» Navigated turbulence:
Tenure included racial integration
Lee McMurrin, who led Milwaukee Public Schools during a time of racial integration, dies at 86.
Lee McMurrin led Milwaukee Public Schools during a turbulent period when Nazis came to School Board meetings and some teachers refused to teach black children.
Those were two of many challenges that McMurrin, MPS superintendent from 1975 to 1987, faced during the tumultuous years of racial integration.
But under his leadership, Milwaukee schools avoided the violence that occurred in many cities during court-ordered school integration.
“That was a big thing at the time, coming out of the riots in the late 1960s, and then the school desegregation order,” said William Andrekopoulos, MPS superintendent from 2002 to 2010 and a district teacher when McMurrin held the top job.
A founder of magnet and specialty schools in Milwaukee, and author of the book ”Stories from the Front Lines of Integration,” McMurrin, 86, died recently at his home in Covington, Wash.
He came here in 1975 from the deputy superintendent’s job in Toledo, Ohio, as Milwaukee was awaiting an opinion on a long-running school desegregation case.
The challenges were daunting, including intimidation from white supremacists, but he never gave up, said his daughter, Marianne McMurrin of Tempe, Ariz.
“He worked on solutions day and night, developing creative ideas to integrate peacefully so that children would not be caught up in the prejudices and discriminatory behavior of adults,” she said.
Boston had just gone through an angry and sometimes violent process of school desegregation, so Milwaukee decision-makers put a premium on keeping the peace here.
McMurrin’s goal was to “desegregate the schools voluntarily, if he could. He had a positive, gregarious personality, but he also made people aware of what they had to do,” said Dave Bednarek, a Milwaukee Journal education reporter when McMurrin was superintendent.
There was substantial resistance within MPS after Federal Judge John Reynolds handed down his order to desegregate the system on Jan. 19, 1976.
McMurrin was ready with a list of specialty schools to help attract white students from outlying neighborhoods to inner-city schools. He also worked to make schools in the suburbs available to black children.
“He was so excited to become superintendent of MPS,” recalled his daughter, who graduated from Riverside High School in 1979 and went on to a career in teaching.
“It was a calling he had to provide all children with an equal education in which they could reach their true potential. He wouldn’t let the naysayers steer him off course,” she said.
A high-energy guy known for his winning smile, McMurrin disarmed critics with his friendly demeanor.
“It was almost like magic how he was able to get some people on board with him to do right by Milwaukee’s children. He had a moral compass directing him to never give up,” Marianne McMurrin said.
“He was at the height of his career at MPS, where his optimism, creativity, problem-solving, longrange planning … interpersonal skills and his energy could thrive,” she added.
After he left Milwaukee in 1987, McMurrin served as superintendent in suburban Cleveland school districts for eight years. And after retiring from the second of those districts, he spent several years helping his brother, Roger, establish a mission board to support a music ministry in Ukraine.
McMurrin and his wife, Frances, moved to Bend, Ore., in 2000. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, and for the next seven years he was her main caretaker until she died.
“Those seven years were the best years of our married life. We were together continuously,” he said in a 2011 Journal Sentinel interview.
McMurrin, a U.S. Army veteran during the Korean War, was a longtime athlete but had health issues of his own over the years, including a quadruple bypass operation, and shoulder and hip replacements.
But even as his health was failing recently, he remained positive and talked about his 12 years in Milwaukee, his daughter recalled.
“His mind was still so active before he passed away, that he could still hold an intellectual conversation solving problems. He was always optimistic that solutions could be found for anything, including current events,” she said.
McMurrin, who died June 11 at his home surrounded by his family, is survived by Marianne and another daughter, Michelle McMurrin Park (of Covington); son Marshall of Tilamook, Ore.; and brothers Nathan of Davenport, Iowa; and Roger McMurrin of Kiev, Ukraine.
The funeral service and burial were June 15 in Covington.
“He was always optimistic that solutions could be found for anything, including current events.”
MARIANNE MCMURRIN, ABOUT HER FATHER, LEE MCMURRIN