Mryl Jean Hughes was born January 1, 1923 in Hibbing, Minnesota.  She grew up there against the backdrop of the Great Depression, though Mryl does not remember feeling a sense of deprivation in the Arrowhead region of Minnesota.  After high school Myrl was studying to be a med tech, but with the coming of the war the Mayo Clinic and US Army created a specialized physiotherapy program, and Myrl enrolled in that.  She went through training and a posting at Nichols General Hospital in Louisville, and after that she was bound for the south Pacific.  Myrl spent four months in Brisbane, Australia, waiting on the hospital in New Guinea to be built, and once it was ready she was off to Hollandia, on the north coast.  Mryl recalls that physiotherapy was really a new practice then, and equipment and materials were limited.  After two years of treating patients there, notably after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Myrl was sent to the Philippines, and from there she expected to be in the first contingent sent to Japan.  The atomic bombs obviated that possibility though, and Myrl returned home  – to the much colder temperatures of Hibbing!  There she resumed her schooling, and she became involved in Christian education, where she made her career in postwar America.  Mryl Jean Hughes was interviewed over zoom by Scott Masters and Zach Dunn in December 2024.