When Rebekah Yates Anders decided to become a physician in the late 1940s, very few women attended medical school.
Still, Anders faced every challenge with aplomb. She married her med school sweetheart and gave birth to their first child between final exams and graduation.
For more than 30 years, she and her husband had a successful OB-GYN practice. Four of their six children followed in their parents’ footsteps and became medical professionals – three as doctors and one as a registered nurse.
Anders died July 22 at St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. She was 90. Her funeral was July 25 at Carl J. Mowell & Son Funeral Home in Fayetteville.
Born on Sept. 4, 1924, in Macon, Anders had a curiosity about nature and science early on. She finished first in her high school class of 1942, and graduated magna cum laude from Wesleyan College in Macon in 1946.
After teaching biology and chemistry at an all-girls high school in Atlanta for two years, she worked as a research laboratory technician at Grady Memorial Hospital and later studied the effects of radiation at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y.
In 1949, she started medical school at the University of Rochester in New York, where she met classmate Patrick Lloyd Anders of Bethlehem, Pa. They were married in 1951.
The couple gained national media attention when The Associated Press published a photo of the medical school graduates in cap and gown holding their newborn daughter Patricia, who was born on June 2, 1953, between final exams and graduation.
“It amazes me that she was able to do it all – marriage, medical school and a new baby,” said her daughter, retired physician Elizabeth “Buffie” Anders DuPuis of Seaside, Fla. “I went to Duke Medical School and UCLA. It’s a challenge. So to think of her doing it the way she did, it was astounding.”
After graduation, Anders and her husband moved to Atlanta and completed their internship at Piedmont Hospital in 1954.
Then her husband joined the Navy, and Anders put her medical career on hold for a few years to focus on their growing family. In 1962, Anders and her husband opened an OB-GYN practice near South Fulton Hospital in East Point.
Anders taught Sunday school and volunteered with the PTA and served as the physician on school band trips. She also co-founded TLC2, a home for unwed mothers that later merged with the Georgia Baptist Children’s Homes and Family Ministries.
Known for her hospitality and encouraging spirit, Anders opened her home for overnight church youth activities and offered him guidance when he was youth and senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in Fayetteville, said the Rev. Dwight “Ike” Reighard.
“I was a young minister. I didn’t grow up in the church. She was so encouraging and respectful,” said Reighard, now senior pastor at Piedmont Church in Marietta. “She showed kindness and graciousness – and never had a spirit of judgment. She brought out the best in her children and others.”
In 1986, Anders received the Wesleyan Alumnae Award for Distinguished Service. After retiring in 1999 at the age of 75, she continued teaching Sunday school and enjoying time with her grandchildren. Her husband of 63 years died in 2014.
At age 87, Anders wrote a children’s book, “The Silver Bell.” She also co-authored “Octogenarians Say The Darndest Things” with her son David Lloyd Anders, a medical doctor in Peachtree City.
Despite her accomplishments, Anders will be remembered most for her faith and devotion to her family and her patients, friends say.
“I never met a finer person. She loved the Lord, and she loved people,” said Kenny Wallace of Fayetteville. His wife, Nancy, was a patient of both Anders and her husband, who delivered their twin girls in 1985.
“All of her children are successful,” Wallace said. “I never saw a family that was so large and had so much love for each other. She left a tremendous legacy.”
In addition to her daughter Elizabeth and son David, Anders is survived by daughters Patricia Yates Anders Jones of Knoxville, Tenn., and Janet Anders Banks of Warner Robins; sons Mark Alan Anders of Columbus, Ga., and Timothy Wayne Anders of Fayetteville; 20 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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