Frank Hadley Murphy was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Hedvig, was first generation Norwegian, her family from the island of Tromso, north of the Arctic circle. His father, Kenneth, was born in Friendship, Maine and later moved to the island of Martha's Vineyard where Mr. Murphy's grandfather was a sea captain. Of Scot-Irish and English descent the family had 11 ancestors on the Mayflower and are directly related to the first governor of Massachusetts, William Bradford. Mr. Murphy's a lifetime member of the Descendents of the Mayflower Society and his siblings still reside in the Plymouth area. Mr. Murphy graduated from high school in Quincy, Mass. where his father was a school teacher. The family summered on Martha's Vineyard where they always kept a home. After Frank graduated from high school in 1968, the Murphy family returned to the Vineyard to live year around. Mr. Murphy was a medical corpsman in the Navy in the late 60's and early 70's and was stationed in a small American military hospital on the coast of Morocco. After stints working in hospital emergency rooms, Frank became a scrub tech (OR Tech) and worked with Harvard professors of surgery in the mid-1970's. It was here in the surgical theaters of Boston City Hospital that Mr. Murphy began to have his first mystical experiences. He then worked as a farmhand on a large private estate in Newport, Rhode Island where he helped raise sheep, flowers and vegetables. He moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1978 and worked at the Pink Adobe Restaurant where he met his first wife, Aarone Premel, who was the niece of Nobel laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Aarone had been a linguist at the Sorbonne in Paris for 17 years. She died of cancer in 1985. After losing a number of family members that same year, Frank explored the religious life at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert near Abiquiu, NM and Sophia Divinity School in California. Frank remarried in 1987 and he and his wife, Anna, adopted three children. It was during this time that Frank had his epiphany with a Pu-erh tea which he describes in his first book "The Spirit of Tea". With what Frank describes as "a sort of minor background in theology and medicine", he writes about the transcendental aspects of China tea as entheogens and plant spirit medicines. Frank's tea education and experiences, trainings and apprenticeships are as follows: He was the first and only graduate of the original American Tea Masters Association started in San Francisco in 1994 by Tea Masters Donald Wallis and Roy Fong. In 1996 he was invited to sit on a panel as a judge at the China Tea Competition in San Francisco. Visited the central green tea growing district of China: Hangzhou's West Lake, Zhejiang Province this same year. Contributed articles and a song, "Camellia", to the 'American Tea Journal' and 'Tea A Magazine'. "The Spirit of Tea" article appeared in 'The American Tea Journal' Spring/Summer 1996; "Camellia" appeared in the 'American Tea Journal' in 1996 & 'Tea A Magazine' Sep/Oct. 1998. Excerpts from "The Spirit of Tea" talk appeared in 'Tea A Magazine' in their April/May edition. "Spirit of Tea" lecture given at Connoisseur Tea Conference, San Francisco. 1996 Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an article on tea, "High Time for Tea" appearing in the Journal's 'Far Eastern Economic Review', January 18, 1996. In 1997 Frank was invited to sit on a panel as a judge at an international tea competition associated with the Connoisseur Tea Conference in San Francisco. That same year, he was appointed to the post of Spiritual and Religious Affairs Director of ATMA by Donald Wallis and Roy Fong. 2000. Embarks upon a 2 week China Tea Intensive in the field with Tea Master Roy Fong in Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces, China. Mr. Fong is the owner of San Francisco's Imperial Tea Court. During the intensive the group attended classes at China's National Tea Research Institute; picked Dragon Well Tea on the Institute's private grounds; learned how to hand fire the leaves in woks; and then partook of the tea, brewed with Tiger Run Spring Water, while sailing across majestic West Lake---in a floating tea house. In 2007, Frank was contracted by the Santa Fe Opera for five months of lectures, presentations and tastings in conjunction with Tan Dun's Opera "Tea: A Mirror of Soul." Tan Dun won the academy award for the musical score he created for the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Frank was able to present Tan Dun, on stage, with a package of tea from his own native village in China. 2008 A third trip with Roy Fong to China's Yunnan Province focused on picking, firing and pressing our own Pu-erh tea cakes. Frank has contributed articles and essays to various national and international books and tea publications. He appeared on Chinese television in 2007 where his first book "The Spirit of Tea" is now being published. He has been a guest lecturer at tea festivals, expos and conferences, been interviewed on radio talk shows and has been the subject of several newspaper articles. Frank married a third time in 2013. He and his wife, Carol, a wilderness guide and their two cats, lead a reclusive life in the mountains of north central New Mexico. He refers to their home affectionately as Yellow Crane Mountain Hermitage. Frank's second book "Tea Fried Brain: Notes From Saint Camellia's Church of the First Infusion" was released in April of 2014. The back cover of "Tea Fried Brain" reads as follows: "In this controversial testament gleaned from twenty years working behind the scenes of the American Tea Community, free radical, Frank Hadley Murphy, takes us on yet another transformational adventure into the heart and soul of China tea. "Filtered through veils of mysticism and humor, the teas of China's Yunnan Province flower as sentient beings, entheogens and plant spirit medicines. "Set within the Chama River Canyon Wilderness Area of north central New Mexico, this narrative may, like some teas, push the reader beyond their own comfort levels into the vast open expanse of the human heart." A third book, "Reflections on a Mystical Life" will be published in early 2016. Frank may be contacted at jademountaintea@earthlink.net