Published by Hazel Eyes Press, LLC, Springfield, IL

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2022 by Derek Robinson.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, including informational storage and retrieval systems, without explicit permission in writing from the copyright holder, except for brief quotations in reviews/articles or instances otherwise in compliance with the fair use doctrine and other applicable legal authority.

Note: To protect privacy, some names in this book have been anonymized.

ISBNs

979-8-9861722-0-0 Hardcover

979-8-9861722-3-1 Paperback

979-8-9861722-1-7 Digital

979-8-9861722-2-4 Audio

Cover Design: Sergey Myshkovskiy

Interior Formatting: Olivier Darbonville

Editing and Proofreading: Erika’s Editing

To my patients, who have given me the privilege of a lifetime to care for them as their physician.

To my many mentees who, over the years, have inspired me to strive toward being a better example of God’s grace.

To my readers, who I hope will find encouragement in these pages.

Contents

Chapter 1

The Foundation: Love, Faith, Hope

Chapter 2

Swimming Across (Racial) Lanes

Chapter 3

One Son, Two Families

Chapter 4

Claiming My Shot

Chapter 5

Xavier and Brotherhood

Chapter 6

The Journey from College to Medical School

Chapter 7

The First Two Years of Medical School

Chapter 8

The Clinical Years of Medical School: With the Finish Line in Sight

Chapter 9

The Clinical Years of Medical School: Keeping My Eyes on the Prize

Chapter 10

When the ER Became My Classroom

Chapter 11

A Transformative Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter 12

Preparing for Leadership

Chapter 13

Vignettes from the ER

Chapter 14

From Physician to C-Suite

Chapter 15

Becoming a Father

Chapter 16

When Being a Doctor Wasn’t Enough

Chapter 17

Mentoring: Giving Back is Good for the Soul

Chapter 18

Native Sons

Chapter 19

In the Midst of the Pandemic

Chapter 20

Looking Forward: Working Toward a More Equitable World

About the Author

Photo Album

Chapter 1

The Foundation: Love, Faith, Hope

My mother’s love was curated in her humble upbringing and rooted in her deep faith, and it was within this love that I was raised. Her parents and ancestors had known great adversity and great hope, and she carried their weight and wisdom with her in all she did as a mother. When I was born in the 1970s, it wasn’t societally acceptable to be a single parent—and children of single parents were not expected to succeed—but my mother brooked no such notions. It wasn’t until I became a father myself that I developed a true appreciation for the incredible resiliency she demonstrated in raising me and the awesome pressures she must have faced in advocating for me.

My mother had a job as a computer programmer, and as the son of a working mom, I spent my earliest years in the care of my extended family during the day. My grandmother, who I affectionately called Big Momma, was my primary caretaker Monday through Friday. Having given birth to fourteen kids and being the stepmother of seven others, she knew plenty about parenting.

Because my mother needed extra help as a single parent, Big Momma relocated from the country for a time and took residence in a small public housing building nearby. I have memories of running around her little apartment, hiding from her in the closet, and playing with her dentures, which she kept in a cup in the refrigerator. Like most children, especially boys, I was very active and rambunctious, which did cause problems now and again. When I was two or three, I once jumped from the kitchen counter; I struck my head hard, earning me a visit to the emergency room. I don’t recall much about the ER itself, but I do remember being fascinated by the doctors and nurses.

Once I was old enough to attend day care, Big Momma moved back to the country. The day care my mother sent me to was probably the best in my home city of Shreveport, LA, and it was my aunt’s idea to send me there; a colleague of hers, a librarian, had founded the preschool, and my aunt thought it would be the right place for me to begin developing my young mind. My time there was phenomenal, and I was fond of my teachers; more importantly, I was more than prepared for kindergarten when it came time for me to be evaluated at age four.

My mother was excited about my prospects. She had ensured that I was intellectually, socially, and emotionally prepared for school. When she set out to find me an elementary school, she looked into the very best schools, for she knew the value of an education from her own experience. Education had lifted her up, and she was determined that it would do the same for me. She placed applications for me at several public schools that were part of our area’s magnet program. In the early 1980s, these programs offered enhanced academic rigor and sought to bring together students of diverse backgrounds, and she believed in my ability to excel in an advanced learning environment.

