Evening star., 1939-06-11
House Members Wife Finds
Time to Seek Doctors Degree
Mrs. Murdoch, Mother
Of3, Has Big Interest
In Education
BY JESSIE FAINT EVANS.

Dt JESSIE AN VANS.
Most women in official life in
| Washington find either a career as
the wives and mothers such a full
time one that it permits of no
extra curricular activities in their
own right.
Mrs. John R. Murdock, wife of an
Arizona Representative and the
mother of three children, is not
only gracious hostess, intensely in
terested in the State of Arizona
and her husbands constituency, but
is finding time in the midst of
Washington's social diversion to seek
her doctors degree in education at
the George Washington University
Combining many and varied activ-
tiles in delightfully."- feminine way.
that with true Western directness
so Encompasses the unusual as to
make it the customary way of ones
endeavors, is no new experience in
Mrs. Murdock's life.
Before her husband was elected
to Congress he was the dean of the
Arizona State Teachers College,
and Mrs. Murdock was for 10 years
teacher of English and physical
education in the Junior College
nearby. She resigned this position
to accompany her husband to his
congressional post in Washington.
Champion Archer.
Very characteristic, so her friends
say. was her becoming Arizona's S
champion archer, in order to in
spire the students in her physical
education classes, as to the merits
of archery as Sport-developing
poise. self-control and unerring aim.
From her childhood days on a
farm in Missouri. Mrs. Murdoch
always had before her the ideal
that one day she was going to
achieve college education. although
her father felt that there was little
point in girl having the benefit
| of one
With its far horizon as her goal.
! the determined little girl. who has
become the broadly visioned pur-
poseful woman of today, took the
/ local eighth grade course over three
times with variations" because
/ there was no more advance type of
schooling available in the remote
neighborhood in which she lived.
At IS she was teaching little ele-
mentary school in the vicinity. after
/ having successfully passed the State
Board examination for teacher
/ whether her amazement or her
| fathers was the greater she still
| cannot remember Several years
! lntervened before her savings from
her tiny salary enabled her to go
to a college preparatory school, as
/ the next step forward in the reali-
cation of her ultimate aim.
/ Now an A. B. and an M. A. from
! the University of Arizona. she pur-
sued some of her college subjects in
between the coming of their family
OF two sons and a daughter. and
after they. too were intent upon
their own educa tional careers.
This was possible" she said, be
cause we lived in a college town
and l could fit my schedule into the
hours between my domestic and
maternal duties"
Holds Teaching Great Profession
In the academic and professional
distinctions of their children-David
directs the famous Orpheus Men S
Musical Club at Phoenix, Rachael
speclallzes in architecture with her
husband, John B. is on the deans
list and president of the sophomore
class at Massachusetts Institute of
| Technology-Mrs. Murdock has the
/ fond pride of a mother who has also