Pamela Webb Tubbs is a native of Columbia, South Carolina, who made Norfolk her home in 2000, when transferred here by the U.S. Navy. She joined our Club in 2003, thanks to Julie Keesling, a fellow Sailor who Pam had known since they shared a duty station in Japan a few years earlier.
Pam was attracted to Rotary by our mission to be of service to others, and particularly by the organization’s commitment to polio eradication, as she is a polio survivor. Pam contracted polio at age two and had to learn to walk again. She seemed to have recovered completely, growing up as an active baseball player, biker, clog dancer, and Girl Scout. However, like many of the million polio survivors worldwide, Pam suffers from Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS), a condition which, decades following the original acute attack, manifests as progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. As a result, she had to give up physical activities that require leg strength. Pam counts herself very fortunate that her post-polio issues only partially limit her ability to serve others.
Like her distant cousin, Loretta Lynn, Pam can’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing. At the University of South Carolina, she studied vocal and piano pedagogy and toured with in the USC Concert Choir. During and after college, Pam performed at a variety of venues around Columbia as a solo entertainer and in numerous musical theatre roles. Becoming reacquainted with an old friend who had recently returned home from service in the U.S. Navy, she was inspired to embark on a career as a naval officer.
The Officer Candidate School curriculum was not designed with liberal arts majors in mind. However, Pam persevered through classes in celestial navigation, thermodynamics, stability/buoyancy, the steam cycle, etc. She was commissioned in 1977 and ordered to her first duty station, Naval Support Activity Mare Island (near San Francisco). Driving from South Carolina to California, she stopped in Memphis, Tennessee, to visit with a friend. That friend told Pam she had met the “perfect” guy for her. That perfect guy turned out to be Ace Tubbs. After a whirlwind courtship within eight months, Ace and Pam engaged and then married. The Navy didn’t move quite that quickly as Ace and Pam were married for six months before they were able to live in the same town.
As Pam was climbing through the military ranks, the effects of her childhood polio started to show up. Fortunately, by that point, Navy attitudes about how women were employed began to evolve, and coincidentally, their uniform regulations. Being allowed to eschew skirts for trousers—which hid her leg brace—and flat shoes—rather than the high heels which she no longer had the leg strength to wear—Pam could continue her Navy career. Along the way, she earned graduate degrees from Memphis State University and the U.S. Naval War College; she was promoted to Captain (O-6), and twice served as a commanding officer before retiring with 26 years of service. Pam’s final duty station was in Norfolk where she responsible for pay, personnel, and transportation administration for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
Pam and Ace have two sons, both of whom are happily married with sons of their own. David is an adjunct history professor at both ODU and TCC. David’s wife, Jackie, just joined our Satellite Club. Gordon recently received his Master of Divinity degree from Regent University; he plans to return to active duty in the Navy as a chaplain.
Pam was granted a leave of absence from our club while she and Ace were in Tokyo from 2008-2013 for his work as a clinical psychologist. We were happy to welcome her back.
Pam is actively involved at First Presbyterian Church as a choir member. An accomplished music arranger, she maintains a website where she markets her choral and instrumental arrangements. Her service in our Rotary Club has included Board membership; Rotations Committee chair; and membership on the Fundraising, Chaplains, and Greeters Committees. As a Music Committee stalwart, she has shared her musical skills as a pianist and song leader. She also is a Rotary Foundation Sustaining Member, a Polio Plus Society member, a Paul Harris Fellow +2 and a Paul Harris Society member.