Short Biography

I am the middle child in a family of five girls. I teach language arts to gifted students at North Habersham Middle School, grades 6, 7, and 8. One of the things my students do is participate in the Future Problem Solving Program, sponsored in Georgia by the Torrance Center of Creative Studies at the University of Georgia. For a couple of years I had the opportunity to serve as the Evaluation Coordinator of the International Future Problem Solving Program in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Back to family stuff, two of my sisters have achieved relative fame in their areas and I am proud to tell about them.

My oldest sister, Murphy Henry, is a bluegrass banjo player and has developed her own teaching style called (naturally) The Murphy Method. She and her husband operate the Murphy Method business out of their home in Winchester, Virginia. Their band, Red and Murphy and Their Excellent Children, includes my excellent niece, Casey, age 19, and my excellent nephew, age 15, Christopher, both of whom have turned out to be excellent bluegrass pickers, Casey on banjo, and Christopher on mandolin and guitar. Casey is a freshman at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville where she is studying hard to be a banjo picker. She does some editing for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine and writes for a banjo newsletter called Banjo in the Hollow. Chris is interested in music, including his rock band, his mandolin, his guitar and whatever it is that he does to create music on his computer. Murphy writes the General Store column for Bluegrass Unlimited and has recently begun her own newsletter called Women in Bluegrass. She has also just published a book that includes all her columns for Banjo Newsletter entitled ...and there you have it.

My other famous sister is Dr. Claire Hicks, second oldest in our family, who has been seen on television all over the country because of a documentary about her produced by Ted Koppel's Nightline called Journey of a Country Doctor. Claire is in family practice and lives in Jesup, Georgia, and has done a lot of work with AIDs patients. Glenn Close is doing a made-for-TV movie about Claire and her work that should be out in about two years. Nightline recently won a prestigious award for three of its shows, including the one about my sister. Claire has two daughters, Helena, age 11, and Mac, age 6. Helena is going to be the first female President of the United States.

Not to give short shrift to my other wonderful sisters, my next youngest sister is Nancy Pate, who is an excellent songwriter, and plays with the band Born Gypsy out of Atlanta. She is the mother of the Sugar Babies, also known as the Blondes, Caroline, age 5, and Natalie, age 3.

My youngest sister, Laurie Hicks, everybody's favorite Hicks sister, is a pediatrician in North Carolina, and is the mother of strong and happy David Andrew Tanner, age 1.
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