Maintaining the Momentum: Winter 2008

In 1997 Captain Gladys Muriel Rylee Casper established a charitable remainder unitrust to create an endowed scholarship in the School of Nursing. But in a tactical maneuver designed to help alleviate the financial strain facing many students, she recently decided to renounce her income interest in the trust so that students may benefit from the funds now rather than later. “This gift serves as a wonderful tribute to Captain Casper’s distinguished nursing career and life devoted to the service and care of others,” says UAB President Carol Z. Garrison.

A 1947 graduate of the Jefferson-Hillman Hospital School of Nursing, Casper grew up in Alabama’s rural Perry County. She joined the U.S. Army Cadet Nursing Corps during World War II and received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Colorado in 1951. After serving active duty in Germany, she returned to the United States and soon met and later married Richard F. Casper, a career military man and her husband of 34 years until his death in 1994. Mrs. Casper continued her military career for more than 20 dedicated years before her retirement in 1985 from the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps.

A strong belief in the importance of the nursing profession and the rewards it offers both to nurses and those in their care led Casper to make this gift. It is her wish that the Rylee/Casper Endowed Nursing Scholarship be used to provide financial assistance to deserving nursing students, particularly those from her home county of Perry and the adjoining counties of Bibb and Chilton. “I wanted to make the funds available to students in this area,” Casper says. “I hope it helps someone who might otherwise not be able to go to the School of Nursing actually finish and get his or her nursing degree.”

According to School of Nursing Dean Doreen Harper, Ph.D., Casper’s timing couldn’t be better. “At a time of critical nursing shortage,” she says, “Muriel Casper realized that making these funds available now allows more nursing students the potential to benefit from her profound generosity —and she can see her desires fulfilled.”

For more information please contact:
The Office of Development and Alumni Relations
218 School of Nursing Building
1701 University Boulevard
Phone: (205) 975-8936
Fax: 205-934-0269