San Pedro Rotary Club Celebrates Its Centennial

Join an “Out of this World” evening with local astronaut, Dr. Anna Lee Fisher. 

American chemist and emergency physician Dr. Fisher became the first mother in space in 1984. During her career at NASA, she logged 192 hours in space and was involved with three major programs: the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Orion spacecraft. She is a graduate of San Pedro High School. She graduated cum laude from University of California Los Angeles with a BS in Chemistry and completed the UCLA Doctor of Medicine.

We will celebrate all San Pedro Rotarians past and present during an evening of fine food, music and entertainment. There will be a tribute to each decade highlighting the service and contributions the Rotary Club has made to the San Pedro Community.

Read more on Dr. Fisher below.

Time: 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sept. 10

Cost: $100 and up

Details: https://tinyurl.com/557duhyv 

Venue: Dalmation-American Club, 1639 South Palos Verdes St. San Pedro

Anna Lee Sims was born in Albany, New York, August 24, 1949. Her mother Elfriede had been born in Germany in 1918 but had emigrated to the United States when she was sixteen years old. She had returned to Germany shortly before the outbreak of World War II to care for her grandmother, and was unable to return to the United States due to the war, during which she had served in the German military as a Morse code operator. After the war she had worked in Berlin for the U.S. Army, where she met Riley F. Tingle. The two had returned to the United States, where they were married in April 1949. Over the years the family moved about frequently moved about frequently to different bases in the United States and Germany, and Anna grew up as an Army brat.

On May 5, 1961, when Sims was in the seventh grade at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, she listened to the radio broadcast of Alan Shepard becoming the first American in space on a transistor radio her teacher had brought in, and first contemplated the idea of becoming an astronaut. This seemed out of reach at the time, as all the Mercury Seven astronauts were test pilots, but she figured that by the time she was old enough there would be space stations, which would need doctors. When she was in high school she did volunteer work at Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, California, but did not let go of the dream of flying in space. She graduated from San Pedro High School in 1967, and considered San Pedro, California, to be her home town

Sims entered UCLA, initially studying math. She decided that the job prospects were poor and switched to chemistry, graduating with her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1971. She then spent a year in graduate school, conducting X-ray crystallographic studies of metallocarboranes, and published three articles in Inorganic Chemistry. But she saw others who had earned PhDs after six years of work but still could not find jobs, and decided to pursue medicine instead. The following year she moved to the UCLA School of Medicine, where she received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1976. At the time, medicine was considered a “non-traditional” career for women, and there were only about 15 women in the medical school class of 150 She completed her internship at Harbor General Hospital in 1977. At Harbor General she met Bill Fisher, a fellow intern a year ahead of her. He too was a military brat—the son of a United States Air Force colonel—and also had dreams of one day flying space. She chose to specialize in emergency medicine and worked in several hospitals in the Los Angeles area, doing eight 24-hour shifts per month.