Rosalyn Singleton, an Eagle River resident, mother of two sons and a physician at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium recalled an event that happened about 15 years ago that had her taking stock of her life.
Her sons, Justin, now 22, and Colin, 18, have always been good at keeping her in check and helping her balance her life, which Singleton admits isn't always in balance.
“I got called once to a code, and I abruptly grabbed the guys and starting racing down the highway. Justin, who was 7 or 8, said, ÔMom, we need to talk about your priorities,'” she said, laughing at the memory.
Singleton is known locally as a skier and a runner. She is a member of the Eagle River Nordic Ski Club and parented two standout cross-country skiers who graduated from the local high schools.
In her professional life, the petite, dark-haired Singleton, 51, is an immunization consultant for the Alaska area. She is also a guest researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and has been for 20 years.
“I'm like your mother-in-law,” she said, laughing, referring to that lengthy appointment. “I never go home.
“I do a lot of work with CDC on disease surveillance and vaccine-preventable diseases and respiratory diseases in Alaska Native children, and so that's how I got into work with the CDC.”
Singleton decided what she wanted to do with her life as a sixth-grader growing up in the Napa Valley in northern California, where her father was a beekeeper.
“I was a very analytical kind of child,” she said. “I sat down and thought through all of my skills.'”
She decided that while she was a good athlete, she wasn't professional athlete material, and she wanted to help people, she said.
“I was trying to think of something, and I was good in school, so I finally put it together and decided I wanted to go into medicine.”
At the time, her friends told her, “Oh, you can't be a doctor. You're a girl,” she said.
She continued with her plan, graduating from high school in 1974, attending Biola College in Los Angeles and then attending Northwestern University in Chicago for medical school and her residency, where she specialized in pediatrics.
While at Northwestern, she met and married Jim Singleton, who was there studying pediatric dentistry.
“Being the daughter of a beekeeper, I was not swimming in money, and so when I finished college, I decided I wanted to be financially independent,” Singleton said.
So she got a National Health Service Corps scholarship, and she had to promise to serve in an underserved area when she was done with school.
“My options were things like the prison system, Coast Guard, some clinics like in Appalachia or East L.A. or Indian Health Service. Indian Health Service sounded really interesting, so we ended up going to the Navajo reservation,” she said.
The Singleton's elder son, Justin, was born in Arizona in 1986, and as their three years of service wound down, both Singletons wondered where they would go next.
Jim, who had been working as a regular dentist, received a “completely unsolicited call from Alaska” with a job offer.
Up until that point, Singleton said she had never even thought about Alaska in her life.
“We came to visit, we drove down Turnagain Arm and I was hooked,” she said. “That was it.”
Skiing came about as a family activity after Justin, who had done some Junior Nordic skiing, decided to play hockey.
“One year into that I realized I would die as a hockey mom, because I couldn't take just sitting in the stands for an hour and a half while my son was skating around the ice, and (I was) holding a newborn,” she said.
They had a talk with Justin and suggested it might be good to choose a sport that the whole family could enjoy and he said he'd go back to skiing, which is how the family got involved in the sport, she said.
Her sons are both now attending colleges in Michigan, but when they were home, Singleton said she mostly worked three-quarter time, so she would have more family time.
With a career in medicine and a family, Singleton said some of her career goals had to be set aside because they interfered with raising her children, but that was OK with her.
“I think mothering has been my favorite part of my life,” she said, her voice softening. “There's nothing like the joy of having children and raising them. Raising children has had a profound impact on my life.”
Reach the reporter at sally.foo@alaskastar.com.
