OHair MadalynMurray

American atheist, activist and author. As the leading spokesperson against God and religion in the USA, OHair earned herself the title of "the most hated woman in America" by successfully waging a personal war against prayer in public schools, finally having it outlawed by Supreme Court Hearings in 1963. She is the author of several books including "All About Atheists," "Atheist Epic," "Atheist Heroes and Heroines," "Our Constitution, The Way It Was," and "What on Earth is an Atheist." OHair was the daughter of Lena and John Mayes, a couple who provided their daughter with an ostensibly stable childhood. Her dad was a successful owner-operator of a small construction business that collapsed in the Crash of 1929. When her seamstress mom Lena became pregnant with Madalyn, she threw herself out of the second story window of their home in an attempt to abort the pregnancy. Scrambling to make ends meet, Dad opened a roadhouse which, despite local speculation of it being a sometime brothel, served as a definitive camouflage in his successful rum-running activities during Prohibition. When police raids threatened his arrest, Mayes stationed his brazen and quick-witted daughter Madalyn at the roadhouse entrance to cover for him and to throw the authorities off his trail. Young Madalyn displayed a strong talent for confrontation and her diatribes got results. After eloping with John Roth at age 22, OHair entered the Womens Army Corps, joining her husband in Hawaii where he was stationed as a Marine soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. While serving as a WAC in WW II, she received six battle stars. It was in Hawaii that OHair fell in love with married Army officer William J. Murray, Jr., a wealthy Roman Catholic. When she found herself pregnant by Murray several months later, he refused to admit paternity alluding to the fact that his devotion to the church would never permit him to divorce his wife. Noting Murrays family wealth, an enraged OHair sued for child support and took his name for herself and her illegitimate son. Returning to the mainland distraught and pregnant, OHair divorced Roth and promptly made Roman Catholicism the target of her considerable rage. At the bulls-eye of this target was the Pope himself, personally responsible for preventing her lover from marrying her. Shortly after giving birth to her son, OHair assumed the position of a deranged Scarlet OHara during a thunderstorm challenging God that, if such a thing as "God" existed, it should strike both her and her child dead with a bolt of lightning." She interpreted their unscathed survival as a sign that "God does not exist, or he would have taken up the challenge....Ive proved irrefutably that God does not exist." Soon after the peak experience of her challenge to God, OHair moved to Texas where she attended the South Texas College of Law and worked at a series of jobs to support herself and her son. She earned her B.A. in 1948, and passed the Bar in 1953 (though some reports state that it is unclear whether or not she was ever admitted to the bar). In 1952 she moved with her parents to Baltimore where she had another illegitimate son two years later. A social worker for 15 years, she suffered from heart disease, diabetes and dizziness. The tide of OHairs personal life was to turn forever when she dropped her oldest son off to school late one morning in 1960. While walking with him to his classroom, she noticed children with their heads bowed recitin Read less