Her school of choice for me was South Highlands Elementary, located in perhaps the wealthiest neighborhood of my hometown and was known for its academic excellence. Unfortunately, the school refused to take me: the administration at South Highlands didn’t feel I was a good fit for their program since my father didn’t live with us. Undoubtedly, my mother was devastated at this news. Her first real engagement with our city’s school system had marked me as deficient and lacking potential for academic excellence. South Highlands didn’t care that I was a smart, curious child who loved to ask questions, nor did they care that I saw my father almost once a week. They merely saw the circumstances of my birth and dismissed me.

To understand why my education was so important to my mother, it’s necessary to know where she comes from. She’s a child of sharecroppers, and both her parents were of African and Native American ancestry. Her father was born in 1888, and her paternal grandparents were both born into slavery. Her dad, who was over sixty years old when she was born, lived through the post-Reconstruction era, the terrorism of lynchings, the rise of Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. My mother’s mother, Big Momma, was my grandfather’s third wife, and she was thirty-three years her husband’s junior.

My grandparents didn’t have wealth or many material possessions to offer their children, but they had their faith, their love, and each other to sustain them. They didn’t have electricity in the home until my mother was seven years old, and indoor plumbing wasn’t installed until several years after that. My mom and her siblings all shared beds, but they stayed warm and cozy under their quilts. Their two-room home was tight on space, yet there were always plenty of biscuits to go around. When she was in first grade, my mom went to school at our church, where the family worshipped. In their tattered clothes, she and her siblings would set off daily to school on the school bus that took the older kids into the city for high school. As one of the younger children in the family, my mother benefited from having older sisters and brothers to tutor her, and she thrived academically. Her educational path might have ended after twelfth grade, save for the advice of a few angels disguised as guidance counselors at her de facto segregated high school; they encouraged her to continue her studies, and she became the second in the family to go to college. Without their help, she probably wouldn’t have overcome the extreme poverty of her childhood.

Because my mother was determined to find a good school for me, I landed at Judson Fundamental Magnet, a great elementary school where I forged what would become lifelong relationships—even today, I remain connected to friends from those early years. While I did fine academically, and even though I had a healthy self-confidence, elementary school was not a walk in the park. We used to receive these little slips of paper with a stamp showing our behavior—our grade for the day could be a star, a smiley face, or a frown. I got my fair share of frowns for talking too much in class, and according to my mom, during my first few years in school, she came to expect a call from my teacher on the first day of each school year. I think a good amount of my antics stemmed from my curiosity. For example, a replica of a human skeleton, with its many bones, was on display in the back of the school’s science room; until my teacher admonished me for touching it, Mr. Skeleton and I often shook hands. I can now laugh at the notion, but I’m sure these incidents were frustrating for my mom, especially after working so hard to place me in a good school.

Science and math were my favorite subjects, but I also liked art. In science, I found our exploration of the solar system captivating. In fifth grade, I was excited when our homework was to create a model of the solar system, and I used spray-painted Styrofoam balls, cut in half and affixed to a poster board, to represent the sun and each of the planets. Unfortunately, just after I turned the model in, the nation faced the tragedy of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and shock and dismay spread through my class. We knew that a teacher was one of seven people on board, and I worried that I could lose one of the teachers I admired in such an accident. Moreover, because my mother periodically traveled for work, the Challenger explosion made me worry that perhaps a plane she was traveling on could crash as well. Thankfully, time after time, she would arrive back home safely, which eventually soothed my fears.

Outside of academics, some of my fondest elementary memories include field day (dunking booths, sprints, bean bag races), singing in the school choir, taking turns raising the flag on the flagpole, serving as a safety patrolman (Safety patrolmen acted as crossing guards. We got to wear an orange belt with a triangular buckle, and we’d stop traffic so students could safely cross to the sidewalk.), and being in the Cub Scouts. Of all of these, I enjoyed Cub Scouts the most, as we would meet after school and do all kinds of fun activities.

