Early Life
Madalyn Mays was born in the Beechview neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 1919, to Lena Christina (Scholle) and John Irwin "Irv" Mays. As an infant, she was baptized into the church as a Presbyterian. In 1937, she graduated from Rossford High School in Rossford, Ohio.
In 1941, she married John Henry Roths. They separated when they both enlisted for World War II service, he in the United States Marine Corps, she in the Women's Army Corps. In April 1945, while posted to a cryptography position in Italy, she began a relationship with an officer, William J. Murray, Jr. Murray was a married Roman Catholic, and he refused to divorce his wife. Mays divorced Roths and began calling herself Madalyn Murray, and gave birth to a boy she named William J. Murray and nicknamed "Bill".
In 1949, Murray completed a bachelor's degree from Ashland University. In 1952, she received a law degree from South Texas College of Law; however, she failed the bar exam and never practiced law. In later writing for American Atheists, she referred to herself as "Dr. O'Hair", likely with regard to her juris doctor.
On November 16, 1954, she gave birth to her second son, Jon Garth Murray, fathered by her boyfriend Michael Fiorillo. She and her children traveled by ship to Europe, planning on defecting to the Soviet embassy in Paris and residing in the Soviet Union. However, the Soviets denied them entry. Murray and her sons returned to Baltimore, Maryland in 1960.
Murray stated that she worked for seventeen years as a psychiatric social worker, and that in 1960 she was a supervisor at the Baltimore city public welfare department.
Murray left Maryland in 1963 after she allegedly assaulted five Baltimore police officers who came to her home to retrieve a runaway girl, Bill's girlfriend. In 1965, she married U.S. Marine Richard O'Hair. Although the marriage resulted in separation, she remained married to him until his death in 1978.
Read more about this topic: Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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