Dr. Ben Carson, 47, also knows how to keep his audience rapt with tales about separating Siamese twins and other surgical wizardry. But these days, Carson—whose third motivational memoir, The Big Picture, was published in February—is also preaching the values that enabled him to make the transition from poor, inner-city kid with a hair-trigger temper to chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins.
Carson puts his money where his microphone is. Through the five-year-old Carson Scholars fund, which he and wife Candy, 45, founded, they have earmarked $500,000 of their own money to create college scholarship. So far, about 160 students in grades 4 through 12, in Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., have been awarded $1,000 grants. Scholars must have a 3.75 grade point average and leadership skills and, Carson says, "We also want people who care about other people." He started the fund after noticing that schools routinely showcase star athletes but rarely put "our academic superstars on a pedestal. No wonder they're looked at as nerds."
Carson's own nerdiness was hard won. "I was the worst student you could imagine," he tells the Hopkins audience. "My favorite subject was recess. Fortunately for me, I had a mother who believed I was smart."
Sonya Copeland, now 71, was only 13 when she moved from Chattanooga to Detroit to marry 28-year-old Robert Carson, who worked on a Cadillac plant assembly line. They split after she learned he was a bigamist. Destitute, she took her two boys (Curtis, now, 49, is a mechanical engineer in South Bend, Ind.) to live in her sister's tenement apartment in Boston. "After my husband left, it was worse than the depths of hell," says Sonya, who worked as a maid but now lives with Carson and his family in an eight-bedroom hilltop estate outside Baltimore. "I knew my boys needed me....I'd do any sacrifice to get them educated."
When Ben was 8 she bought him a chemistry set. "It was like magic," he recalls, "to take all these chemicals and create incredible aromas and colors and formulations." Reality was harsher. In 1961, Sonya moved her family back to Detroit, where, by fifth grade, Carson was failing all his subjects. Determined to help, Sonya ordered her sons to read and write reports on two books each week, which she, with only a third-grade education, pretended to review. Within two years, Carson ranked at the head of his class at mostly white Wilson Junior High School.
That didn't diminish his rage against the racist treatment he encountered. One memorable day in eighth grade, his teacher berated his white classmates for allowing him, the black boy, to win the outstanding-student award. At 14, Carson's fury erupted: He tried to stab a fellow ninth grader who had changed the station on a transistor radio. "He had a large metal belt buckle, and the knife blade struck it and broke," Carson recalls. Terrified by his own temper, he ran home, where he locked himself in the bathroom and prayed for hours. A Seventh Day Adventist like his mother, he says he never lost his temper again.
Carson went on to win a scholarship to Yale, where he met music student Candy Ruskin; the two were married in 1975. They moved to Ann Arbor, where Candy earned a master's degree in business and Carson attended medical school at the University of Michigan. He was accepted into the neurosurgery program at Johns Hopkins, where in 1984, at age 33, he became the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the U.S. Since then, he has made a name for himself by separating Siamese twins joined at the head and by performing hemispherectomies—removing one side of the brain to treat those with severe multiple seizures.
At home, Carson relaxes by shooting pool and playing music with his three boys—Murray, 15, Benjamin Jr., 14, and Rhoeyce, 12. Though the family is wealthy, Carson reminds his sons that privilege comes with a duty to help the less fortunate.
At a recent scholarship event, 14-year-old Megan Nivens, a grant recipient, approached Carson shyly. "You don't realize how many doors you've opened for me," she said. "Now I know I'm going to college. I feel so fortunate." Ben Carson knows the feeling.
Christina Cheakalos
Linda Kramer in Baltimore
- Contributors:
- Linda Kramer.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
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