My all-time favorite activity as a young boy was going to the local campgrounds for a camping trip. I would usually go with my friend Shaun and his family; his dad was active in our Cub Scout den, and he really enjoyed doing outside activities with us. When we weren’t at the campground, from time to time, we would raise money for the local cystic fibrosis organization because Shaun’s younger brother had the condition. As a kid, I don’t recall observing symptoms of the disease in Shaun’s brother, but I do remember hearing he might not live a long life. As a physician, I now have a better understanding of the challenges the family must have faced, especially in light of the limited technology in the 1980s, and as a father I understand why Shaun’s dad took such joy in chaperoning our camping trips.

As much as my mother valued education, I was also raised in the church, as my family has long practiced the Christian faith. Deep faith carried our ancestors across chattel slavery, through emancipation, past segregation, and into contemporary times. For my family, our place of worship was the Starlight Baptist Church, which was founded in 1874. Starlight Baptist was a country church out in the sticks, and for many years, the building didn’t have air conditioning. Fans would blow hot air from the outside into the hot church, which did little to cool us off. We didn’t have a fancy choir, drums, or an organ to accompany our praises to God, but the choir always stayed in key and on beat, in synch with the stomping boots of my older cousin, who was the choir director for many years. With an understanding of God’s grace and mercy, our elders bellowed out old hymns, which were reminiscent of the spirituals that nourished the souls of their ancestors as they toiled on plantations, during devotion time. Many weeks I watched in awe as Big Momma would catch the Spirit and dance and shout in church for as long as she was able. When I was very young, it bothered me when the ushers would come to walk her outside to cool off. I honestly didn’t know what those men were doing to her, but my grandmother seemed upset when they came, and I didn’t want anyone messing with her.

Of all my experiences in the church, I especially remember the baptisms. Water was in limited supply in our church because we relied on a well (which produced hard water that left the sinks and toilets with rust-colored stains), and we didn’t have a baptismal pool, so baptisms took place in the woods instead. Candidates for baptism would get ready in the small church bathrooms and emerge draped in white robes and head wraps. The pastor and deacons would don their chest-level rubber waders and lead the congregation across the road, through a barbed-wire fence, and down a trail to a hidden pond. Parishioners would sing Take Me to the Water as we made our way through the woods. While some deacons were always in the water to assist with the baptisms, a few were stationed along the banks to watch for snakes, alligators, and other creatures that might be lurking in the water.

Every Sunday began with Sunday school class before the main service, and every Saturday evening my mother, who taught the adult class, would quiz me on the upcoming lesson to ensure that I was prepared for the next morning. My older cousin ran the kids’ class and gave out candy-orange slices if we did a good job with our recitations. Sweets were always a strong incentive for us kids; it’s amazing how much time I spent soliciting pieces of candy from every old lady with a purse. (I think we kids all figured out who had the good stuff and hit them up regularly.) I learned about Christ in Sunday school, but even beyond the religious principles, these classes were an educational training ground for me: reading comprehension, critical thinking, and public speaking were all an integral part of our lessons.

Like many churches, we often had programs that coincided with major holidays. This meant that young people would be given a poem or short speech to give during the program. Our youth director would assign a selection to each of us a few weeks beforehand, and we were expected to learn it by heart, or close to it. One of my mother’s pet peeves was a cold reading of a poem from a child who had clearly made no effort to memorize the words, and so she made sure her son was ready to speak in front of the congregation; the night before any special program, I found myself standing in front of the faux fireplace in our living room, repeating my poem until it was perfect. As I got older, the poems got longer, but mom’s standards and expectations did not change.

By the time I was a teenager, our church population had become smaller as some members, including a few of my own family, left Starlight Baptist for more modern churches. When I was sixteen, I became the permanent teacher for one of our youth classes; I had to learn how to conduct a thirty-minute class and keep my students well-behaved enough not to get us in trouble with the pastor for being too rowdy. It was during these years that our church was able to install air conditioning, which was a tremendous relief. It offered us respite from the heat and humidity, of course, but air conditioning came with another benefit: since the windows could now remain closed during the summer, we had fewer wasps flying into the church. Winter mornings were another story, though. As a youth teacher and one of the first people to arrive for Sunday school, I got plenty of practice lighting the church’s propane space heaters. I would first check the external propane tank’s level, then turn on the gas; by the time our seniors arrived, there were a few warm spots in the church waiting for them.

