Janet (Castore) Murphy '71
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- Alenka FigaAlenka: Okay.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: My name is Janet Murphy. I was Janet Castore when I was here. I currently live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I’m a member of the class- Grinnell College class of 1971.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And... I remember coming to Grinnell. It was before computers and all of that. I was very excited to have a Selectric typewriter, and one of the ways I earned money, I would get my exams and stuff done early and type last-minute exams for other people at 75 cents a page and earn a little bit extra. And I also, for a couple of years, worked as a night lady. Because, the women’s dorms were locked and they had someone, regularly five nights a week and the other two nights a week when that person was off were manned by people from Grinnell. And so, I actually got paid to stay up all night. I got a lot of studying done, typed papers and so forth, and let people into their dorm. So that was kind of... good.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: There were a lot of, as I’ve walked around the campus, a lot of things that I remember. Going over to Burling, I remembered when a group of students removed the President’s Medallion that was on display. They replaced it with... a group- a bunch of like gumdrops or whatever in the shape of the Medallion and they hid it somewhere else in the library. And they had spent the day putting clues in a whole series of books, for like a scavenger hunt.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And then they stayed in the library when it closed, placed- took the Medallion out, placed it in a new place, it was a drawer in the librarian’s desk or something, and left these clues all over the library and then left the library. And there was just hell to pay when it was discovered that- Oh, my God, there hadn’t been even evidence of a break-in but it was obviously gone and whatever. Nobody ever disclosed exactly who that was, if I remember.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: One of the things I really liked about Grinnell, and this might be a little strange for some people, at the end of four years, I had to do an oral exam on everything in my major over the four years. And my department chose most of the people; I got to choose one person who was gonna be my examiner, and I was in American studies and I found it to be extremely interesting to prepare for, and the exam itself was just very very good for me. It was eye-opening and really made me pull together all the things I had learned.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And.. as that- the whole- being an American Studies major, I teach mathematics, so I’m ending up not exactly in that field. But, being in a major where you have to think of things from a diverse number of points of view. Studying one area from the aspect of a historian, a sociologist, somebody writing literature, all of these different points of view or ways of looking at a period of time were just very good for me and I find that in nearly every situation I’m in, I don’t think of it just from my point of view. I look at the other people in the room, and try to figure out where they’re coming from and what they’re seeing at that particular time, and what they’re hearing, and try to get a more global picture of whatever’s going on.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: Some of the really strong memories I have of Grinnell are just, the conversations and experiences that I had. Some of them every day; there was a group of us that would meet in the Forum almost every morning after class and sit and talk and think about problems of the world or what was happening that day or whatever, and just, the bonding and the friendships that went on there.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: The dances- we had some extremely resourceful people who got in just, really, really good live groups who were on their way from Chicago to somewhere and they would get them to stop off in Grinnell in-between. I remember having Duke Ellington for homecoming, which was just incredible. So, those kinds of experiences at a small, intimate school were just really really good.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: The people I was exposed to made me really stop and rethink... the ideas of how I had been raised, the way I thought about things. There were some things that I didn’t really have to think about that much when I was growing up. I grew up in a small town that was not very diverse, and when I got here there were a lot of Civil Rights issues going on.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And there were Black students I talked to who wanted to be completely separate. No integration whatsoever, the separate but equal thing, and that was it. No interracial marriage, no anything, and then there were other people I talked to who just wanted to be a person, and they thought, Blacks, Whites, everyone should just be people. Intermarriage was fine. Just- and I had not really ever thought of a lot of those kinds of conversations and I had not put myself in the shoes of someone who was not White.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And as I started doing that, I just found myself upended at different times and thinking about, "OK, what would it be like for me if I were here and I were not white middle class? How would I be reacting to different things in a class? How would I be reacting to different social situations?" and I started getting very comfortable with being uncomfortable.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And I think that’s been a very important part of my life. It has not bothered me, during my life, to be in uncomfortable situations and to be out of my comfort zone. I’ve actually found it very stimulating and use it as a time to redirect myself and say, you know, “There must be something here that I need to rethink,” instead of like, “Oh dear, I need to go back to where I am more comfortable.”
