By Sallie Satterthwaite
Lifestyle Columnist

With news of murder and mayhem now a virtual staple of daily life, it's easy to throw up one's hands and say, “Enough. Turn off the box. Discontinue the paper. I can't stand another interview with neighbors, sheriff's deputies and numb family members.”

Maybe I'm overreacting. But just when I felt that my emotional thermostat had been set on rage as unrelenting as the heat wave, there came a cool breeze.

There came a letter from a loving son asking if we wouldn't tell the story of a remarkable force for good.

Tim Anders wrote to say that his family is celebrating the approaching retirement of his mother — at 75 — and extolling the goodness that one woman has contributed to society simply by being the best that she could be: a wife for 48 years, mother, physician and counselor, Sunday School teacher, co-founder of a home offering unwed mothers hope, mother-in-law and grandmother.

And made it look so easy.

In a time when education is sometimes neglected, Rebekah and Pat Anders saw every child through at least a college degree; all have advanced degrees, including three medical degrees.

In a time when 50 percent of marriages fail, the Anderses have all stayed married — the “youngest” marriage 14 years old.

In a time when patients are resigned to hasty consultations limited by HMO quotas, Rebekah Anders' gynecology patients get all the time she needs to find out how they and their whole families really are. “Her practice has been her ministry,” physician son David said.

In a time when working mothers sometimes take marginal roles in their children's lives, Dr. Rebekah is remembered by hers for marshmallows on toothpicks roasted over candles. Paper dolls she drew herself. Playing in the rain. Chaperoning band trips. Driving to piano lessons. In between leading the PTA, Brownies and Girl Scouts, church choir and Sunday School.

Now, I might as well confess my personal interest in this story. There was an Anders (all the boys, I believe) in the high school class of each of my daughters. I knew David best. He was drum major of the Fayette County High School band when Mary was first chair flute, and a handsomer drum major never took the field.

Preoccupied with my own family, I scarcely knew theirs then, and it's really only now that I'm beginning to fathom the wellspring of inspiration from which these over-achieving young people drew.

When I began writing the stories about their mother found elsewhere in this issue, I was inundated with reminiscences from several extremely articulate writers. Lacking room for everything they sent, I beg to use this space for a few of the anecdotes that are just too good not to share.

My favorites were the ones in which Dr. Rebekah bent the rules. David remembers listening to a baseball game with his Braves super-fan mom, but being sent to bed when rain put the game on hold, the Braves leading the Dodgers 1-0.

“After a two-hour rain delay, she awakened me in what seemed to be the wee hours of the night in time for me to hear the game was now tied 1-1 in the ninth. In the bottom of the ninth Eddie Matthews hit a home run off [Sandy] Koufax to win the game.

“It was a thrilling victory, especially for a 9-year-old boy recognized by his mom as being a true fan whose need to hear the game transcended bedtime rules and regulations.”

David and his wife, Kenya, whose mom, Joan Houghton, is no slouch herself, named their firstborn Rebekah Joan for their mothers.

Buffie Anders DuPuis said Rebekah was unflappable. Once when she and her siblings had been particularly mischievous, her mom's worst threat was that she was going to run away to Alabama.

“But that was as flustered as she ever became, never raising her voice, no four-letter words, always calm, and without the help of Dr. Laura or Prozac. In spite of being surprised by cats jumping out of refrigerators (placed there by my brother), and worse.”

Tricia Anders Jones tells another tale about rules:

“Mama never talked about bodily functions, being the Southern lady that she is. We were not allowed to say `hate' or `guts,' because she didn't like those words. So when we got mad we would tell each other, `I dislike your intestines intensely.'”

Tricia remembers her grandmother Yates, living out her last years with the Anderses, as “the perfect grandmother,” a model, no doubt, to Dr. Rebekah when her own turn came. “I came out to the kitchen one day and caught her feeding a breakfast of Oreos and M&Ms to my Jennifer, who was about 3. This from the mother who made us clean our plates or no dessert.” Tim Anders was the first to mention that he and his siblings, as well as their spouses, “are all college-educated or beyond, all married with no divorces.” Tricia credits her parents for that too.

“They were pushy about [our going to college] and I thought the 11th Commandment was, `Thou shalt not get married before you finish college.'

“I truly love all five of my in-laws. As I told Mama once, we out-married ourselves. But I think that speaks highly of how we were reared — we wouldn't have chosen so wisely if we had not been brought up right.”

Refreshing news in the midst of a shriveling summer.

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