I called my granddaddy “Dada” because he was more like a father than a grandfather. He just loved being a physician, and he loved babies! He would be so proud to know that his first great grandchild will soon be giving birth to his first great-great grandchild at the same hospital where he was the first Black doctor to have medical privileges at Medical Center in Macon, Georgia!
While we have some outstanding Black physicians in Middle Georgia, my grandfather paved the way for many of them. Few can say that they would have been able to practice medicine for over 40 years, make house calls, serving others even when they couldn’t pay, and being called the “N” word daily while being made to change into his scrubs in the hospital’s janitors’ closet instead of the dressing room where the other doctors changed. He endured all of this despite being the most highly trained and qualified surgeon, having received his surgical training at Winston Salem’s Kate Bitting Reynolds Hospital and Tuskegee Veterans Hospital.
By the way, my grandfather was the Chief Surgical Resident during his tenure at Tuskegee Veterans’ Hospital. When he met my grandmother, Ruth Mae Bronson Johnston, while he was an undergraduate student at Morehouse and she was finishing up her master’s degree at what was then Atlanta University, it was love at first sight. She would go on to travel with him while he was in the army as he went on to medical school at Meharry Medical School. Having grown up the majority of his life in Chicago, Illinois, but alternating between his mom’s home in Selma, Alabama, my grandmother just knew he was going to take her to the big city of Chicago. My grandfather chose instead to come back to my grandmother’s hometown of Macon, Georgia to serve the underserved community. In other words, he wanted to make sure that Black people, who were living in segregated Macon and Middle Georgia at the time, had access to adequate health care and medical services. I love and miss you, Dada!
