Anita Thigpen Perry
First Lady of Texas (2000-15)
Mary Anita Thigpen Perry (born May 5, 1952) is an American nurse who was the longest-serving First Lady of Texas, being in that role from 2000 to 2015. She is married to former Texas Governor Rick Perry.
As First Lady of Texas, she had been an active advocate for nursing and other health care issues.
The Anita Thigpen Perry Endowment at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio focuses on nutrition, cardiovascular disease, health education, and early childhood development. In 2008, the Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center was renamed in her honor.
Early life and education
Perry was born in Haskell, Texas. She is the youngest daughter of family physician Joseph Eltidge Thigpen (1920–2013), a native of Bay Springs, Mississippi, and homemaker Beunis Fay Ratliff Thigpen, originally from Haskell. Her parents met in Tyler, where Beunis was visiting relatives. Her father had a distinguished flight record in World War II and earned several medals, including the Bronze Star. He also flew his own plane and was known for making house calls long after the practice ceased to be the norm.
“Anita Thigpen Perry” enters the record as first Lady of Texas (2000-15). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anita, Thigpen and Perry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4765651. VIAF identifies the subject as 83589146. The Library of Congress control number is no2009038397. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2000, 2015 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anita Thigpen Perry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.