Walter James ("Jim") Murray was born July 12, 1930, at Peoria, Illinois. He was the third of four children born to Joseph A. Murray (1881-1936) and his wife Genevieve (McGrath) Murray (1896-1992). He served with the United States Air Force in Okinawa, Japan from January 1948 to May 1949 during the military occupation of that country after World War II, where he was assigned to the 623rd A.C.&W. (Aircraft Control and Warning) Squadron as an information center/radar operator (radar air traffic controller). He later worked as an aircraft dispatcher for Northwest Airlines in the Twin Cities.
Murray left Northwest in 1962 to join the Peace Corps as a teacher of English as a second language. In the course of his career he taught classes at the elementary, high school, and college levels. Participants in his classes included university students, military personnel, employees of American overseas corporations, secretaries, businesspeople, housewives, doctors, lawyers, school teachers, and others. Murray's Peace Corps teaching jobs took him to Bom Jesus da Lapa, Brazil (1962-1964) and to Hoshiarpur, Rewari, and Chandigar, India (1971-1973); he taught history between his two Peace Corps terms. Murray taught at Savannakhet and at Vientiane, Laos (1973-1975) as an employee of International Voluntary Services, Inc.; Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia (1975-1977) as an employee of the Whittaker Corporation; and the Binational Center (Centro Colombo Americano) at Cali, Colombia (1978-1980). Murray next taught at Fukuoka, Japan (1981), Nanjing, China (1981-1982), and at Fukuoka and Tokyo (1982-1984) for Time-Life Educational Systems, Inc.; at Taif, Saudi Arabia (1984-1985); and at Seoul, South Korea (1986-1987) and Istanbul, Turkey (1987-1988) as an employee of ELS International Inc.
From the guide to the Walter James Murray Papers., 1920-2002 (bulk 1962-1988)., (Minnesota Historical Society)
