Anita Thigpen Perry worked as a nurse for more than seventeen years before becoming the longest-serving first lady of Texas. In 2008 the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center named its nursing school after her.
Anita Perry
Haskell
Anita Thigpen was born in Haskell, Texas on May 5, 1952. Her father, Joseph Eltidge Thigpen, was the town's family physician, and she sometimes went with him on house calls. In September 1966, at fourteen, she went on her first date with sixteen-year-old Rick Perry, at a high school football game in nearby Paint Creek. They married sixteen years later, in November 1982.
Training
She started college at Texas Tech University, but Texas Tech had no nursing school at the time, so she transferred to West Texas State University in Canyon, now West Texas A&M University, and took a Bachelor of Science in Nursing there in 1974. She later completed a Master of Science in Nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
The career
Thigpen began as a registered nurse at Haskell Memorial Hospital and rose to director of nursing there. She helped set up a rape crisis program at the hospital, and she also taught. Over seventeen years her work covered surgery, pediatrics, intensive care, administration and teaching.
She left nursing after her husband was elected Texas agriculture commissioner in November 1990. She later worked for public relations and lobbying firms on health care issues, and in 2003 was hired as an outreach director and fundraiser for the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.
Anita Perry with Professor Yoram Weiss, medical director of Hadassah Hospital-Ein Kerem, in the Shock Trauma Center. Jerusalem, October 2013.
In her own words
From a 2008 interview with Teresa McUsic of Nurse.com:
What drew you to the nursing profession?
I was fortunate to grow up around nursing. My father, Joe E. Thigpen, MD, was a family physician in the small West Texas town of Haskell. Nurses were my father's partners in health care. They were a tight team built with experience, knowledge and trust. I remember listening to their conversations and watching the graceful approach the nurses took with patients and their families. And I learned the greatest lesson in the halls of that hospital: Nurses not only dispense information and medication to their patients, but also physical and emotional comfort.
Talk about some of the rewards and frustrations you felt during your 17-year nursing career.
The rewards far outnumbered the frustrations. The neonatal intensive care unit and administration were my favorite positions; and the thing I would enjoy the most in the future is teaching.
I often say that nurses are the ground soldiers of health care. I truly believe that. Nursing may not always be as glamorous as a drama on television, but to the patients we serve, the time we spend with them is top priority.
First lady
Perry was second lady of Texas from January 1999, while her husband was lieutenant governor, and first lady from December 21, 2000 to January 20, 2015 — longer than anyone else has held the position. She used it largely on health care and sexual assault prevention.
On August 22, 2008, the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center renamed its nursing school the Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing.
Related
Sources
- Anita Thigpen Perry, education, nursing career and dates as first lady of Texas. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Interview with Anita Perry, Teresa McUsic. Nurse.com, June 30, 2008. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Office of the First Lady of Texas, biographical files. Texas Digital Archive, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Accessed September 9, 2026.