Murphy Temple

For 19-year-old Murphy Temple, life has been a daily learning experience. Each passing day provides the Mississippi native another chance to soak in something new, something different and something most young people growing up along the Gulf Coast do not have the opportunity to experience.

Named one of the first-ever Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars, Murphy worked hard in and out of the classroom at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, made possible by the Foundation. That shining academic record did not go unnoticed, and she received a college scholarship from the Foundation in 2008. Murphy decided to remain in New England at Yale University where she has just completed her freshman year. 

Her quest for knowledge comes from three sources: her parents; her grammar school teachers back in Florence, MS; and a man named Carroll Perry, a teacher at Andover, who “got me excited about what some call the ‘dismal science’ of economics.” Murphy didn’t even want to take the class but, thanks to Mr. Perry, she may declare her major in economics next year. 

About the time Murphy was entering public high school in her hometown, her father passed away after a long illness. Her dreams of attending a great college seemed to die too. But thanks to the Young Scholar Program, the dedication of her mother, and, most importantly, Murphy’s desire to learn, she transferred to prep school and achieved that dream of attending an elite college. 

She’s a Mississippi Yankee now. She loves the Northeastern US and says moving from the deep South was not a terrible culture shock. “I never really felt any strong Southern identity, and I quickly dropped what little accent I had. I wanted New England, and that’s what I got, so I embraced it.”

What does the future hold for Murphy? It’s a wide open playing field right now. Perhaps journalism (she’s a staff photographer at the Yale Daily), maybe the law, or she might become a history teacher. One thing is certain: Wherever she lands, she will make an impact, and she will continue each day to find a new idea and to learn something she didn’t know that morning when the alarm went off.