most artistic, and also the most brilliant students. A lot of our students didn’t have a lot of money, and there was constant pressure on them. For example, if you put enough pressure on coal, you could turn it into a diamond. Our students at Henry,were like coal. They came from rough situations, but were beautiful beings. They could walk down a hall and by rapping their knuckles on something, they could create something beautiful. I saw that all the time, just something as simple as that. I used to tell everyone that there wasn’t a question in my mind that Henry students were the best. They were also the most courageous, and the most honest in terms of knowing themselves. I’m now fifty-nine years old and I’m still trying to learn the skill of being honest with knowing myself. When people say what do you want to do with the rest of your life, I always say, I’m going to try to live the rest of my life like a kid from Henry High School because they were genuine, sincere, and honest . That’s a very difficult thing to be able to do at that age. That’s the most rewarding thing I got from the Henry. I’m just eternally grateful of what Henry students gave me there.

Life after Teaching

Upon retiring, Tom Murray has spent his time volunteering and writing a novel about baseball.

Footnotes:

1. Franklin Middle school as a school located in north Minneapolis, but has since closed down. It is located on  1501 Aldrich Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55411. 

Photo Credits:

Tom Murray: Camden News via Twin Cities Daily Planet,  2010

University of St. Thomas: Via University of St. Thomas

Mayor R.T. Rybak: Cameron Wittig for Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, 2013

Article Facilitators: ChiMeng Xiong, Jess Stimpson, Tae Feser