Our pastor chose every second Sunday as Youth Sunday, and I was afforded the chance to serve as superintendent of our entire Sunday school service. This was my first leadership position, and even though I was a teenager, the adults respected the role I was in; when I called on them in classes, they all started their responses with, Brother Superintendent Robinson. The elders of the church encouraged me every step of the way, and they often reminded me that I didn’t have to be a perfect leader as long as I put forth the effort and came prepared. The elders will help you carry the tune, but they can’t fix the wrong words, they would say. This taught me an important lesson in how I should govern myself in working with those who were more experienced than me, for I was humbled by the wisdom the elders shared.

The Starlight Baptist Church may not have been perfect, but its shortcomings were superficial, and year after year I was enriched with love from people who celebrated my faith, fostered my potential, and charged me with the responsibility of carrying forward the legacy of my ancestors—ancestors who never had the privilege of going to the many places that were destined for me. Here in my church home, I was encouraged to become my full and true self, protectively shaded by the elders and the congregation, in a world deeply rooted in love, faith, and hope.

Chapter 2

Swimming Across (Racial) Lanes

As far back as I can remember, I have always had a love for swimming and the water. Fear of the water was not uncommon in my community, but I delighted in my summertime swimming lessons at the George Washington Carver YMCA on Hearne Ave, as well as at other city pools. Each season, my mother signed me up for these classes through my day care. She wanted me to swim because she never had a chance to learn; growing up, her rural community didn’t have a pool, and it’s not likely that her parents could have financed lessons to begin with. My father, too, encouraged me to swim—he never took swimming lessons as a child, but he was adventurous enough to have learned with his friends and siblings on a local bayou. I looked forward to these classes each year, and seeing the water filled to the rim of the pool, with sunlight reflected in its stillness, excited me over and over.

I was twelve years old when I dove into the world of competitive swimming almost on a whim. One hot spring afternoon, I was in the car with my dad when I pleaded with him to stop at the Southside Swim Club, home of the City of Shreveport Swim Team (COSST). We’d passed the club many times—it was located across the road from our local mall—but I’d never been inside. I couldn’t hide my excitement when my dad pulled the car into the parking lot. When we then entered the club’s main grounds, I was in awe of the three sunlit pools, which I had been unable to see from the street.

The largest of the pools was fifty meters long, with eight lanes for swimmers, and it was much bigger than any pool I had ever seen. Swimmers stroked up and down the sun-kissed lanes as their coach Butch stood behind the blocks, sporting a straw hat. I quickly introduced myself to him and expressed my interest in trying out for the team. Of course, at twelve years old, I had absolutely no inkling of the commitment I was making in that moment, nor could I have been aware of the hard work, discipline, and dedication that would be required of me if I were to swim competitively.

That day, Butch invited me to take part in the team’s upcoming practice, and soon I would learn just how far behind the other swimmers I truly was. When we returned, he instructed me to swim a lap. I dipped into the cold water and began to stroke and kick down my lane, but as I reached the other end of the pool, fatigue was already setting in; meanwhile, the other swimmers gracefully and effortlessly swam right around me. To his credit, rather than placing me with kids my age, Butch directed me to the group of younger swimmers practicing in the indoor, twenty-five-yard pool. There I was, a middle-school student in the lane with kids who were probably in second and third grades—including Butch’s son, who despite being so young was a third-generation competitive swimmer. This was a challenging start for me because I couldn’t blend in as I figured things out. I was older than the others, my swimming skills needed refinement, and I was the only Black swimmer in the pool. While I loved swimming and tried not to get discouraged, I initially wasn’t sure that COSST was for me. I’m sure I made some basic improvement in my first few weeks, but change can be hard to see in the moment, and I wondered if I would ever catch up to the kids my age.

The Southside Swim Club was a special place. It was the preeminent training site for competitive swimming in the city, and kids from all over Shreveport were members. Its late founder Jack Jordan is credited