This is the story of Jeanette Murphy, Supermum. The 53 year-old from Atlanta, Georgia is a full-time carer who has adopted 23 children with special needs on top of her own four birth children. Remarkably, the family of twenty-nine all live under one roof.
Jeanette and her husband claim they felt a calling to help children with special needs. Jeanette first became interested in mental disability in her teens when she became friends with a Down’s Syndrome boy who lived on her road. The experience inspired her to work as a counsellor in a home for disabled adults, and it was there that she met her husband, John, a nurse. John shared her dream of bringing children into their family and providing them with a safe and loving home. “We found that the people we were looking after had already been raised and had picked up bad habits that we couldn't change. We wanted to reach out to them when they were younger,” says Jeanette.
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In 1983, when they already had two biological children of their own, the Murphys adopted Shannon. 5-year-old Shannon was severely brain-damaged and hyperactive; she was extremely demanding and needed constant care. Nevertheless John and Jeanette felt encouraged to take on more children, including sweet-natured “family favourite”, baby Jonathan, who had Down’s Syndrome and had been wrongly diagnosed as blind. After that, the church adoption services contacted them every year with details of another child, and the Murphy family grew steadily. Adoption centres soon started referring parents who were reluctant to abort but unable to cope with disabled babies to the couple.
In the film, John and Jeanette’s birth children are asked how they felt about the idea of the ever-expanding family. Not that they had much choice; the Murphy children had to accept each adopted child in order to fulfil their parents’ dreams. “I never felt neglected,” says Shaun, the oldest of the children. “I never felt they weren’t paying enough attention to the biological children... It was like a team effort.” The children contribute to everyday life in the home, which the Murphys hope will aid in the development of their social skills.
Looking after such a huge family is obviously no mean feat. The monthly food bill is around £9000 and it’s a 24/7 job. The extended family has to manage on community donations and disability payments. Their house is cramped, with bunk beds housing up to four children per room. But the Murphys’ unwavering life ethic has enabled them to develop a unique approach to caring for the mentally disabled. They are convinced that a loving family home is the best possible environment in which to nurture the potential of these children, many of whom have physical as well as mental disabilities. They consider it vital to teach the children real life skills rather than “pampering and babying.” One of their daughters, Angel, is blind and has a prosthetic leg, but she is in charge of bath time and helps to care for the other children. She was a frightened child when she arrived, but “now she’s fearless,” Jeanette proudly explains. “Our goal is for the kids to eventually get jobs and marry. If we ever have enough money we want to build a second house for the older kids, where they can live semi-independently.”
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows at the Murphy’s house. Behind the family’s daily life, concern over the children’s health always lurks. Down’s Syndrome is accompanied by heart defects, and most of the children were born with life-threatening conditions. The Murphys had a big scare when little Emily’s pacemaker stopped working. “Once you experience something like this, you know that bad things can happen,” says Jeanette. In 1990, baby Jonathan was diagnosed with leukaemia; he endured three years of chemotherapy and painful surgery before he died. “When you lose a child, it feels like you’ve lost a part of you,” says Jeanette. “I've sat through 14 heart surgeries for 13 kids panicking every time a doctor rushed down the hall. Five of our children have died – three as babies – and my world fell apart every time. They were all so precious.”
Not everybody approves of the Murphys’ methods, and some are determined to bring them down. “A lot of people think it’s impossible, so we must be doing something wrong,” explains Jeanette. When their son Cody’s biological mother handed him over as a baby, his grandparents decided that they wanted custody themselves. The ensuing legal battle and accompanying media circus put the Murphys in the spotlight, but the Court of Appeal ruled in their favour.
Some of the children, such as 20-year-old Amy, who has a part-time clerical job, may gain a degree of independence. Others will need more care as they get older, and some have declined dramatically. John and Jeanette won’t be around to supervise them forever, but for now, the Murphys put their faith in God and take it one day at a time.
Jeanette is optimistic about the future of her clan. “I am happiest when I see them helping one another, like the other day when Mia, who is ten, fell down and scraped her knee. Cody and Nathan, who are 14 and ten, brought her inside for a plaster. I see how much love they have every day.”
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Roy Cleveland Sullivan (Feb.7, 1912 – Sept. 28, 1983) was a U.S. park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven different occasions and survived all of them. For this reason, he gained a nickname "Human Lightning Conductor" or "Human Lightning Rod". Sullivan is recognized by Guinness World Records as the person being struck by lightning more recorded times than any other human being. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 71.
