Say it's the

weekend and most or all the Anders clan is (as

usual) at their parents' house in north Fayette.

A caller asks to speak to the doctor.

Odds are exactly

even that any adult who answers the phone could

say, "This is the doctor."

"Dr.

Anders?"

Odds are still in

the caller's favor.

You have to be a

lot more specific, because this is the family of

Pat and Rebekah Anders. Both the senior Anderses,

three of their brood of six, plus two of their

mates, wear M.D. after their names.

It's hard to

pinpoint when the Anders dynasty begins. Was it

in 1942 after "the war turned everything

upside down," as the family's matriarch puts

it, and she returned to her hometown to go to

Wesleyan College?

Or was it when

doctors at Grady discovered a young researcher

interested in medicine and encouraged her to go

for it?

Or was it when the

University of Rochester dean, formerly from Johns

Hopkins where women medical students were not so

rare, created a nondiscriminating atmosphere at

Rochester's School of Medicine?

It's hard to know

exactly where fate took over. As a girl, Rebekah

Anders reflected recently, she was interested in

medicine, but "I was not too serious about

it. In those days hardly anybody went to college,

let alone med school, but step by step things

worked out."

Although also

accepted at Emory, the Macon native chose

Rochester in New York for its more tolerant

attitude toward women in medicine. "I moved

from South to North," she said, and found

herself in "a different world."

"They could

hardly understand my talk, let alone my culture.

There were six girls in the class, and we were

all friends - although the fellows in the

class were as nice to us as can be.

"Of the six,

five married medical students, and five went into

practice and stayed in practice all their lives.

We've stayed close friends, and got together

again when we had our 45th anniversary last year

in Rochester."

Rebekah Yates was

one of the five who married fellow medical

students. She met Pat Anders, from a Welsh coal

mining family in Pennsylvania, in 1949. It was

not exactly over a cadaver, as one of her

children tells it, but close - they were in

anatomy class together, and she was his date for

the class's year-end celebration.

By 1951, they

married, and as they "were trying to decide

where to go to intern, I found out I was

pregnant." The dean, a "forward-looking

man" for 1953, let her arrange her schedule

so an easy lab came toward the end of the school

year.

"The only

problem was that my belly sometimes got in the

way when I used a microscope," she later

told her firstborn, Tricia.

The stork won the

race to the sheepskin: an Associated Press photo

of the newly graduated Drs. Anders holding

5-day-old Tricia went national.

The internship

question was settled: "We decided on Atlanta

where my parents could help with the baby,"

Dr. Rebekah continued. "We both interned at

old Piedmont Hospital. It was a great experience,

with quality doctors."

Pat Anders

discharged his military duty by volunteering for

the Navy after one year of internship. He stayed

in to do his residency in his chosen specialty,

obstetrics and gynecology - all up and down

the East Coast.

"That was my

time out for family," Rebekah Anders said.

"Pat realized he wanted to go for private

practice, so when we were through with military

obligations, we came to Georgia."

At the time, South

Fulton Hospital was under construction, and

seemed a natural fit, with family close-by to

help. Still, Anders waited until her youngest,

Tim, was 3 years old before she went to work, and

credits her parents' assistance with making it

possible.

Juggling home and

career is a dilemma most professionals face, but

Anders' convictions made the decision for her:

"One parent should be home," she said.

"The family ought to come first. Everything

else you can go back to do a second time."

It was a

team-effort, she said, with her husband taking

the night-time and hospital aspects of an Ob-Gyn

practice. "I went to the office part-time,

and could still be at home when [the children]

got home in the afternoon. We continued that way

for a number of years."

As her offspring

grew in numbers and stature, the Anderses

"took the plunge and came to Fayette County

in 1972 and built this house." In addition

to their six, her husband's elderly aunt lived

with the family for the 10 years before she died,

and at another time so did both of Dr. Rebekah's

aged parents.

"Pat retired

from hospital work about 1987," Rebekah

Anders said, "and we moved our office from

next door to the hospital to our home. The

children had moved out, and there was a good bit

of space."

Her husband retired

entirely in 1992, following some health problems,

but "I was enjoying my practice and decided

to keep on in limited practice, seeing mostly

patients I had known for 20 or 30 years."

Rebekah Anders will

be 75 early in September, and - with regret

- is hanging up her stethoscope. "I've

enjoyed every day being a doctor, and I've been

blessed to have been spared the headaches many

have had."

To hear her talk,

you'd think she was considering a second career:

she speaks wistfully of pediatrics. Instead,

however, she plans to upgrade from part-time to

full-time grandmother of 19, from age 1 to second

year of college.

It's not like she

isn't leaving a legacy, not with all the

second-generation Anders physicians on call.

One might suspect

there was pressure in their career choices. In a

sense, there was, and it was negative.

"Our being an

example to the children to become doctors was not

intentional," Anders said. On the contrary:

"We warned them.

"Some wanted

to and some didn't and we were always surprised.

For instance, Mark got his accounting degree,

then decided to go back to med school. Same with

Buffy, who played flute and piano - she

decided she could do better in medicine than with

music."

Eldest son David

ignored their warnings first; he says he wanted

to be a physician since he was 5. His wife Kenya

is also an M.D., in dermatology part-time while

their children are young.

Firstborn Tricia

and her husband, David Jones, heeded the

warnings; she's a high school special education

teacher in Knoxville where her husband is in

sales.

Buffie (Elizabeth,

actually, but as a tot, Tricia called her

"Wi'buff") and her husband Mark are

both Atlanta-based pathologists.

Janet is a nurse in

Warner Robins; she and husband Abe, a technical

software specialist at Robins AFB, have four

adopted children.

And the youngest,

Tim, is comptroller for FC&A in Peachtree

City. His wife Michelle has her master's in

counseling and psychological services, but like

Mark's wife, Kris, is an at-home mom, now

developing an Internet retailing business.

"We feel so

blessed," said their admiring matriarch.

"They all turned out so well, and all our

in-law children too. The Lord has blessed us

every step of the way."

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