Susie McMurry spent her life helping others. Her legacy can be seen across Wyoming. (2023)

Long before they made their names in the oil and gas business, long before they became one of Wyoming’s wealthiest families and poured tens of millions of dollars into the state they both treasured, Mickey and Susie McMurry lived for a time in a trailer beside his shop.

The couple married in 1973. Twenty years would go by before they struck it rich in Wyoming’s Jonah Field. Mickey, in those early years, spent almost all his waking hours working. Susie found ways to make do with what they had.

It was after the discovery of Jonah Field and the creation of the McMurry Foundation that they became known for their generosity. But they’d always been giving people, said their daughter, Trudi Holthouse. They opened their home to kids in need. They helped out friends and neighbors however they could.

“The Jonah Field, and getting money, didn’t really change who they were in philanthropy,” Trudi said. “They were already doing those things. It just changed how much they could do.”

Mickey died in 2015, at age 69. Susie joined him, after a long illness, on Jan. 28. She was 76.

Ultimately, Trudi believes, both her parents fulfilled their missions in life. Mickey wanted to build a better Wyoming. Susie wanted to help people in the moment, “no matter how small or how large it may be.” And that’s how they spent their lives.

They gave to Wyoming Medical Center, the University of Wyoming, Casper College, the Child Development Center of Natrona County, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming and Casper’s YMCA, among countless others.

Susie volunteered at many of the same places, as well as at their Catholic church, St. Patrick’s in Casper. She was especially devoted to her work at the medical center.

“She was just a good, good person, and she lived what she believed,” said Barbara Cubin, Wyoming’s former U.S. representative and Susie’s friend of 50 years. “I think she was as close to a perfect person as there is.”

The Casper philanthropist grew up with two older half-sisters and a younger sister, Trudi’s namesake, in a two-bedroom house in the remote coal town of Hanna. Her parents ran a motel and gas station on the old highway. The whole family pitched in to do the cooking and the housekeeping and work the front desk.

Susie carried her quiet, faithful upbringing with her for the rest of her life.

She and Mickey adopted Trudi and her sister, Jillian, and fostered more kids than Trudi can count. When Trudi was a teenager, she said, her parents hosted her youth group — up to 45 kids — every Wednesday night.

Even after Jonah Field, if a churchgoer needed laundry folded, Susie did it. She dedicated so much of her time to Wyoming Medical Center that Trudi would resort to driving by to see whether her Buick Enclave was parked outside. She carved pumpkins and dyed Easter eggs with her grandkids, whom she doted on, and baked legendary pies.

The McMurrys leave behind a colossal legacy. Those who knew Susie best said she would want to be remembered most of all as a loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

“My dad always used to say, ‘You can take the girl out of Hanna, but you can’t take the Hanna out of the girl,’” Trudi said.

No one ever did.

***

The McMurrys’ generosity is visible throughout Wyoming Medical Center.

There’s McMurry West Tower, the newest wing of the state’s largest hospital in Casper, which now serves as the face of the facility. The NERD Health and Wellness Center, where heart and lung patients do their rehabilitation and employees exercise, bears the imprint of one of their many companies.

Yet it wasn’t the gifts that endeared Susie to patients and staff.

She herself was a fixture for more than 30 years, wearing her volunteer vest as she roamed the hospital’s halls helping staff, patients and families alike, said Mandy Cepeda, the spokesperson for Wyoming Medical Center.

“It wasn’t uncommon to see Susie in the hall,” Cepeda said. “It went way beyond money. She was here and she was talking to people.”

She also frequented the Child Development Center of Natrona County, where she was committed not only to the organization and its mission, but to the children themselves, said Executive Director Alisha Rone.

“When Susie would come into the center, she would always want to go into the classrooms and see what’s going on with the children, and learn firsthand their stories and what we were doing,” Rone said.

She’d ask about the kids’ individual diagnoses and about what was being done to support them.

“If there was a kiddo that needed snow boots, if there was a kiddo that needed a coat, or Susie felt they needed something, she would get it for them,” Rone said.

She would sit with kids as they ate, run activities at the center’s back-to-school carnival and work with them in groups. When the kids wrote letters to Santa Claus, she would help write letters back.

“She just had that personal touch with every kiddo,” Rone said. “She was a teacher and she just wanted to be down at the kids’ levels. She wanted to sit at that table where they were having snack and hear all the conversation. And that was just her. That was her spirit.”

