School Alumni Associations

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IU School of Social Work Alumni Association

Alumni Profiles

Jean Murray

“My Journey from Michigan to Indiana to Alaska” 

I was born in Midland County, Michigan, at home, I might add, on a hot June day. My dad worked for Dow Chemical Company and farmed our 40 acres. As an early teenager I read my mother's Women's Home Companion magazines and others. Somehow, I sensed that some women were not easily moving into motherhood and family and I wanted to teach them how to sew and take care of their families. Thus, my earliest thoughts of social work were born.

My undergraduate work was in sociology and psychology at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana. Subsequently, I attended the IU Division of Social Service in Indianapolis where I earned my Master’s Degree in 1956. My field work placements were at the Juvenile Court and the Family Service Association.

Following graduation, I worked in Intake at the Juvenile Court in Indianapolis where my supervisor was Dora Robson. Judge Harold Fields, a highly regarded, good Juvenile Judge, was at the court then. I think the most interesting part was working with the police who brought the complaints. There were about four of them who were particularly savvy regarding juveniles and neglected children. It was disheartening work because of the level of neglect of some children. It was my job to talk with the juveniles and their parents before they appeared in court and to prepare the neglect cases to present to the Judge. Wayne Johnson, Merlin Outcalt, Hayden Rahm and Bart Anson were co-workers. I still correspond with Wayne. The Court was located downtown on Market between Ohio and Alabama.

I then worked at the Family Service Association in Indianapolis where Henry Graham was the Director and Gertrude Mitchell and George Thorman were supervisors. I recall that Harriet Swain, Mary Louise Eleure, Nora Anderson, and Norinda Pence were co-workers. I keep in touch with Nora who is in Denver. At Family Service I had a general caseload and I also became involved with something new called Group Therapy.

When my daughter arrived in 1966, I quit work. Later that year, we went to Nome, Alaska where my husband, Bob, became the dorm director for the Wm. Beltz Boarding School, a state sponsored school serving high school students from villages in northwest Alaska. They were Alaska Natives, most of them Eskimos, with a few Athabascan Indians. When Bob was hired there, as a matter of practice, they were concerned about my adjustment to the isolation and suggested that I might want to work, too. I became one of the school counselors but I found that I didn't want to work full time. That's when my exposure to group work and community organization came into play. I worked part time as a recreation worker, working with a well supplied crafts room with rock polishers. All that Nome gold is held in rocks!! and various other resources. Since homesickness was a big issue, we started, with the generous encouragement of the local radio station, a weekly 15 minute program featuring students from a specific village each week. It was like a letter home. In cooperation with the English teacher the students, as actors, broadcast the play, "Dial M for Murder" in two segments.

After three years we left Nome and Bob taught in Fairbanks for two years. In 1971 Bob became the principal at the school in Anderson, AK until he retired in 1989. Soon after we arrived in Anderson, my community organization exposure became handy when the University of Alaska, flush with oil money, wanted to expand its educational opportunities to the rural areas. I became the coordinator of the extension, responsible for determining what people wanted to learn and finding instructors. Within four years the University program expanded state wide using teleconferencing and it became an ongoing program with centers placed all around the state, some of which have turned into junior colleges.

It wasn't until Bob retired from teaching in 1989 that my interest in gold rush music arose. We took a vacation trip to Dawson, Yukon with its’ very good exposure to the history of the time. I wondered whether the entertainers were using the "real" music. Our living in Nome and Fairbanks had thoroughly exposed me to gold rush history of Alaska My curiosity led to searching diaries of the time. At first I was just looking for specific songs but perhaps my social work training which pushed me into "Who were these people?" Why did they leave family behind, travel thousands of miles, and face such hardships? That's when I learned that music was a sustaining force for many of them. It became the means of mental health for those who were part of the whole bonanza. A fellow from Tacoma commented that, "Music more than anything reduced the tension among us." In 1999, my collection of songs, stories and photos was published by the University of Alaska Press. The title of my book is Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush, Songs and History. Please feel free to contact me at jmurray31@hotmail.com for more information. You may learn more about the book and a CD by going to www.alaska-klondikemusic.com

Written by Jean Vanderpool Murray
and edited by Irene Weinberg

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IUPUI Office of Alumni Relations contact:
Karen Deery, (317) 274-8959 or kdeery@iupui.edu