Bill Murray: A Life
by Janis Williams
In 2000, Bill Murray and his wife Jo awarded me a private scholarship to pursue my MFA in Writing. After I completed my degree in 2002, the family hired me to help Bill write his memoirs, while also serving as his part-time personal assistant and secretary. This led to my spending up to twenty hours a week with Bill and Jo over a period of almost three years. Bill needed a secretary, because he always had a pile of correspondence, and he loved to write letters. (Jo used to tease that he wrote thank-you notes for thank-you notes.) But also he was an unparalleled story-teller, which was one reason he was always in demand as a speaker.
The other reason was that, for sixteen years during the 1950s and 1960s, Bill had served on the Texas Railroad Commission. At one point during those years, as he often recalled with a grin, he was the "most hated man in Texas," because he mandated that oil producers stop flaring natural gas. However, it didn't take long for a whole new industry to grow out of that mandate, and, before he knew it, Bill was an oil and gas industry giant.
When we started writing his memoirs, I tried interviewing Bill, but he would get bored with that and start telling stories-many about his childhood. I finally stopped trying to direct the conversation and, whenever he would launch into a story, I'd scoot to the keyboard and get it down on paper. Eventually I had the entire book, in Bill's own words.
Bill Murray died in August 2004. The family brought out the book on the one-year anniversary of his death.
"Janis Williams beautifully and accurately painted a written portrait of my dad's extraordinary and accomplished life in her memoir of him, entitled Bill Murray: A Life. Her exemplary writing and editing skills resulted in a book that is treasured not only by family and friends as a wonderful remembrance of a man greatly loved, but also by historians worldwide of the Texas oil and gas industry. My family and I can enthusiastically endorse and recommend Janis for any of your writing needs. She is truly gifted!"
—Jo Anna Murray Osterman
If you’d like a copy of Bill Murray: A Life:
Please send an addressed 8” X 10” envelope with postage to Janis Williams, P.O. Box 66367, Austin, TX 78766