A pharmacist four generations in the making

When Karley Wilson’s father dropped her off to interview with the MUSC College of Pharmacy, he said he’d like to look around inside sometime, since his grandfather had graduated with an MUSC pharmacy degree.

Say what, now?

“I knew my great grandfather was a pharmacist but I was unaware that he attended MUSC,” said Wilson, who was awarded her own MUSC pharmacy degree after the 2021 MUSC College of Pharmacy Awards Celebration and Hooding Ceremony on May 14. “That would have been nice to know in the application process! However, it did make my acceptance to the program that much sweeter.”

There was an immediate poignancy to the family connection – her grandfather George Wilson died in October 2017, right after Karley Wilson had matriculated at MUSC. Among his possessions they found MUSC pharmacy memorabilia nearly a century old that his wife, Evelyn Jordan Wilson (A.B. Jordan’s daughter) had saved, including class photos of her great-grandfather A. B. Jordan ’24.

She never met her great grandfather, but she’d heard stories about how much her father Steve Wilson and his brother and sister Bill Wilson and Mary (Wilson) Steenken had enjoyed the homemade milkshakes at A.B. Jordan’s old-fashioned pharmacy in Ridge Spring, S.C. They remembered their mom fixing ice creams behind the counter and their grandmother sitting at the desk helping do the books; A. B. Jordan, once president of his class at Charleston Medical College, had a house behind the building that he rented out and used as an office.   

“It’s a very small town,” Karley Wilson said. “We were at a large community gathering there two years ago and an older gentleman talked about having a cold as a kid, and how my great-grandfather crushed tablets and compounded them into a liquid so the kids could drink it. He basically served as the town’s physician and pharmacist.”

A 2017 Clemson graduate and 2020 Dottie's Pharmacy Scholarship recipient, Karley Wilson followed his footsteps in her choice of MUSC pharmacy, but she plans a different kind of practice. She’s joining McCleod Health in Florence to complete a post-graduate year one residency and expects eventually to work as an inpatient pharmacist. That was the kind of work that inspired her to pursue pharmacy in the first place.

“I knew I wanted to be in health care and I wanted to help people in some capacity,” she said. “I shadowed various health professionals and fell in love with what the pharmacists were doing. Working with the medical team, having direct patient care, rounding with physicians and nurses, patient interventions, and sterile compounding – I was really able to get a general overview of inpatient pharmacy and it inspired me to pursue this career.”

Her pharmacy education confirmed her choice even as it opened her eyes to all the things a pharmacist can do, which she credits to being at a school actively engaged as part of a hospital system. The experience was even more challenging than she anticipated; now that she successfully completed the rigorous program, she takes extra pride in her degree.

She has good precedent to feel that way.

“My dad talks about how much my great-grandfather loved MUSC and was proud to have come here,” the Anderson native said. Her great grandfather actually stipulated in his will that he be buried with his MUSC pharmacy class ring. ““Being able to say that I have graduated from MUSC is even more special knowing that I will always have that connection with my great-grandfather, even though we were never able to meet.”

“I am grateful for my time at MUSC. I have made lifelong friends and lifelong connections. I have truly enjoyed my time in the College of Pharmacy and I am so thankful to have been a part of such an amazing program. Although it has been one of the most challenging four years of my life, it has prepared me to provide the best patient care and serve my community appropriately.”

Karley Wilson ’21 holding her great-grandfather’s mortar and pestle.