Since Minnie Vance was 10 years old she knew she wanted to do something where she could help people.

Her first interest was nursing since she had read books about all the good things they do. But when she realized they also had to wash and bathe people, she thought, "Why not a doctor?" And she never took her eyes off that goal.

Almost 60 years since opening her own private practice on McCallie Avenue, Vance will retire, but she will continue her lifetime passion by volunteering.

Friends, family, T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital and the Erlanger Foundation will honor Vance in a ceremony today.

Vance, 88, comes from a family in which education was important and going to college was never debated.

She went to the University of Texas at Austin to study pre-medicine and graduated in 1942. She worked three years to save money to go to the University of Tennessee medical school in Memphis.

"Come hell or high water, I was going to do it," said Vance in her office. "I never thought it wasn't possible."

Throughout her life she was the first in many areas and has been recognized multiple times for her work in the community. A pediatric center was named after her and her longtime partner and friend Eleanor Stafford, who died in 2004.

She was among the first female pediatricians in private practice and was one of the first pediatricians in Chattanooga to admit a black child to the regular floor of Children's Hospital on the day desegregation became law.

"We take it for granted now because so many women have careers, but in the '50s and '60s, to have a mother who had her own practice, it was completely different," said her youngest daughter, Anne Bright.

Vance has been a role model for other women in medicine, said Phyllis Miller, a Chattanooga gynecologist who met Vance in 1972.

"Dr. Vance is probably one of the first that was able to successfully be a wife and mother as well as having a career as a doctor," Miller said.

Vance said she hopes to have more time to read now. She wants to read Shakespeare from beginning to end but will keep seeing children because she loves to see them grow.