Lanazah Murray has been connected to the Devils as long as the Prudential Center has stood.
In 2007, with the opening of the arena, she was hired as an usher and ticket taker. Nearly 18 years later, Murray is still working for the organization, now as manager of guest experiences. In between that she’s held many roles, from guest services to event supervisor.
Though the born-and-raised Newark native knew nothing about hockey when she was hired, she has grown to love the sport.
“I enjoyed the physicality of the game, the fights, all the wrong reasons to tune into hockey,” she laughed. “As time went on, the athleticism, skating backwards, juggling a puck with a stick, it became more than what it was. I was into this.
“I’m definitely a fan of hockey and the players’ athleticism so shoutout to the guys.”
As the month of June rolls on, the Devils organization has taken an active role in Pride marches, celebrations and awareness. And as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Lanazah appreciates the effort.
“Being part of the alphabet gang, I think our organization does way more than I do in the community,” she joked. “They make me want to do more.”
Lanazah has always just been herself. Even if just being herself wasn’t always what conformed to society’s expectations.
In elementary school, her class would go out on the playground for recess and divide into girls and boys. And despite starting on the girls’ side, Lanazah would venture over to where the boys were playing.
“I would run over to the boys’ side because the boys were having way more fun than the girls,” she laughed. “The boys are playing basketball and it’s a free-for-all. I got in trouble every day, but it was so boring on the girls’ side.”
Eventually, the teachers relented and as a form of appeasement gave Lanazah her own basketball to play with.
“I was working on my dribble. I was the only girl on the side dribbling a basketball,” she said.
The concepts of identity and sexuality hadn’t entered her mind at that time. She was just being a kid.
“I wasn’t thinking about boyfriends and girlfriends. I just wanted to draw or play sports or play video games,” she said. “Around eighth grade, all the females in my class had boyfriends so I thought I should get me one of those. Then I got me one of those and was like, well, we’re dressed alike.”
Entering high school, Lanazah still preferred not to worry about ideas of identity. However, in many ways it was inescapable.
“The people surrounding me enjoyed labels. ‘What are you? What are you doing?’ I just wanted to chill,” she said. “I was surrounded by people conflicted with their own sexuality. Whether they were straight or gay. And I was like, ‘this is what you guys are thinking about? I’m thinking about fifth period or social studies.’
“I started to dive into what sexuality meant to me and not what people surrounding me, what it means to them.”
Lanazah doesn’t have a “coming out” story because she had always been out.
“I didn’t jump out of a closet. I personally didn’t have any doors on my closet door, it was just open,” she said. “I just considered it unhinged. I just wasn’t into putting a title on it. It was what felt good, what was I excited about.
“I can’t say I came out. I was just free, living out loud. I didn’t feel like I needed to advertise my sexuality, because I wanted to be seen outside of what my sexuality was. Because everyone wanted to categorize you. I didn’t like the fact that people labeled me. I’m not into labels.”
Her mother found out when she discovered a love letter to Lanazah from another female classmate. Her father just thought it was something that would pass.
“My father thought it was just a phase,” she said. “Then 18 hit, he said it was just a phase. Then 21 hit and he was still saying phase. But at 25, 30, he was like, ‘yeah it’s not a phase.’ I said, ‘yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you that. I’m sticking to it.’”
One of her biggest supporters early on was her grandmother.
“One of the first people I spoke to openly about it,” Lanazah said, “was my grandmother. She was like, ‘you can be gay if you want to baby. If that makes you happy, that makes you happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. Forget what people are saying, just do what you do.’”
Lanazah was loved and accepted by her family, but she knows that she had a much different experience than others in her community.
“People around me were getting kicked out of their homes. Or battling it internally when it came to school,” she said. “I had classmates that would dress one way leaving home but have a bag of clothes and transform when they got to school and dressed another way.”
Lanazah has seen a lot of progress when it comes to acceptance of those in her community but understands a lot more work needs to be done.
“I had an easy life growing up in terms of my sexuality. But I know my friends, and people are still struggling,” she said. “I know people over the age of 40 that haven’t told their parents and are living with their ‘roommate.’ There is still a fight to be fought.”
One sign of progress appears on Lanazah’s body. She has a tattoo that was once used to gain access to secret lesbian bars in years past. But now that tattoo is a relic of the past.
“I called it the Underground Lesbian Railroad,” she said. “(The tattoo) represents where we were, where we are and where we’re going. There are no secret clubs now. There are just bars and everyone is included. It’s amazing where we were then when I got the tattoo and where we’re heading.”
Where the community is headed, hopefully, is a future of full acceptance. A future where labels are unnecessary, and those in minority communities are looked upon as merely human beings.
“What we’ve been pushing for the last 20-plus years is it doesn’t matter who you love. Love is love. Just be a decent human being,” she said. “Be kind and nice to everybody. Regardless of what your sexuality is, see them as a living, breathing creature. Everything else is secondary, but the first thing is primary.”
