Anna Lee Fisher decided that she wanted to be an astronaut on May 5, 1961.
On that day, Alan Shepard became the first American to reach space during a 15-minute flight that took him 116 miles above the Earth before his capsule returned him to a landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
Nearly two decades before NASA even considered the possibility of having women astronauts, Fisher, then an 11-year-old attending school in Kentucky, vowed in the face of very long odds to become one.
Fisher was born Anna Lee Tingle in Albany, New York on Aug. 24, 1949. Her father was a US Army sergeant, and she lived the nomadic life of a military brat for the first dozen years of her life. Every couple of years brought a new town and a new school.
Anna Fisher was the first mother to fly in space. The 1967 graduate of San Pedro High School views exhibit in her honor at her alma mater in this file photo. Her daughter, Kristin, is now 5. San Pedro News Pilot, Sept. 13, 1988, Page 1. (San Pedro News Pilot archives)
Five astronaut candidates take a break from training at a three-day water survival school held near Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. Left to right: Sally K. Ride, Judith A. Resnik, Anna L. Fisher, Kathryn D. Sullivan and Rhea Seddon. (NASA / Wikimedia Commons)
The crew assigned to the STS-51A Space Shuttle Discovery mission included Frederick H. Hauck, commander, seated. Standing, left to right, are Dale A. Gardner, mission specialist; David M. Walker, pilot; and mission specialists Anna L. Fisher, and Joseph P. Allen. 1984 photo. (NASA / Wikimedia Commons)
NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, circa January 1978. (NASA / Wikimedia Commons)
Married astronauts William and Anna Fisher with their daughter, Kristin, in 1984. (NASA / Wikimedia Commons)
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Anna Fisher was the first mother to fly in space. The 1967 graduate of San Pedro High School views exhibit in her honor at her alma mater in this file photo. Her daughter, Kristin, is now 5. San Pedro News Pilot, Sept. 13, 1988, Page 1. (San Pedro News Pilot archives)
When she was 13, her family finally settled in San Pedro, where she enrolled in Dana Middle School. She was a fine student who excelled in math and science at Dana.
She did the same at San Pedro High School, where she graduated third in her class in 1967 and was voted “most likely to succeed.” (The school honored her with a permanent plaque on campus at a December 1984 ceremony.)
While attending San Pedro High, she volunteered as a candy striper at Harbor General Hospital, now known as Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and located on unincorporated Los Angeles County land just east of Torrance.
After graduation, she attended UCLA. She first majored in math, but then switched to chemistry, earning her bachelor’s degree in the subject in 1971. She found the job prospects in chemistry wanting, so she decided to enroll in medical school at UCLA instead.
She was admitted and decided to return to Harbor General for her internship. While at Harbor, she met another intern, Bill Fisher, who was a year ahead of her in the program. On their first date, they discovered that they both dreamed of becoming astronauts.
She earned her medical degree from UCLA in 1976, and completed her internship at Harbor in 1977.
In June 1977, Bill Fisher found out from a friend that NASA was about to recruit a new group of astronauts, and was encouraging women applicants for the first time. He immediately told Anna, to whom he was now engaged. They had to move their planned wedding up a week in order to apply.
Anna became Mrs. Bill Fisher in a ceremony held at Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes on Aug. 23, 1977. (The church had to be disassembled in 2024 due to land instability and remains closed.)
The Fishers flew to Houston for the interviews and evaluations. In January 1978, Anna learned that she had been selected for training in the group that also included future astronaut Judith Resnik, who worked for Xerox Corp. in El Segundo. The two became friends.
The couple moved to Houston later in 1978. Bill Fisher was not selected until 1979, at which point the Fishers became the first husband and wife to be admitted to the astronaut training program.
Anna worked at a variety of support jobs for NASA while awaiting assignment to a space flight crew. She was a “Cape Crusader,” the nickname given to those astronauts on the ground who worked giving direct support to space missions. During this time, she became involved with the testing of the Canadarm remote control device, among many other projects.
She became pregnant in 1982, and had her daughter, Kristin Anne, on July 29, 1983. She had made NASA aware of her intentions to raise a family while pursuing her career, and was assured that it would not affect her standing in the program.
On June 28, 1983, Sally Ride became the first female in space aboard Space Shuttle Challenger. In September 1983, NASA announced that Anna would become the first mother to go into space when she was slated to serve as the flight engineer aboard a Space Shuttle Discovery mission scheduled for Aug. 1, 1984.
When reporters asked her how she felt leaving her daughter to participate in the space flight, she pointed out that several of the male crew members were doing the same thing with regard to their children.
The Discovery launch took place on Nov. 8, 1984. Officially known as Mission STS-51A, it was the spacecraft’s second space flight. One of the mission’s chief tasks was the recovery of two failed satellites that had been abandoned during an earlier mission.
Anna used the Canadarm device, but it was unable to retrieve them. It took a space walk along the device’s arm by Joseph Allen to secure the satellites successfully for return to earth.
Anna was scheduled for a second mission in June 1986, but it was canceled following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986.
The Discovery mission would be the only one on which she flew, but she spent several years closely involved with NASA projects, especially the International Space Station. She had a second child, Kara Lynne, in 1989, and she and Bill Fisher divorced in 2000.
She retired from NASA in 2017, but continues to make public appearances. Through it all, she has always claimed San Pedro as her hometown, and has participated in several community events there over the years. She also does motivational speaking at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, near where she now lives.
Sources: Daily Breeze archives. Los Angeles Times archives. San Pedro News Pilot archives. “The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts,” by Loren Grush, Scribner, 2023. Wikipedia.