Muriel Rylee Casper

“My dad never had a penny to pay for my education. But I always had the feeling that if other people could do something, I could too—at least I wanted to try. If I didn’t try, I wouldn’t be able to find out if I could do it or not. “Many of the families in the area where I grew up—Perry, Bibb, and Chilton Counties—are in the same situation I was in. If some of those kids dream of being nurses, I would like to help them.”

Listen to our interview with Muriel Rylee Casper  Subscribe in a reader

Muriel Rylee Casper’s nursing career took her to Germany, Illinois, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, and California. But there is a special place in her heart for Perry County, Alabama, where she grew up on an 80-acre farm near Centreville. Those feelings for rural Alabama and its people led Casper to establish the Muriel Rylee Casper Remainder Charitable Trust in 1997.

The trust provides income for Casper during her lifetime, and the remainder will fund the Muriel Rylee Casper Endowed Nursing Scholarship, to be awarded to qualified nursing students from Perry, Bibb, and Chilton Counties.

About helping to develop the next generation of nurses: “You dream about what you would like to do when you grow up, and I wanted to be a nurse. I’m sure there are a lot of kids out there now who would like to be nurses, but they might just forget it if someone says, ‘We can’t afford that.’ “I know how I felt growing up. I was kind of stubborn; I could take failure or success, but I at least wanted to try. I would like to help give these kids a chance to try.”

Casper lives in Tuscaloosa, not far from where she grew up. Her parents and older sister, Mavis, are deceased. Her younger sister, Mary Beth, lives on the family farm near Centreville. All three of the girls in the family grew up to be nurses, and they were all inspired partly by their rural upbringing.

On farm life: “My dad had no sons, so my sisters and I did the field work with him. We picked cotton and planted corn. You could use a planter to plant the corn, but sometimes he didn’t use the planter. He would dig the furrow, and we would drop the corn in the hill. My sister would drop a whole handful in, not thinking that it would all grow up. She was just trying to get rid of the corn, so it wouldn’t take so long to drop it in. My dad also planted peanuts, and we had cows and mules. “Our father was ahead of his time in many ways. He always encouraged us to get prepared in case we had to support ourselves. I think that’s what motivated all of us to go into nursing.”

On lessons learned on the farm: “My husband was from Chicago, and we lived in the Chicago area for many years. We have one son, and I remember talking to him when he was a teen-ager. One day I told him that we didn’t have a radio on the farm for years. He thought for a moment and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that.’ I said, ‘Please don’t be sorry, because I’m not.’ I didn’t necessarily want to stay on the farm, but I appreciated growing up there.”

Casper entered the Jefferson-Hillman Hospital School of Nursing in 1944 and earned her diploma in 1947. She worked for one year as an operating-room scrub nurse at TCI Hospital (later Lloyd Noland and then HealthSouth Metro West) before going to the University of Colorado for her bachelor’s degree.

On heading west: “People always ask me, ‘How did you wind up in Colorado?’ And I say, ‘On a Greyhound bus.’ “I had never been out of Alabama. But I talked with a nurse in the American Nurses Association office in Birmingham, and she was on active duty with the dean of nursing at the school in Boulder, Colorado. There were not many degree schools of nursing at that time, and she said, ‘Why not go there?’ “Looking back now, I can’t imagine how I got on that Greyhound bus and went to Colorado. But I was determined, and I wanted to try. My dad never paid a penny on my education; I had saved enough money to begin the program, and I worked on weekends and went to Denver to work during breaks. I ran out of money at one point and came back to Birmingham to work at Baptist Hospital. But I decided to borrow money so that I could go back to Colorado and complete my last quarter in school.”

After graduating from Colorado, Casper joined the Veterans Administration Nursing Service. She was based in Lake City, Florida, and was on active duty with the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps for about two and a half years. That included duty at Spangdahlem Air Force Base in Germany. After stops with the VA Nursing Service in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Memphis, Tennessee, Casper resigned from the service. She continued to work with the Air Force Reserves and was at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois when she met a University of Illinois ROTC student named Richard Casper. She left Chanute after two weeks and continued her search for a full-time job, but Casper called and asked her to return to Illinois.

On a life-changing decision: “I hadn’t found a job yet, so I decided I could look for one in Illinois. I had been there a week or two when he asked me to marry him. I hadn’t expected that. We met on September 1 and got married on October 23 in the chapel at Chanute. Instead of getting another job, I got married. “My husband was regular Army, and so was his father. My husband was discharged after World War II, and he went to the University of Illinois in ROTC. He called himself a ‘lifelong professional Army man.’”

Casper gave up her full-time nursing career, but continued to serve with the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a captain after 20 years of service. After living briefly in California, the Caspers settled in Evanston, Illinois, where Richard Casper worked in the University of Illinois extension service.

Richard Casper died in 1994, and Muriel lived in Chicago for another 12 years before returning to Alabama last year.

On working as a nurse in the military: “I like people, and in the military, you get a real good social orientation. When you live on the post, everyone has the same goals. You learn teamwork, and you learn that the military has to have regulations and socialization. If the commander has a party and you’re invited, you’d better go. “The military offers so many opportunities for nurses. I was fortunate to spend time in Germany, and I never would have gotten to do that without nursing. People often don’t realize how having to follow rules and regulations helps you gain a lot of ability to manage life, to mature. When you’re assigned a duty, you’d better do the duty. That’s a pretty important lesson to learn.”

On changes in the nursing profession: “I can’t describe the changes in great detail, but I’m aware that I would be completely lost if I went back to work today. You can always take care of patients, but the duties and the equipment have changed so much. Even the equipment for taking temperatures and checking blood pressure has changed.”

Casper’s son, Andrew “Fowler” Casper, lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and works as an environmental ecologist at the University of South Florida. Casper looks back on her life and thinks about the importance of faith. She has long been inspired by the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. She remembers listening to a radio program where a rabbi talked about the parting of the Red Sea and the role of faith.

On matters of faith: “When the Israelites got to the Red Sea and the Egyptian army was behind them, they turned to Moses and said, ‘What do we do?’ That’s when the Lord said, ‘Tell them to walk forward,’ and that’s when the waters parted. “I’ve always gone to church and had faith in a higher power. But faith is kind of a funny thing. You say your prayers, and if you’re not sure whether something is the right thing for you to do, you often say, ‘Give me a sign.’ For example, I wanted to go to school and get my nursing degree, but I never knew exactly how you follow your faith. “The story of the Israelites makes me think that it’s important for us to take the first step. I guess I had faith to get on that bus to go to Colorado, although I didn’t realize at the time how important it was for me to take that first step. It makes more sense to me now.”