BEN CARSON: MAN OF MIRACLES

Christopher Phillips

Ben Carson looked out at Detroit's Southwestern High School class of 1988. It was graduation day. At 36, Carson was a leading brain surgeon, performing delicate and lifesaving operations. But 19 years before, he had graduated from this same inner-city school. He remembered it all—the depressing surroundings of one of Detroit's toughest, poorest neighborhoods. And he knew the sense of hopelessness and despair that many of these 260 students were feeling about the future.

For weeks he had worried over how to convince the graduates that they, too, could succeed against seemingly impossible odds, that they could move mountains. Now, standing to deliver the main address, he held up his hands. "See these?" he asked the students. "I didn't always use them for surgery. When I was a little younger than you are, I often waved a knife with them to threaten people. And I even tried to kill somebody."

The students stared in disbelief.

Ben and his older brother, Curtis, grew up in a crowded apartment building near the school. Their mother, Sonya, who had married at age 13 and divorced when Ben was eight, worked at two and sometimes three low-paying jobs at a time. She wanted a better life for her two sons and showered them with encouragement. However, both boys started badly in school, especially Ben.

Sonya recognized that Ben was bright. He just didn't seem motivated. "From now on," she announced one afternoon, "you can watch only two TV shows a week. You have to read at least two books every week and give me reports so I know you really read them."

At first Ben hated reading. Then, gradually, he discovered a new world of possibility. Before long he was reading more books than his determined mother required, and he couldn't wait to share them with her.

His mother studied the book reports closely. "That's a fine job, Bennie," she would tell her beaming son. What she didn't tell Ben or Curtis was that, with only a third-grade education, she couldn't read.

"Mom," Ben announced one day, "when I grow up, I want to be a doctor."

Sonya Carson smiled, knowing Ben must have just read a book on doctors. "You can be anything you want to be," she assured him.

With a goal now, young Ben soared from the bottom of his class toward the top. His teachers were astonished. There was one thing, however, that Ben couldn't seem to conquer: his violent temper. He boiled with anger—anger at his departed father, anger at the hardships his mother faced, anger at all the wasted lives he saw around him.

Then one afternoon, walking home from school, 14-year-old Ben started arguing with a friend. Pulling a camping knife, Ben thrust at the boy. The steel blade struck the youngster's metal belt buckle, and the blade snapped. Ben's friend fled.

Ben stood stone-still. I almost killed someone!" he said quietly. There and then he made a decision. If he was ever going to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor and save others, he was first going to have to cure him self. Never again would he let his anger run away with him.

In 1969 Ben graduated third in his class from Southwestern High and received a full scholarship to Yale. After Yale he obtained grants to study at the University of Michigan Medical School. This was the start of a career that was to lead him, at age 33, to be appointed senior brain surgeon at Johns Hopkins hospital. From around the world, other surgeons came to seek his counsel.

In April 1987 a German doctor arrived with the records of Siamese twins, newborns Patrick and Benjamin Binder. The boys had separate brains, but at the back of the heads, where they were joined, they shared blood vessels. Their mother refused to sacrifice either child to save the other. Surgeons knew of no other way to proceed. In many cases, when Siamese twins are separated at the back of the head, one child survives and the other either dies or suffers severe mental injury.

Carson came up with a plan to give both twins the best chance of survival: stop their hearts, drain their blood supply completely and restore circulation only after the two were safely separated.

The entire operation took 22 hours and required a 70-person team. After the twins' hearts were stopped and their blood drained, Carson had only one hour to separate the damaged blood vessels. He worked smoothly and quickly, easing his instruments deep into the brains of the two infants. Twenty minutes after stopping the twins' circulation, he made the final cut. Now, working with his team, he had 40 minutes to reconstruct the blood vessels that had been cut open and close Patrick's head. Another team would do the same for Benjamin.

Just within the hour limit, the babies were fully separated, and the operating tables were wheeled apart.

Tired but happy, Dr. Carson went out to the waiting room. "Which one of your children would you like to see first?" he asked their mother.

The students of Detroit's Southwestern High sat silently as Ben Carson described his life's journey from an angry street fighter to an internationally distinguished brain surgeon. "It's important that you know there are many ways to go," Dr. Carson told them. "Becoming a brain surgeon is perfectly possible. But you don't have to be a surgeon. There are opportunities everywhere. You just have to be willing to take advantage of them. Think big! Nobody was born to be a failure. If you feel you're going to succeed—and work your tail off—you will succeed!"

Pausing, Ben Carson turned to his mother who was sitting in the front row.

"I'd like to thank my mother," Carson said in closing, "for all the success I've had."

Southwestern High's entire graduating class stood and clapped for a solid five minutes. Tears welled in Ben Carson's eyes.

Afterward, Sonya Carson embraced her son fondly. "It's really true, Bennie," she said. "You can be anything you want to be. And you've done it!"