| Steve Blow: Vanished boogeyman left mark 02/04/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News She even had three names, like we confer on the baddest of the bad: Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth ...
... And Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Who, oh who, will our boogeyman be now that Ms. O'Hair is gone?
And why am I suddenly feeling kind of tender toward the old gal?
As the outcome of her sad, strange story has finally come to light in recent days, I've been feeling oddly nostalgic about the big role she played in our lives.
'Most hated woman'
It's hard now to recall the electric tingle that once could be generated by the mere mention of the word "atheist."
Now that Jerry Springer et al have rubbed our nose in every oddity and perversity of life, nothing shocks us. But, boy, there was a time when Madalyn Murray O'Hair sure could.
A woman who didn't believe in God! It seemed unfathomable. And right here in Texas, no less!
Like nuclear fallout shelters and Communist conspiracy theories, Madalyn Murray O'Hair was part of the scary stuff that occupied the minds of children growing up in the 1960s.
Look magazine proclaimed her "the most hated woman in America." And in her typical style, she took up those words as a proud banner.
It seems laughable now that we ever believed her predictions about the death of religion in America.
And her own death now seems so pitiful and small.
Who could have predicted that this bombastic bulldozer of a woman would end up as a pile of sawed-up bones?
She may have been the most hated woman in America at one time, but in the end she apparently was done in by one of her own.
David Waters, a former office manager for Ms. O'Hair's American Atheists organization, last weekend led authorities to what are believed to be the dismembered remains of Ms. O'Hair, her son and granddaughter.
Mr. Waters pleaded guilty to extorting more than $500,000 of American Atheists' money from the three before their deaths. They disappeared in 1995.
A hero of sorts
Even in death, Ms. O'Hair plays the boogeyman for a lot of earnest church folks. A bogus petition still circulates, claiming that Ms. O'Hair seeks to ban all religious broadcasting from the airwaves.
She never did such a thing. But with her name attached, the hoax simply refuses to die.
It will scandalize some when I say that Ms. O'Hair should be called a hero in one regard – for her fight to end compulsory school prayer.
Please notice I said "compulsory." As she pointed out herself in a guest column for this newspaper in 1984, she never sought to end "voluntary, individual prayer" in schools – nor would she.
That private kind of prayer – the very kind commanded by Jesus, she liked to point out – remains the right of every student.
Of course, never missing a jab, Ms. O'Hair always called him "the fictional Jesus."
American Atheists has since moved from Austin to New Jersey. Its Web site (www.atheists.org) contains much more about her life and its gruesome end.
One report gloats a little that Ms. O'Hair achieved her goal of meeting death without being "prayed over" by a bunch of well-meaning Christians.
Some comfort.
The abrasive Ms. O'Hair was often as unpopular with other atheists ("a gutless crew") as she was with Christians.
And this may be the most telling epitaph to Madalyn Murray O'Hair:
There is a section set aside on the American Atheists Web site for people to write "appreciations" of her life.
It's blank.
Steve Blow can be reached at 214-977-8374 and at .
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