The Pact

by Sampson Davis

  PRAISE FOR

  DRS. SAMPSON DAVIS, GEORGE JENKINS, RAMECK HUNT ANDTHE PACT

  “Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins—M.D., M.D., and D.M.D., respectively—are something more than the sum of their degrees.”

  —Newsday

  “The three had much to overcome to become doctors. Their book tells how they did it…. [A] prescription for success.”

  —The Philadelphia Enquirer

  “The Pact is their story, told simply and affectingly, about how they beat odds that many of us can hardly imagine. In their experiences are lessons for anyone who wants to help young people become educated and avoid the traps of poverty, drugs and crime…. Eye-opening and moving…The Pact is a lesson in the power of peers.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “A powerful message of hope to inner-city youngsters…The three doctors offer candid and stirring accounts of what it was like to grow up in broken homes, and of the huge cultural adjustments they had to make in transitioning from high school to college.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “While their story is sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and sometimes remarkable, it is always inspirational.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “It’s a buddy story, but the plot is no Hollywood fantasy.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Their intimate, personal story is the dramatic account of despair, inspiration, pain, hope, guilt, perseverance, and, finally, courage. Each battled their own doubts and demons and managed to pull themselves out of dangerous situations through the strength of their friendship, to achieve success beyond their wildest dreams.”

  —The St. Louis American

  “Will inspire and entertain…The Pact is the impressive true story of three teenage boys from Newark, New Jersey, who became outstanding men.”

  —Essence

  “Starkly honest…a dramatic firsthand narrative detailing how each doctor managed to rise above the ills of city life—violence, drugs and poverty—to achieve what once seemed like a far-fetched dream…. Their advice hardly comes off as preaching. Rather, it is more in the way of sharing some hard lessons in life.”

  —The Star-Ledger

  “An uplifting and true story…these young brothers each fulfilled their dreams and enthusiastically share their inspiring story for all.”

  —Heart & Soul

  “Candidly and vividly detailed.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “The story of these young men’s struggle has remarkable clarity and insight. In extremely accessible prose, the authors articulate the problems they faced…. Although it is a memoir, this book’s agenda is far from hidden and its urgency is undeniable: through their pact, Davis, Jenkins and Hunt achieved success, and if they did it, others can, too.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “In their own voices, these three young men tell a compelling story that will inspire other young people to form and value supportive, long-term friendships.”

  —Booklist

  “After you’ve read it, pass it on to your son. If you haven’t a son, then give it to a nephew, cousin, or a young man from the neighborhood or your church. The Pact is a book that should never end up on a shelf because it is probably the most important book for African-American families that has been written since the protest era…. Besides their personal stories, the doctors share practical steps that can be useful to a circle of friends in making their own pact…. Get The Pact. It just may change a teen’s future.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  Riverhead Books

  Published by The Berkley Publishing Group

  A division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.

  Copyright © 2002 by Three Doctors LLC

  Cover design © 2002 Marc J. Cohen

  Cover photographs © Anthony Barboza

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

  Davis, Sampson.

  The pact / by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1851-8

  African American physicians—Biography. I. Jenkins, George. II. Hunt, Rameck. III. Title.

  R695.D38 2002

  610'.92'2—dc21 2001059647

  For Fellease,

  a real fighter, rest in peace;

  and Ellen Bradley,

  your strength lives on in Rameck.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Dreaming Big

  2. Home

  3. Ma

  4. Common Ground

  5. Caged

  6. A Big Break

  7. Hope

  George on PEER PRESSURE

  8. Summer Odyssey

  9. Earth Angel

  10. A Different World

  Rameck on GIVING BACK

  11. Rap

  12. Lovesick

  13. Access Med

  14. Old Ties

  15. D.W.B.

  16. Becoming Doctors

  Sam on PERSEVERANCE

  17. Graduation

  18. Goodbye

  19. Home Again

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  WE TREAT THEM in our hospitals every day.

  They are young brothers, often drug dealers, gang members, or small-time criminals, who show up shot, stabbed, or beaten after a hustle gone bad. To some of our medical colleagues, they are just nameless thugs, perpetuating crime and death in neighborhoods that have seen far too much of those things. But when we look into their faces, we see ourselves as teenagers, we see our friends, we see what we easily could have become as young adults. And we’re reminded of the thin line that separates us—three twenty-nine-year-old doctors (an emergency-room physician, an internist, and a dentist)—from these patients whose lives are filled with danger and desperation.

  We grew up in poor, broken homes in New Jersey neighborhoods riddled with crime, drugs, and death, and came of age in the 1980s at the height of a crack epidemic that ravaged communities like ours throughout the nation. There were no doctors or lawyers walking the streets of our communities. Where we lived, hustlers reigned, and it was easy to follow their example. Two of us landed in juvenile-detention centers before our eighteenth birthdays. But inspired early by caring and imaginative role models, one of us in childhood latched on to a dream of becoming a dentist, steered clear of trouble, and in his senior year of high school persuaded his two best friends to apply to a college program for minority students interested in becoming doctors. We knew we’d never survive if we went after it alone. And so we made a pact: we’d help one another through, no matter what.

  In college, th
e three of us stuck together to survive and thrive in a world that was different from anything we had ever known. We provided one another with a kind of positive peer pressure. From the moment we made our pact, the competition was on. When one of us finished his college application, the other two rushed to send theirs out. When we participated in a six-week remedial program at Seton Hall University the summer before our freshman year, each of us felt pressured to perform well because we knew our friends would excel and we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves or lag behind. When one of us made an A on a test, the others strived to make A’s, too.

