THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605190040
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Doctors must use their gifts outside the examining room, Dr. Benjamin S. Carson Sr. told the graduating class of Eastern Virginia Medical School on Saturday.
``Physicians should be problem solvers. And those problems don't always just occur in the laboratory or in the clinical ward or in the operating room,'' he said.
Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, delivered the keynote lecture at the ceremony in Norfolk's Chrysler Hall. Ninety-one students were awarded doctor of medicine degrees.
Carson decried the influence of television and the lack of recognition for thinkers in America.
Children, particularly African-American children, need to learn about role models in science, not sports, he said. ``We've become a nation that can tell you anything you want about Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson and Madonna.''
He said he learned the power of knowledge when he was growing up in poverty in Detroit and Boston. As a child, he could name every show on television, but he never raised his hand in class. The other kids called him ``dummy.''
His life changed when his mother, who had a third-grade education and worked as a housekeeper, began limiting his watching of television. She required him to read two books a week and report on them. Soon, he was entranced by books about science and nature.
Carson went on to great things. At 33, he became the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the nation. He has earned an international reputation, pioneering surgical procedures for children with brain-stem tumors and chronic seizures caused by diseases like Rasmussen's encephalitis.
Class president Doreen A. Kennedy addressed her fellow graduates.
``What measures the quality of life is the ability to make a difference in the lives of others,'' she said.
Most of the students will go on to post-graduate training in specialties, such as family medicine, pediatrics and surgery. In addition to the medical degree recipients, other students earned doctorates in biomedical sciences and clinical psychology.
One member of the class of 1996 was not able to walk across the stage with her classmates. Jennifer Leard Murphy of Virginia Beach had to withdraw from school after her daughter was born last summer with Pfeiffer's syndrome, a rare disorder.
The child has required round-the-clock nursing. Murphy hopes one day to return to medical school, but in the meantime, she said, she may be required to pay back some of her student loans. Friends have set up a fund for her.
Checks should be made payable to the Jennifer Leard Murphy Fund, in care of Helen Heselius, P.O. Box 1980, Norfolk, 23510. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by GARY C. KNAPP
About 150 students graduated Saturday from Eastern Virginia Medical
School, taking the Hippocratic oath during the ceremony.
by CNB