Ben Carson, the African-American son of a single mother, grew up in dire poverty in Detroit. By the age of 33 he was the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
In a city where two-thirds of the people are African-American, Johns Hopkins Hospital’s pediatric neurosurgeon has been embraced as one of Baltimore’s heroes and a role model for young blacks. After seeing him speak a few weeks ago I can safely tell you this: His story is inspiring to all, regardless of one’s race, ethnicity, interests or background. Some people just have a fire in them that rouses everyone around them, and Ben Carson is one such man.
As a young boy, Ben Carson was a poor student — not someone you would expect to grow up to become a brain surgeon. His parents divorced when he was 8; his mother, Sonya Carson, had a third-grade education and worked two, sometimes three jobs to provide for her sons. Carson’s schoolwork grew worse and worse, and in elementary school, he fell to the bottom of his class. But his mother, determined that he could do better, put her foot down.
“She did two things,” Carson told the audience. “First, she turned the TV off. Then, she had us go to the library and get two books every week. We had to write up book reports for her. Those were the days when you didn’t sass your mother; she’d tell us what was what if we didn’t do what we were told. Every week she would read those book reports very seriously and we always turned them in on time.
“Years later, we found out that she was illiterate, but of course, we didn’t know that at the time,” Carson said with a laugh. “She would go ‘mm-hmm,’ as she ran her eyes slowly through the page, making little check marks in the margins.”
Carson’s grades began to pull up. His instructors were amazed with his improvement. Exhilarated by his success and the realization that he was actually quite bright, Carson reversed his life and became top of his class within a year.
With his recognition of his intelligence came new ambitions and lofty goals, leading, ultimately, to his success. A hard and determined worker, the destitute boy from Detroit went on to become a leader in neurosurgery. He received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.
Success has not made him any less personable — probably to the contrary. On the podium, Carson was funny and engaging. At once devout and irreverent, a devoted Christian who is militantly against political correctness, Carson kept us all laughing hard and thinking hard. He spoke about his own life with such candor that, in a room filled with hundreds of people, many of us felt as if we were sitting just across the table from him.
“Never be afraid of getting ‘too much’ information in your brain,” he said, speaking primarily to the young medical students in the audience. “It’s not possible — trust me — I know what your brain can do.” In a true moment of theatrical flair, Dr. Carson enumerated the neural process that happens just for the simple action of raising your hand. The recitation lasted more than a minute, and by the time he finished we were all clapping. “Let’s see one of your rap stars do that,” he said.
One student rose and asked him this: “Do you think that you would be a different person today if you hadn’t grown up in such poverty?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Very much so. But I don’t think that determined my success. I think success is a personal thing that we can all achieve, with the right motivations, the right passions. I tell my kids that they are ‘disadvantaged’ because they’ve got no fire in the belly … I try to create artificial hardships for them, make them push themselves the way my mother pushed me. Rich or poor, it’s all a matter of what pushes you, and how much you push yourself.”
Two days after I saw him speak, I ran into the famed Dr. Carson — almost literally. I narrowly dodged him while coming around a corner in an administrative wing of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It took me a moment to recognize him; he was dressed from head to toe in surgical scrubs.
“Hello, Dr. Carson,” said the woman at the desk he had approached. “What can we do to help you?” Off the podium and at work, he was softer-spoken, but equally amiable. I didn’t quite have the gumption to introduce myself to a man obviously dressed for surgery, but I watched as he disappeared down the hall.
His is a moving story of success against the odds. I’m sure that those in the audience with me that night will be neither the first nor the last to give him a standing ovation — nor the only ones to be inspired by his example to push to the utmost limits of achievement.
Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and Vassar College in New York, shares her experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventures, go to the BDN Web site: bangordailynews.com or e-mail her at meg@margaret-adams.com