Susie was the one who pushed the Child Development Center to create an endowment fund so the organization could permanently serve children. She then helped to lead the endowment campaign.

Her philanthropy, and her ability to bring other donors on board, built a network of support that stretched well beyond the McMurrys — and will meet the needs of Natrona County children and their families for years.

But it was the way Susie cared for everyone that Rone remembers most.

“Anytime you were in the presence of Susie, it didn’t matter everything else that she had going on in her life,” she said. “What mattered to her is that five minutes with you. She wanted to see how you are doing, what was going on in your life, and it just made you feel so special. She just had a way of making your whole day.”

***

Susie was a frequent face at the University of Wyoming, too.

In the early years of Tom Burman’s tenure as UW’s athletic director, he fretted about the competitiveness of the program. Questions loomed within the state and the athletic conference about its fate.

“There were times between 2007, 2008, 2009 where I worried about UW’s ability to survive in the Mountain West Conference,” Burman said. “We didn’t have the facilities. We didn’t have the support. We didn’t have the budget to compete.”

Then the McMurrys stepped in.

When they decided the athletic program was important, Burman said, “other people decided it was important.” When they invested, others followed, and his worries subsided.

“There’s none of that discussion in 2023,” he said.

The McMurrys, he said, “often referenced the fact that what made UW football special and War Memorial Stadium special was (that) it’s the one unifying force in our state.” They helped spark a sustained resurgence in UW athletics, helping it once again become a source of community and pride for Wyomingites.

UW’s student-athletes will continue to benefit from the McMurrys’ donations every time they step inside the High Altitude Performance Center, which bears their names, and the many other athletic facilities they supported.

But the way that the McMurrys went about donating also set them apart, Burman said.

“In an era when donors to intercollegiate athletics are solely focused on winning and losing, they were solely focused on making the university better and providing an opportunity for student-athletes to develop as athletes and students and humans,” he said. “That’s all they cared about.”

When the coronavirus pandemic emptied the University of Wyoming campus, student-athletes were asked to stay. Many people forgot about them. Susie did not.

She worked to ensure that UW’s student-athletes had everything they needed, Burman said.

“Their families were at home all over the country, dealing with COVID-19, and they’re here in Laramie trying to stay focused, stay healthy mentally and physically,” he said. “She was so concerned about their well-being that she often would reach out to us and want to know what she could do to make sure they had mental health support, make sure they had nutrition support and make sure we were taking care of them.”

She also loved watching them play.

For the McMurrys, though, “it wasn’t about the game,” Burman said. “It wasn’t about winning or losing to them. It was about gathering with friends from all over the region in celebration of the state of Wyoming.”

***

Susie’s legacy stretches across the state. Even the list of Casper organizations she touched is a long one.

She spent more than 20 years on the board of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming, where she helped spearhead the construction of the club’s current campus in the early 2000s, and, more recently, its new technology center. She supplemented her service with donations, said CEO Ashley Bright.

It was important to her to make sure everyone knew that they were capable and that they mattered, he said. Especially kids.

“She believed that children are the sunshine of our lives, and if we don’t take care of our children, our world will be without sunshine,” Bright said.

Susie was also a longtime board member at the YMCA of Natrona County. Her focus was on helping Casper families live well, said Glenda Thomas, the YMCA’s development director. And she was especially passionate about expanding its childcare and youth sports programs.

The McMurrys were “very visionary and instrumental” as the YMCA designed, funded and built its latest additions, which include a gym, locker room, field house and pool, Thomas said. They also helped to preserve access to memberships and classes for people who couldn’t afford them otherwise.

When one of Thomas’ own kids suffered an illness or injury, she said, “Susie was always the first one to come to the hospital to make sure my family was taken care of and in good hands.”

Susie’s love for kids extended to the big ones, too: At Casper College, she and Mickey put money toward student scholarships, construction of the new Visual Arts Center and the Sharon Nichols Auditorium, work at the Tate Museum and much, much more, said Denise Bressler, executive director of the Casper College Foundation.

The McMurrys had the money to live wherever, and however, they pleased. And they did. They built a stately four-bedroom, 10-bathroom home in southeastern Casper in 2007, known locally as the McMurry Mansion and to their inner circle as the “big house.”

“My parents had no intention of ever leaving Wyoming,” Trudi said. “This is where they made it. This is where their family was. This is where their roots were.”

