Engineer-physician-astronaut among honorees on 2015 calendar

When Robert “Bobby” Satcher was growing up in the rural South Carolina community of Denmark, he was easily recognized as the boy who always carried a book.

His intellectual abilities were legendary and noted by teachers early on. There was no question he would be valedictorian at Denmark-Olar High School, class of 1982, and destined for great things, eventually earning accolades as a doctor, professor and astronaut.

“He was quite a student and when I say quite a student academically, he was different from most,” said Denmark Mayor Gerald E. Wright. “He was very disciplined as a young person, which is kind of rare.”

Wright, a former superintendent of Bamberg-Olar District 2, attended the same church as the Satcher family, St. Phillip’s Episcopal, on the campus of Voorhees College. Young Satcher, whose father was a Voorhees professor, was an acolyte.

“He gave the impression of just a young man who was mature beyond his years in terms of focus on academic work,” Wright said.

Now, Satcher – and by extension Denmark – can claim another honor. Satcher will be recognized at a private reception Tuesday along with 11 other accomplished South Carolinians, when the 2015 AT&T African-American History Calendar is unveiled.

Satcher, 49, credits his family and teachers for instilling a love of learning that would launch him into an Ivy League institution and into professions he loves.

“My dad was a college professor and my mom was an English teacher and they always stressed education,” he said in an interview by telephone late last week. “There was a lot of encouragement from my parents to build up my abilities and to make it such that we could do whatever we wanted to do.”

His family moved to Denmark as he was beginning ninth grade.

“I had an interest in science and math from a fairly early age,” he said. “I was always good at it.” During high school, Satcher also took college courses during the summer to enrich his studies, which also built his confidence.

“By that time, I knew ultimately that I wanted to do something in science, perhaps engineering,” he said. “The whole space thing was kind of a little bit beyond the scope of realistic possibilities,” he thought at the time, but not beyond pondering in his dreams.

Following high school graduation, Satcher left tiny Denmark and entered Massachusetts Institute of Techology, where he received undergraduate and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering in 1986 and 1993. A year after earning his Ph.D. at MIT in 1994, he completed work on a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed post-doctoral fellowships in orthopaedics and musculoskeletal oncology.

His resume – professorships, medical appointments at prestigious institutions – reads like the erudite and globe-trotting doctor and professor he is. But then, in 2006, he added yet another title to his vitae: NASA astronaut.

He was working as an assistant professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery when he got the news. He also held an appointment as an attending physician in Orthopaedic Surgery at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, specializing in musculoskeletal oncology and an adjunct appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Northeastern University School of Engineering. But, amazingly, he still had time for his dream of going to outer space.

Satcher had submitted his application just prior to the space shuttle Columbia disaster, on Feb. 1, 2003. The Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisana as it re-entered earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

NASA suspended space shuttle flight operations and applications to the citizen astronaut program following the disaster, and that gave Satcher time to consider his answer if NASA ever called.

“I had decided that I would at least move forward with the application – I never thought I would get selected, quite honestly,” he said.

After completing Astronaut Candidate Training at NASA’s Johnston Space Center in 2006, he flew on the space shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station Nov. 16, 2009, eventually logging 259 hours in space and performing a different kind of surgery on the robotic arms of the space station. His Twitter handle from outer space was @astro-bones.

“It is one of the few things that exceeds your expectations,” he said. “It is a fantastic experience. You have all kinds of ideas about what it is going to feel like, but there is nothing like going.”

Satcher, now a surgical oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and co-director of eHealth Research Institute, regularly travels to Africa where he is working to establish cancer centers in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, he finds time to return to South Carolina and Denmark on a routine basis.

He sits on the board of trustees at Voorhees College and delivered the commencement address to the 2012 graduating class. The college awarded Satcher an honorary doctorate that year and the town of Denmark declared it Robert Satcher Week and gave him keys to the town.

When young people ask Satcher how he went about achieving his goals and dreams, he says he has several answers.

“I just tell them to do what they really want to do, what really excites them, and whatever it is, focus on that initially,” Satcher said. “Don’t try to take up too much. ... I just focused on what I was doing at the time.

“The most important thing is to do something that you are passionate about - something that really excites you.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Engineer-physician-astronaut among honorees on 2015 calendar ."