Barbara Jury, ’50, has seen some radical changes in nursing since she started working in the profession in the 1950s.

Glass syringes are now plastic and disposable. Measuring a patient’s vitals is now done by computer.

“Who knows where nursing will go in time,” Jury said. “But you still have to remember it’s going to come down to a nurse reinforcing the care every day.”

And now, with a history of improving health care practices, volunteering and preserving nursing history, Jury will receive a 2016 USC Half Century Trojans Hall of Fame award, which honors USC alumni who earned a bachelor’s degree at least 50 years ago and exemplify the ideals of the Trojan family.

Starting out

At age 7 Jury was painfully sick. Her appendix was removed, and she healed in the hospital for a week, mostly alone save for the nurses. She was intrigued by the profession.

But she really became a nurse overnight as a teenager, in this story told in the LA History Archive by Joyce Jacob, Jury’s friend: The family hen “Old Meanie” defended the coop from a coyote. The family stopped the attack, but Meanie was left with a bloody and broken wing. Jury stitched up the wing and helped Meanie recover in her doll cradle.

“I think this is when she realized she would be a good nurse,” Jacob said.

Jury studied music, her other passion, at Redlands University before moving to Los Angeles to study nursing at USC and California Hospital. In 1950 she graduated with a bachelor’s degree and RN license.

Trendsetting in nursing

Jury worked for 46 years at California Hospital. She pursued a master’s degree at UCLA when the hospital asked her to manage its newborn nursery.

“There was nothing else in the area,” Jury insisted. “My heart is always with ‘SC.”

She has shown her Trojan pride by attending countless football games and Rose Bowls, and also by volunteering daily for KUSC, the university’s nonprofit classical music radio station, between 1997 and 2012. She has also supported the Trojan Marching Band, USC Song Girls and Yell Leaders, USC Athletics and the USC Department of Nursing, where she served as a member of its Board of Councilors.

After earning her master’s degree, Jury went on to create the hospital’s first premature baby nursery, a room with just five incubators and a chair at the time. It was one of the first premature nurseries in Los Angeles.

She was also the hospital’s first director of risk management — collaborating with doctors and nurses, patients and lawyers. Jury calls her work “just common sense,” but she improved procedures across every department of the hospital.

Volunteering in Los Angeles

Beyond her nursing work, Jury also taught from 1959 to 1975 (evident in these 1967 photos) and volunteered on the California Hospital foundation board and nursing alumni association board. Jury also started chronicling the hospital’s history of nursing through video interviews and a museum that houses uniforms, yearbooks and historical medical instruments.

She also volunteered for more than four decades in the women’s volunteer organization Soroptimist International of Los Angeles, including three terms as president and governor of the Camino Real Region, making her a recognized Governor Ever More within Soroptimists. Her charity work has also benefited the DaCamera Society, Downtown Women's Shelter, the 1736 Family Crisis Center and Barlow's Respiratory Hospital.

Inspiring others

For her leadership and dedication to the nursing profession, Jury will be honored at the annual Half Century Trojans Hall of Fame luncheon on Oct. 18. Marilyn Flynn, dean of the USC School of Social Work which houses the university’s Department of Nursing, will present the award.

Jury joins other notable Hall of Fame award winners, including social work alumna Barbara Solomon, ’66; Olympic runner and World War II veteran Louis Zamperini, ’40; USC namesake, trustee and electronics pioneer Gordon Marshall, ’46; and USC namesake, trustee and longtime educator Verna Dauterive, M.Ed. ’49, PhD ‘66.