Susie encouraged plenty of vacations, though. She, Mickey, their kids and their grandkids jetted off to destinations all over the world.

“It was the only way she could get my dad to unwind and stay out of the office,” Trudi said.

Susie was especially fond of Hawaii. “She loved warm, sunshine, pool,” Trudi said. “Not so much the beach, because she wasn’t into the sand. But she loved to be in the sunshine.”

In her later years, she bought a house in Arizona, which the family has frequented since Mickey’s death by suicide.

Losing him so suddenly and so publicly, Trudi said, was “soul-crushing” for Susie. But she picked up the pieces, took over the assortment of companies he left behind and continued their philanthropic work for nearly eight years.

She kept up their busy schedule of appearances for as long as she could. If she forgot a face when someone greeted her in public, she never let on. She made time. She showed interest.

“She was one of those people that always — I’m envious — they always seem to know the right things to say at exactly the right time,” said Cary Brus, who oversaw many of Mickey’s energy operations and was promoted to president and CEO of McMurry Companies after he died.

Even when the right thing was to swear.

“She could say the F-word under her breath at the best time ever,” Trudi said. “No one believes me. … They’re like nuh-uh, your mom does not say the F-word.”

But every once in a while, she did.

Susie’s health declined for a long time before she died. It’s brought Trudi comfort, she said, to “look back and go through photos, and reminisce on times that … she was able-bodied and capable, and an active participant in our lives.”

Trudi is grateful, too, that Mickey didn’t have to see it. “I don’t know that my dad could have physically lived through my mom’s end of life,” she said.

Susie’s death was “the longest goodbye,” Trudi added. “She just fought and fought and fought until the very end.”

***

St. Patrick’s Catholic Church of Casper, where Susie’s funeral service will be held on Monday, sprawls just off of Country Club Road.

There are several crosses, in various forms, adorning the outside: two near the roof and two in a stone design next to the front doors. Above the entrance is a large, round window. The building’s camel-colored brick boasts four front doors, each with a rectangular window, and several sets of stairs leading up to those doors.

In the summertime, the doors are swung open before each mass to welcome parishioners.

Through the doors and into the lobby, and the first person to say “hello” to them before the 8 a.m. service was Susie.

“She was kind of sparkly, effervescent (and) just the perfect greeter,” Very Rev. Gary Ruzicka, who was McMurry’s pastor for a combined 20 years, said. “… People would come up the steps to the front of St. Patrick’s, and there was Susie. … And she greeted them in the name of the Lord and welcomed them to the service.”

There was Susie, at the front. But not always. She also served in the funeral ministry and would often work behind the scenes in the kitchen, helping with the food or washing dishes, Ruzicka said, “kind of as a ministry to the grieving … .”

McMurry’s Catholic faith was about more than just being an active member of the church. It was her “foundation,” Ruzicka said. As is often the case with people of faith, it carried her through trials and struggles.

“I think it was her faith that sustained her. It was her faith that gave her the courage to keep going,” Ruzicka said.

“And it was her faith that gave her hope. The hope … that she knew that God loved her and that God would take care of her and that he would provide for her, and then, as things would happen, that God’s will was gonna sustain her.”

The impact of her faith didn’t stop with her, though. Other members of St. Patrick’s remember her touching their lives with a certain kind of inspiration and light, Ruzicka said.

“ … On an individual and personal basis, I have heard people say something along these lines: ‘What a blessing she was.’ ‘She was an inspiration to us.’ Some people said, ‘She was like my mentor.’ ‘I wanted to be like her.’”

Ruzicka, too, she altered.

“In spite of all the (hard) things, Susie was profoundly aware that God blessed her,” he said. “And that helped me understand that God continues to bless me as well.”

Trudi echoed his words.

“Our family is grateful for the blessings that God has given us,” she said.

In the days since Susie’s death, the tributes have come from all over. From people Trudi has never met, describing good deeds she’d never heard about. After Mickey’s sudden death, Trudi — and her mother — had no choice but to mourn him in public. This, she said, is a more personal, more peaceful grief.

Susie left hard shoes for any person to fill. But Trudi has every intention of continuing her mother’s philanthropy, in her memory.

“I’m proud to be her daughter, and I’m proud to have had her as my mother, and I’m proud to be able to celebrate her life with all of these people,” she said. “What a better way to enter Heaven, with all these people just loving you.”