and, at his mother's advice, began studying respiratory therapy at Wallace State Community College. After a year at Wallace State, Scrushy transferred to Jefferson State Community College and later entered the respiratory therapy program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Upon graduating from UAB's program, Scrushy was offered a position teaching at the university, where he was promoted to director during his two-and-a-half-year tenure. Scrushy divorced his wife, with whom he had two children, and took a position teaching at the Wallace State campus in Dothan. There, Scrushy met and married his second wife, Karen Brooks. The two had four children before they divorced in 1996. In early June 1997, Scrushy married Leslie Anne Jones in Jamaica, with guests such as Martha Stewart attending. The group met at the HealthSouth Hangar at the Birmingham International Airport and boarded a chartered Boeing 727 to Jamaica. Together Richard and Leslie have had three children. Career and HealthSouth In the late 1970s, following his time teaching at UAB and Wallace State, Scrushy was offered a position with Lifemark Corporation, a Houston, Texas-based health care company. Within a few years of being hired at Lifemark, Scrushy was part of a $100 million operation that included the pharmacy, physical rehabilitation, and hospital acquisition divisions. While working for Lifemark, Scrushy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as the regional director of the respiratory therapy division. He then moved to Houston where he became the company's chief operating officer. Still working for Lifemark, Scrushy devised a plan for an outpatient diagnostics and rehabilitative health clinic chain. He presented the plan to Lifemark, but the company was unable to act on it due to a company merger that was already underway with American Medical International. Scrushy left Lifemark in 1983 and founded Amcare, Inc within a year. The new company opened its first facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, and had initial capital between $50,000-$70,000. With the assistance of four partners from Amcare Inc. and a one million dollar investment by Citicorp Venture Capital, Scrushy took the quickly growing company and founded HealthSouth Corporation in 1984. Two years after its founding, HealthSouth became a publicly traded company. The next year, HealthSouth expanded into two new fields, worker's compensation and sports medicine, allowing the company to double its earnings and obtain assets close to $100 million. By the early 1990s, the company had expanded even more,