Catherine Worthingham, a noted Stanford educator, became the association’s two-term president during World War II. She served an unprecedented five years as president from 1940 through 1944 at the request of the executive committee, which felt that the war years were no time to install new, inexperienced officers.
Worthingham was the first physical therapist to hold a doctoral degree (in anatomy). She would later become a major figure at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, where she was instrumental in advancing the physical therapy profession.