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: The war issues- I hadn’t thought about it that much before I came to Grinnell... I do know like, when I was in high school the guys in my class were either going to college or to war and that was talked about a lot. But, it didn’t really hit home for me until I got here and I was- became more active about just knowing what was going on in the war.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: I had cousins who were in Vietnam, got sent to Vietnam. I had another cousin who was Quaker and a conscientious objector, and then with the protests that were going on here, it was in my face. It was something that couldn’t be ignored, and I really had to think about it. And, just from the family I’m from, if there’s something you’re having to think about seriously, you get involved. And I did end up, from time to time, getting involved in some of the protests, flying the flag upside down at half-mast, just various protests around campus.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: I also got involved in many conversations around campus about the status of women. I did not actively get involved in any of the groups, but I talked with a lot of the people and again found myself having to rethink. There were some people who were just extremely militant about, "We cannot stay at home. We have to go get certain jobs. We have to become much more like the men and take over those jobs that men do and not do the jobs that women traditionally do." And I found myself saying, “That to me is another kind of being chained into a situation.”
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: True freedom is being able to decide, "Yes, I want to stay at home;" "Yes, I want to teach;" "Yes, I want to be an engineer;" "Yes, I want to go into the military and be a general;" "I want to be able to go into combat;" "Yes, I want to be a doctor;" "Yes, I want to be a nurse." So, actually being able to choose something that was more traditionally for women or not, to me, was real freedom.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: But I hadn’t really thought about it that much before I came here, and when I left Grinnell and got married, I was one of the first in my class to have children and I chose to stay at home and it was at times very difficult because my classmates were starting law practices, they were becoming doctors, they were doing all kinds of things and I was at home with children, and if I had not made a conscious decision that that was my career choice at that time, I think it would have been much more difficult for me.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And... I did a very good job, I think, of staying at home and being involved with them and doing things that kept me involved in the community and changing the community. I found I didn’t have to do that always through a paying job. There was a lot of volunteer work I did. I helped integrate a women’s group in our community that was all white women and I managed to get it integrated. I did a lot within our community to make.... I don't know.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: I just... We had a Korean son so we had a multi-racial family and we made a decision to live in a multi-racial neighborhood and I worked as a Girl Scout leader and made sure the troupe was very multi-racial and a lot of stuff that we talked about in the troupe had to do with walking in somebody else’s shoes. The girls who came out of that troupe, I’ve kept in touch with quite a few, and they have maintained that in their lives.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And then, eventually, I did go into teaching, and I chose to work with students who are at poverty level, and part of that, again, became an ethical thing for me. I had the time and energy to do it. I don’t know that it would have been as conscious a decision if I had not been at Grinnell. But I felt like- My parents could afford Grinnell. I was aware of this kind of college and I was prepared for it, pretty much.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: The high school I went to was not the best, but just personally, I was able to pull up and do what I had to do to come through here honorably, and I wanted my students of poverty, who did not have books at home, who did not have families who even knew about schools like Grinnell, to have the same opportunity to go to college... to change their family, basically, their next generations, and I was successful in getting quite a lot of my students... I taught mostly 8th grade math and I had quite a lot of my students who came back and had managed to get into college and said, y’know, I had changed their family for generations.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: Because, besides teaching math, one of the things I did was I talked to them about the things that you do for community service and get it recorded, get it documented. Take summer courses. There are summer courses offered for you because you’re low-income. Get affiliated with programs at universities; you’re more likely to have the university accept you as a student later on and give you tutoring services. Take advantage of everything that you can. Make sure that you associate with other people who are ambitious.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: Difficult things for me were… when I had a student that I had had for seventh and eighth grade. He had hung around with some kids who were going to college, and some students who were involved with the Latin Kings, and he was trying to decide between the two groups, and he talked to me a couple of times about it. And the Latin Kings were very... y’know, you’ve got testosterone at that age and it was a very thrilling kind of looking thing and in the end he decided to go with his college friends.
- Janet Castore Murphy & Alenka FigaJanet: And when he was a freshman in high school, the Latin Kings came to his house and... shot him in the head on the front steps of his porch, and I had to go to his funeral with- Mm, this is difficult.Alenka: Oh, I'm sorry.Janet: With all my students that I’d had for two years. And... it made me more determined than ever to reach kids as soon as I could and not have them have to face those difficult decisions at such a young age.
- Janet Castore MurphyJanet: And so I still work- I'm now in elementary. I’ve moved to elementary level, but I still work with those kids, making them aware of educational opportunities. At various times I’ve been able to arrange field trips at a university and just get them wowed by, "Oh my gosh, I could be here. There’s a place for me here," because the sooner they realize that the harder they’ll work, the more likely they are to pull their academics up.
- Janet Castore Murphy & Alenka FigaJanet: But I think a lot of what was at Grinnell was not... for me, was not the major incidents. I was aware of those and involved in some of those but it was the enduring friendships, and just.. that long-term change over time. Yeah.Alenka: Thank you.Janet: Mhm.
Alumni oral history interview with Janet (Castore) Murphy '71. Recorded June 2, 2012.