Anna McHargue

Retired Col. Anna McHargue, M.D., a U.S. Air Force former commander and flight surgeon, will be honored as the 2006 Distinguished Alumnus Award recipient during Murray State University Alumni Reunion Weekend activities held May 11-13.

McHargue will be honored at a dinner Friday evening in the Pogue Library and also recognized during Saturday’s Commencement ceremony at the Regional Special Events Center .

The first female flight surgeon in USAF Reserves, McHargue has logged more than 3,500 flying hours during her 24-year career that began in March 1977. The first flight surgeon to land on every continent in a C-5, McHargue was also hand-picked to serve in that capacity for Operation Deep Freeze, a deployment to Antarctica .

McHargue, whose childhood dream was becoming a physician, said when she was given the opportunity in the 1970s to fly as a female flight surgeon it was during a time that women weren’t flight surgeons. “I wasn’t readily accepted when I was assigned this position,” she said. “After serving for one year with no flight assignments, Gen. Balch, the 349 AW commander, finally decided that I needed to fly and placed me on assignment. This position provided me with the many opportunities that enabled me to progress up the ranks.”

A native of LaGrange , Ky. , McHargue majored in chemistry and biology, graduating summa cum laude. She credits her tenacious spirit to a line of strong women including her late mother and grandmother, Wilena McHargue and Etta Webster, and the late Dr. Liz a Spann and Roberta Whitnah, former MSU faculty members. “My mother and grandmother both lived to see me become a physician and encouraged to me to continue when I didn’t know if I could or not,” she said.

During a trip home to LaGrange from Murray State , McHargue said she was discouraged with her pre-medical classes and told her mother she didn’t think she could continue. “She told me ’yes, you can, now get back on that bus and go back to college.’ ”

Spann and Whitnah mentored McHargue while at Murray , during an era when usually only three women out of 100 were granted the opportunity to attend medical school. “These two women set me up to believe that I could continue on to medical school,” McHargue said. “Their support never waivered.”

A 1962 University of Louisville School of Medicine honors graduate, McHargue participated in numerous roles and activities at Murray including serving as president of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority. She was a member of marching band, Chemistry Club, and Beta Beta Beta biology fraternity. “These activities provided me with social skills and widened my world to become a well-rounded individual and also prevented me from studying all the time in the library,” she said. “They permitted me to create a large circle of life-long friends, whom I still stay in contact with today.”

As the former commander of the 349th Aerospace Medicine Squadron from 1988-1992, Mchargue was activated and appointed to the position of vice commander of David Grant USAF Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base during Operation Desert Storm. During McHargue’s tenure there, she became one of only two unit physicians to qualify to assist with USAF’s Expeditionary Medical Support. “I truly believe the opportunities that have been granted to me, simply meant that I was in the right place at the right time,” she said.

McHargue was one of five physicians who treated Ecuadorian nationals in the lowland jungles along that nation’s North Pacific coast during Operation NUEVOS HORIZONTES in 1998.

McHargue said one of the greatest pinnacles of her flying career occurred when delivering a water purification unit in a C-5 to people the heart of Africa along the border area between Ruwanda and Zaire . “A vision I will never forget was seeing a sea of black people on the runway as we flew into the area,” she said. “We also saw a number of bodies of individuals who had died after they contracted Cholera from drinking the polluted water."

McHargue said within a two week time period the epidemic had been eradicated with the help of the purification unit she and her unit delivered. “It was a most unique experience to be able to participate in this effort.”

The recipient of numerous medals including The Legion of Merit(fifth highest AF medal), Aerial Achievement, Armed Forces Expeditionary and three Meritorious Service medals, McHargue has proved to be the Wing’s single most authoritative source of information and counsel on flight medicine to austere environments which have included Russia, China, Antarctica and the jungles of Ecuador. She was named the 1998 and 2000 Flight Surgeon of the Year by the 312th Airlift Squadron.

In addition to being honored as this year’s MSU distinguished alumna, McHargue will join more than 40 of her 1956 class members for their 50-year reunion activities. “I’m looking forward to seeing so many of my classmates,” she said. “That’s the most exciting aspect about traveling back for this honor.”

Distinction and honor is prevalent in the 1956 class, as McHargue joins four other of her class members Wanda Durrett Bigham, Bobby Brashears, Charles Mercer, and Jacque Voegeli who have also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Classmate Howell Clark is a former MSU Distinguished Professor honoree. “I believe that during our college days we were a much more serious generation,” she said. “We just thought we were ordinary people, but there were many older students attending college after World War II and this in itself created much more seriousness among all of us.”

McHargue is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the Wilderness Medical Society, the USAF Society of Flight Surgeons and the Reserve Flight Surgeons Association. Active in the Church of the Advent in San Francisco , she is a member of the Diocese of California Standing Committee and the Grace Cathedral Board of Trustees. She participates in the church’s feeding program for the homeless of the city.

The 1999 Air Force Reserve Command Flight Surgeon of the Year, McHargue has served 45 years in the medical profession and works part-time at the NASA/Ames Research Center Clinic in Mountain View , Calif.