Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan

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Fan
Name: Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan
Alias(es): Mama
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Fandoms: Star Trek: TOS
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Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan was a Star Trek: TOS fan.

She was Sondra Marshak's mother.

Marshak dedicated several books to her mother, including Star Trek: The New Voyages.

This fan, "Mama," is not to be confused with "Grandma Trek" -- Shirley Maiewski.

Frequent Con Guest of Honor

Mrs. Anna Tornheim Hassan was a frequent con attendee and a sometimes guest of honor, along with Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath

She was a guest of honor at:

About

From the TreKon 1977 program book:

MRS. ANNA TORNHEIM HASSAN. "Mama" to fans of STAR TREK all over the world and to the STAR TREK stars and celebrities, has become a celebrity in her own right.

Her spirit and her warmth have drawn people to her-not only the stars who call her "Mama" and welcome her with hugs and kisses - but countless fans. And newsmen, television reporters-those people have tracked her down from earliest days - even before her daughter Sondra Marshak's first book, STAR TREK LIVES!, and every book by Sondra and Myrna Culbreath since, acknowledged Mama as inspiration and indispensable help.

Newsmen wanted to know what this remarkable woman was doing at STAR TREK conventions - obviously as young at heart as any teenager, yet a grandmother many times over, a great-grandmother, and a STAR TREK fan to her bones.

Mrs. Anna Hassan was always glad to tell them-and to talk to any fan, warmly. Soon she had fans of her own.

She's appeared on television specials - where she stole the show — and on many television news programs, in newspaper articles. She's shared speaker platforms and head banquet tables with the STAR TREK Stars, and spoken herself. Fans line up for her autograph, write her fan letters, and ask her everything triey always wanted to know about STAR TREK. If they ask her about warp drive, she refers them to the engineer-Scotty-James Doohan.

She's attended more than two dozen STAR TREK conventions from coast to coast, and now is being invited to conventions as a guest of the convention.

Fans welcome her not only as a remarkable person, but as a symbol of the diversity and delight, and the kind of hope which is the spirit of STAR TREK.

Mama was born Anna Tornheim, in an Isreal which was not then Isreal, just about the time the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk. In her lifetime man has conquered the sky and reached the moon. In her own life, she has seen war and terror, has married across a gulf of diversity. Her husband was born in Egypt. She has come to a new country, made a new life, raised five daughters to maturity and seen them all take University degrees, including several advanced degrees, achieve responsible positions and professional success, and give her grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are growing up without fear.

In the lifetime of those grandchildren-of Sondra's son Jerry, now 5, will we conquer fear and hate decisively, defeat disease and death, and-reach for the stars?

STAR TREK has opened that hope, and more, for Mama, and for her husband. If there are other worlds, other people out there who may have solved the problem of war and death and fear - and who may even live very long and prosper - then why can't we? Or, as Mama says, "Maybe they could teach us and we could live."

Mama Lives!