Early Life and Education
Kerry Murphy was born on April 30, 1960 in Omaha, Nebraska. She grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, the only child of Shirley and Edward Murphy (1919–2005). Her father served during World War II, and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve after 27 years. He also worked as a residential real estate developer. Her mother worked as a public elementary school teacher.
When Healey was 15, her father suffered a severe heart attack that rendered him unable to work for the rest of his life. This put a financial strain on the family and led Healey to work a number of part-time jobs to help support her family. Throughout high school, she worked at a souvenir shop in Daytona Beach. When she was 16, Healey enrolled in Daytona Beach Community College and began to take classes in computer science. She was then hired to help the Daytona Beach News-Journal become one of the first newspapers to transition from typewriters to computerized word processing. In addition to working to help support her family and save money for college, Healey also served as class president and student council president at Seabreeze High School.
After high school, Healey attended Harvard University with the help of a substantial scholarship. There, she served as the membership secretary of the Harvard Republicans Club and produced six plays. Healey graduated from Harvard in 1982 with an A.B. in government.
After graduating from Harvard, Healey was awarded a Rotary International Scholarship and received a Ph.D. in political science and law from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 1991. While in Dublin, she met fellow Rotary Scholar and Harvard alum Sean Healey, whom she married in 1985. Upon completing her studies at Trinity College, Healey spent 1985 as a visiting researcher in the International and Comparative Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School.
Read more about this topic: Kerry Healey
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“... such is the horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude, that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising above the condition of servant, I would gladly hail death as a welcome messenger.”
—Maria Stewart (1803–1879)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)