Even as a toddler growing up in Ohio, Natalie Perry demonstrated a special fondness for nursing.
Her mother, Paula Perry, remembers how Natalie enjoyed "playing nurse" with the house cat, even pretending to give him injections. "Nipsy would be out
prowling all night and come home exhausted from his nighttime adventures," Perry recalls, smiling at the memory. "So he would put up with it."
While the source of her daughter's desire to be a nurse was a bit of a mystery, Perry speculates that Natalie may have been influenced by her grandfather.
"My father felt that nursing was a great career," Perry says, "and he was always urging the women in the family to pursue it."
When Natalie graduated from high school, she and her mother moved to Miami to start a new life. Perry worked in fundraising at a hospital in West Palm
Beach, where she met and married her second husband, a physician. Meanwhile, Natalie began attending the University of Miami and also worked for a time in
the Hurricanes Football office.
As she neared the completion of her UM education, Natalie considered switching from her business and sociology studies to nursing, but for family reasons,
she decided to continue on the business road. She graduated in 1991 with her bachelor's degree.
After graduation, she worked for a time at a Miami shipping company but then, no longer able to resist her lifelong calling for a career in nursing, Natalie
returned to school. She enrolled in the Accelerated B.S.N. program at Miami Dade College, earned a certificate in trauma care at Jackson Memorial Hospital,
then worked for a time at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center.
From there, Natalie moved on to Delray Medical Center. She worked in the cardiovascular surgery intensive care unit for three years before transferring to
the cardiac catheterization lab, where she was soon serving as nurse manager.
"Natalie adored her nursing career," Perry says. "She worked long hours and enjoyed every minute. She liked the people she worked with. She just loved every
aspect of nursing."
And then in 2008, Natalie suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism. She was 39 years old.
Eight years later, Paula Perry's husband passed away. Prior to his death, the couple had talked "for a long time" about making a gift to UM. "When he died
in 2016, I realized it was time to update my will," Perry says.
Working with the University's planned giving team, Perry revised her will so that, when she passes away, her entire estate will be donated to the University
of Miami and its School of Nursing and Health Studies. Part of the bequest will establish a nursing scholarship in Natalie Perry's name.
The gift, says Perry, honors her daughter's two great passions-nursing and the University of Miami.
Over the years, Natalie's affection for the U was as unwavering as her devotion to her profession. Even long after she graduated, Perry says, "Every spring,
we would go down to Coral Gables together and stock up on 'Canes T-shirts."
Paula Perry, who now lives in North Carolina, knows her planned gift to the University of Miami is exactly what her daughter would have wanted her to do. "I
hope this will make it possible for a student at the University to get a nice degree," she says, "and do some good in the world."
https://news.miami.edu/sonhs/publications/heartbeat/heartbeat_spring_2018.pdf
