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Once homeless, soon Harvard grad
Liz Murray will tell her story locally at a Town Hall lecture.
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By Meredith Moss,
Staff Writer
5:19 PM Monday, May 18, 2009
DAYTON — One week after she addresses a crowd at the Schuster Center in Dayton, Liz Murray will be attending another large gathering.
Her Harvard graduation.
Best-known for Lifetime’s film version of her life, “From Homeless to Harvard,” Murray will be the featured speaker at the Junior League Town Hall lecture series on May 28. Tickets are still available.
“Not long ago I never thought I’d end up at a place like Harvard,” says the 28-year-old who grew up in squalor in The Bronx with drug-addicted parents.
“Unfortunately, both of them became HIV-positive and both got sick and our family fell apart,” says Murray, who was on her own at age 15.
While sleeping on the streets, she determined that a good education was the only way out of a desperate life and decided to apply to Manhattan’s Humanities Preparatory Academy.
“My dad was working in a shelter and I asked him to come with me. We pretended he lived with me at one of my friend’s addresses.”
She was accepted, and completed high school in two years while camping out in the streets and subways of New York. She won a full scholarship to Harvard, where she has studied psychology.
Murray travels the world giving seminars on empowerment and was one of the first recipients of Oprah Winfrey’s Chutzpah Award. Her memoir will be published next year.
Even when life gets rough and overwhelming, she said she believes it’s still possible to make a decision to move forward, recognizing the choices you have and making a better life for yourself.
“It’s about that place you get in your life where you almost want to give up on yourself,” she says. “I want people to know all of us have key moments when we can make powerful choices.”
At those key moments, she says, you need to be totally honest.
“You can’t push anything under the rug; you have to assess where you are, and then be clear about where you want to be,” she says.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or mmoss@DaytonDaily
News.com.
How to go
What: Town Hall Lecture with Liz Murray
When: 10 a.m. May 28
Where: Schuster Center, Second and Main streets
Admission: $30
Tickets: (937) 228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com Tickets also available at the door.
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