Jan Murphy:  

I graduated in the bottom quarter of my class in high school and was voted most likely to not succeed in the humor newspaper that came out at the end of the school year. I spent part of a semester at OU and then went to Houston where I became an airline stewardess before they fired me for being late. After being fired from various other jobs, I went to nursing school at a junior college. I completed school and got married the same year, 1973. I was married to Phil Stobaugh's older brother. Phil was Memorial HS class of '69. Complete coincidence, I met his brother in Houston. Phil and his wife now live in Texas, they have two grown children. I spent the next seven years having two children and working in Labor & Delivery and teaching prepared childbirth. I then got a divorce, I had two small children, 4 and 7 at the time. I returned to school to get my bachelor's degree in anthropology. I know, everybody said at the time, "what are you going to do with a degree in anthropolgy?" So I went to law school and found my true calling: talking, arguing and showing off. I won first place in the Mock Trial contest, represented the school, U of Houston, on the Moot Court team, and was elected to the Order of the Barristers and Who's Who in Law Schools. I married my current husband the same year I graduated, 1987, and moved to Dallas. I practiced trial law very successfully and then after three years I had a major stroke which was caused by a congenital defect in the blood vessels of my brain. At first, I was very disabled, unable to speak, walk or even sit up with out help. I was paralyzed on my right side. But with intense therapy and rehab all day every day for seven months, I was able to walk with a walker, write slowly and speak with slurred speech. I have also had a complete personality change, going from a killer, go-for the throat, Rambo litigator to someone who feeds the poor, shelters the homeless and battered women. My husband and I had a safe house where we had 150 battered women and their children stay with us over 6 years. We received several awards for this. I did pro bono legal work while still in Texas and visited new stroke patients in the hos...Expand for more