When Nancy Fawley talks about her family’s philanthropy, she doesn’t start with a check. She starts with a woman sprinting ahead of her time.

Her great-aunt, Miriam “Auntie Mir” Semple, graduated from Temple in the early 1920s and played field hockey, basketball, and even what The Philadelphia Inquirer called “girl’s baseball,” when few women were encouraged to compete. “She was always an athlete,” Fawley says. “At a family picnic in her sixties, she outplayed all the men.” Semple later ran YWCA fitness programs and worked for Philadelphia’s social services—a life of movement and service that shaped her family’s outlook.

A century later, that story came full circle inside Paley Hall. Fawley first learned of the Simulation Center’s realistic park during a presentation to the College’s Board of Visitors, while the building was still in its early stages of construction. “I thought it was the perfect way to honor my great-aunt,” she says. Today, that simulated park, which is used to teach athletic trainers and interprofessional teams, serves as a tribute to Semple, linking the Temple trailblazer to hands-on learning at the Barnett College of Public Health (CPH).

The park is also part of a larger legacy. The J. Russell Fawley Scholarship—named for Nancy’s grandfather, a Philadelphia textile businessman—began with his 1968 trust for Roxborough Memorial Hospital. When ownership changes made distributions impossible decades later, the family redirected the funds to Temple, guided by personal ties and gratitude for a Temple surgeon who changed their lives.

That physician, Dr. Harry Bacon, treated Fawley’s mother in the early 1960s. “He gave her the surgeries that allowed her to have a normal life—getting married, getting pregnant, and living to 94,” Fawley says. His compassionate care made supporting Temple’s nursing students feel inevitable.

“My father had started a small scholarship for nursing students at Roxborough Memorial Hospital in my great-aunt’s name,” Fawley says. “We always believed a college education can change someone’s life.” Her mother insisted the scholarship remove financial barriers entirely. “It had to be a full scholarship so students could focus on their studies.” Today, between 40 and 50 nursing students—from undergraduate through DNP—receive full support each year through the J. Russell Fawley Scholarship, the largest endowed scholarship at Temple. “I’m so proud we’re able to do this,” she says.

A journalism major turned academic librarian, Fawley built an international career in higher education, living and working in Germany and Doha, Qatar. She sews her own clothes—a nod to her family’s textile roots—and runs marathons: Cape Town last fall, Athens next. “My goal was a marathon on every continent,” she says.

Now serving on CPH’s Board of Visitors, Fawley stays closely connected to the students who embody her family’s values. “I don’t have a healthcare background, so learning about the College and how it supports the community has been helpful,” she says. “Temple has always been part of our family. Giving young people who couldn’t otherwise afford it the chance to study—that was important to my family. It still is.”