Liz Murray - Inspiring message of triumph

Liz Murray - Inspiring message of triumph

As a teenager, Liz Murray stood on a street corner in New York, rocking back and forth as she felt the weight of the decision before her. She had just enough money to pay for a subway ride to her next interview at one of the last two alternative high schools that hadn't turned down her plea for admission.
Or she could make her way back to the Bronx, buy pizza for dinner and try to find a place to spend the night.
"The greatest challenge really came not in my circumstances, but in believing in what I did," Murray told more than 6,000 Bryan school employees Friday. "No matter what the circumstances were, I had a choice."
Murray, whose life was chronicled in the Lifetime television movie Homeless to Harvard, was the keynote speaker at Bryan's back-to-school convocation at Central Baptist Church.
Murray told the audience of teachers, staff and administrators that she got on the train and headed to the next interview, fully expecting to be rejected once again.

But a teacher named Perry Weiner saw Murray's potential and would accept nothing but her best, giving the young girl the chance to turn her life around.
"He didn't ask for my transcript. He didn't want to know my GPA," Murray told the audience. "I shared everything with that man."

Murray told Weiner how she and her older sister had lived in a trash-strewn, filthy apartment in the Bronx. Their parents were drug addicts, and when the welfare check came at the first of each month, the family of four would go to the "drug spot" and her parents would buy cocaine and heroin, Murray said.