Johnnie Fisher was a shy man.
But when the retired Vance Air Force Base sergeant died in 2009 at the age of 77, the gift he left to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation proved quite an attention-getter.
Two years later, OMRF received a check for $600,000 from Enid attorney Clark McKeever, who represents the executors of Fisher’s estate, Annette Lillie and Sue Smith. The check was the first installment of a bequest to support heart disease research at OMRF.
“Johnnie specified that his money be used for research in diseases of the heart, and he knew OMRF was doing important work in that area,” McKeever says. Distributions from the estate totaled approximately $1,000,000.
“Mr. Fisher’s generosity follows a long tradition of rural Oklahomans who have chosen to support medical research through estate gifts,” says OMRF President Stephen Prescott. “Thanks to donations like this one, our cardiovascular researchers can continue to search for new and better ways to treat heart disease.”
To commemorate the gift, OMRF named a laboratory after Fisher in its Samuel Roberts Noble Cardiovascular Center, where scientists focus on understanding the processes that lead to heart and blood diseases.
Fisher was born in Wisconsin in 1932. He joined the Air Force as a teen and served in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, retiring as a staff sergeant in 1968. His last military assignment landed him at Enid’s Vance Air Force Base. After his retirement, he took a job as a firefighter.
A lifelong bachelor, Fisher retired to Enid’s Golden Oaks Retirement Village in 2002. “He was happy there and enjoyed riding his bicycle around the village’s lake,” said Annette Lillie, trustee of Fisher’s estate.
At Golden Oaks, says Lillie, he largely kept to himself, quietly going about his business. “But Johnnie was kind and considerate and always ready to lend a helping hand.”
According to Lillie, years of military life left Fisher an early riser, and each day he was the first one in the kitchen to prepare breakfast for his fellow residents. Always thrifty, Fisher saved diligently, shunned purchasing new clothes and drove an old, decidedly no-frills truck.
When heart disease struck Fisher, he visited with McKeever, searching out a way to use the proceeds of his estate to keep others from suffering the same fate. After studying information about OMRF, he left instructions in his will that 60 percent of his estate would go to support cardiovascular research at OMRF, where scientists have already helped create three life-saving medications.
“Johnnie Fisher gave selflessly, knowing that his gift to OMRF could not help him,” says Prescott. “But he understood that his donation could help others live longer, healthier lives.”
