Albert B. Boutwell graduated from The University of Alabama in 1928 with the LL.B. degree. After practicing law, he was elected to the State Senate in 1946 for his first four-year term. It was during this first term that he became aware of nursing leaders’ dream to establish a university-based baccalaureate nursing program. In spite of the skepticism of many of Alabama’s physicians about the concept of collegiate training of nurses, in the 1949 session Senator Boutwell co-sponsored with Senator Graham Wright Senate Bill 578 to create a state-supported collegiate school of nursing at The University of Alabama. Although just two years earlier a similar bill had been defeated, this time the bill passed establishing the nursing school and specifying that it would be administered by The Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama. The same legislature granted a request that the University be given an additional $40,000 for the nursing school as part of the University’s 1949–51 biennial appropriation. Senator Boutwell went on to serve two additional terms in the Alabama Senate before being elected lieutenant governor of Alabama in 1958.