Trisha Marmo

May 2024 Issue

by Beth Rice
Photography by
Cassidy Dunn Photography

As a young girl growing up in the early 1970s, the fact that Trisha Marmo had a child-sized ironing board wasn’t all that unusual. Unlike most five-year-olds, however, Trisha’s ironing board was her operating table, and her dolls were her very first patients.

“Very early on I had an affinity for helping others,” Trisha recalled. “It’s just always been a part of who I am.”

That affinity has guided Trisha all her life, steering her into a nursing career, which came as a surprise to her because, from those early ironing board/operating table years, her heart and mind had been set on becoming a doctor.

And when Trisha Marmo sets her heart and mind on something, there’s no stopping her.

Education, according to Trisha, was her salvation. “But it almost didn’t happen. There was no money for college when I graduated high school. In my family once you turned 18, it was time to become an adult and figure out life for yourself. So, I did.”

After putting herself through an associate’s program at Florida Keys Community College (now The College of the Florida Keys), the Phi Beta Kappa graduate set her sights on a four-year degree. Although she was accepted to her first preference, Tulane, out-of-state tuition wasn’t an option, so Trisha enrolled as a junior in the premed program at the University of Florida.

“I was paying rent for the first time, having to buy groceries and gas, working three jobs and going to school full time.” Trisha said. “I was hustling, but still struggling. A friend was applying to nursing school, and a light bulb went off in my head. I could get a nursing degree, get a job, and put money away for med school. And I’d still be in medicine.”

Trisha switched majors, but the struggle was still real. “I ate one meal a day. I didn’t have a phone. I didn’t have a bed. And I didn’t care, because I felt like I had found my place and my people,” she said. “I loved everything about nursing. Everything.”

But the day came when Trisha could no longer keep her head above water, and she went to the Dean of Nursing and told her she was going to have to leave the program. “I was about to do just that when she leaned down, slid open a desk drawer, pulled out her purse, then her checkbook, and looked up at me and said: ‘Tell me what you need. Exactly what you need.’”

Trisha stayed in school, graduated with honors in 1992, and went straight to work as a critical care ICU nurse at Mayo Clinic Hospital (then St. Luke’s Hospital) in Jacksonville. Six months later Trisha paid a visit to the Dean of Nursing and handed her a check. “She was surprised. She thought her check was a gift. I thought it was a loan. It was extremely important to me to repay her … to thank her for the impact she had on my life … and it’s still important to me that I pay it forward today.”

In order to keep doing just that, Trisha and her husband, Chris, have become the benefactors of the Marmo Family Nursing Scholarship, created in partnership with the Beaufort Memorial Hospital Foundation. Designed to offer nursing students “a hand up rather than a handout,” the fund will award five nursing school scholarships annually, with the first recipients to be chosen this summer.

“It sounds cliché,” she said. “But Chris and I have had a successful run, and we’re ready to give back. Education was the ticket out of poverty for us both. And we hope with this fund to be an example to others of all that can be accomplished through education. We also hope our scholarship recipients will pay it forward themselves one day by providing exceptional health care to the community.”

“South Carolina already has too few nurses and is projected to have as many as 10,000 nursing vacancies by the end of the decade,” said Kimberly Yawn, Associate VP at the BMH Foundation. “And it’s only going to get worse unless we find a way to attract more qualified people to the profession. This gift is going to have a major positive impact on both the nursing students who receive the scholarships and local residents who will one day receive their care.”

Maximum impact is exactly what Trisha and Chris were hoping to achieve when they created the Marmo Family Nursing Scholarship. “Gifting scholarships is like that old story about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish,” Trisha said. “Education is the key to better lives for the students today and for the health of the community tomorrow.”

Now retired and loving life in Bluffton (the couple relocated in 2021 from California) the energetic mother of five and grandmother of six credits a neighbor for connecting her with the Beaufort Memorial Hospital Foundation.

“We met with Kimberly, and it just seemed like the perfect fit,” Trisha said. “Nursing, education, and community. A philanthropic trifecta.”

For information about the Marmo Family Nursing Scholarship—or to apply—visit BeaufortMemorial.org/MarmoScholarship.

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Fun Facts:

• Trisha is currently writing an historical fiction trilogy using her Scottish ancestors as characters.
• Trisha has two loves: Writing and medicine. In addition to nursing, she’s an entrepreneur, a published author, she ran a successful online health and wellness coaching business, and hosts women’s wellness retreats.
• Trisha believes chocolate is a food group, and that there’s no problem that can’t be solved by a hot bath, a cup of tea, or a good nap.
• Favorite quote: “Nothing is impossible … the word itself says I’m possible.” –Audrey Hepburn.
• Trisha and Chris celebrated their 30th Anniversary in April.