  We studied together. We worked summer jobs together. We partied together. And we learned to solve our problems together. We are doctors today because of the positive influences that we had on one another.

  The lives of most impressionable young people are defined by their friends, whether they are black, white, Hispanic, or Asian; whether they are rich, poor, or middle-class; whether they live in the city, the suburbs, or the country. Among boys, particularly, there seems to be some macho code that says to gain respect, you have to prove that you’re bad. We know firsthand that the wrong friends can lead you to trouble. But even more, they can tear down hopes, dreams, and possibilities. We know, too, that the right friends inspire you, pull you through, rise with you.

  Each of us experienced friendships that could have destroyed our lives. We suspect that many of the young brothers we treat every day in our hospitals are entangled in such friendships—friendships that require them to prove their toughness and manhood daily, even at the risk of losing their own lives. The three of us were blessed. We found in one another a friendship that works in a powerful way; a friendship that helped three vulnerable boys grow into successful men; a friendship that ultimately helped save our lives.

  But it wasn’t always easy. There were times when one of us was ready to give up, and times when we made bad decisions. Some of that is ugly and difficult to admit, and we suffered pain and other consequences. But we have laid it all out here nonetheless.

  We did this because we hope that our story will inspire others, so that even those young people who feel trapped by their circumstances, or pulled by peer pressure in the wrong directions, might look for a way out not through drugs, alcohol, crime, or dares but through the power of friendship. And within our story are many others, of mentors, friends, relatives, and even strangers we met along the way, whose goodwill and good deeds made a difference in our lives. We hope our story will also demonstrate that anyone with enough compassion has the power to transform and redirect someone else’s troubled life.

  If we have succeeded at all in helping to turn even a single life around or in opening a window of hope, then this book was well worth our effort.

  1

  DREAMING BIG

  George

  MY EYES FOLLOWED the dentist’s gloved hands from the silver tray next to my chair to my wide-open mouth.

  “What’s that for?” I asked, pointing at the funny-looking pliers he was holding.

  At eleven, I sported a set of seriously crooked teeth, and my mother had taken me to the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark to get braces that we hoped would improve my smile.

  My curiosity must have impressed the dentist, because he not only explained his tools and how he planned to use them; he also taught me the names and number of teeth and how to count and classify them. A few minutes later, he quizzed me to see how much I remembered.

  Our little game left me so excited that I could hardly wait for my next appointment. That was when I began thinking about becoming a dentist someday.

  I don’t remember the dentist’s name, but I never forgot what he did for me. He gave me a dream. And there was no greater gift for a smart kid growing up in a place where dreams were snatched away all the time.

  I spent the first seven years of my life in Apartment 5G of the Stella Wright Housing Projects with my mother and older brother. Our building was a graffiti-covered, thirteen-story high-rise with elevators that smelled like urine and sometimes didn’t work. Like public-housing projects in major cities across the country, the Stella Wright development was massive: sixteen high-rises stretched over two blocks. They were packed with hundreds of poor families like mine, mostly mothers and children, few fathers in sight.

  My favorite place was the playground. But like so many structures around the development, it stayed in disrepair. My friends and I were constantly climbing, jumping, and swinging on broken-down equipment that daily threatened our lives.

  One day when I was five, I was playing on the wooden jungle gym and tried to skip over a missing plank to get to the sliding board. My jump was short, and I missed. My small body slipped through the gap and slammed to the ground below. The impact knocked me unconscious.

  My brother, Garland, just six and a half then, rushed over, slapped my face over and over again, and tried to scoop my body up in his arms, thinking I was dead. Blood gushed from the back of my head. He screamed for our mother.

  Our mother, Ella Jenkins Mack, has always been the dominant figure in my life. I was just a toddler when she and my father, George Jenkins, Sr., divorced. When I was two, we moved from South Carolina, where I was born, to Newark. I rarely saw my father after that. He came around a few times while I was in high school, sent $500 or so for toys at Christmas, and attended my graduations. But we never spent the kind of time together that builds a relationship.

  As soon as my mother, my brother, and I moved to the projects in a building on Muhammad Ali Avenue, my mom started working to get us out. She was a proud woman, and she didn’t like living in public housing. She wanted to make it on her own. Raised on a farm with eight brothers and sisters in Warrenton, South Carolina, she had been taught to fend for herself. She developed a toughness that at times made her seem emotionless, but her determination and consistency stabilized our lives. I never saw life break her down. If she struggled to pay the bills—and I know there must have been times when she did—her children never saw it. When Garland and I did well, she praised us without gushing. And we knew better than to expect a reward for doing what we were expected to do, like cleaning our room or making a good grade on a report card.

  Mom began working as a financial customer-service representative for Chubb Insurance Company in 1978 and still works there today. By the time I was seven, she had saved enough to move us out of the projects. We moved a block away to High Park Gardens, a private complex with landscaped gardens, grass, and a few trees. The complex operated like a co-op. Each tenant bought stock for $2,400 and got a discount on the rent. We could see our old building in the projects from the back window.

  Four years later, my mother married Garland’s father, Heyward Mack, a decent and quiet man with a Southern drawl that tied him to his South Carolina roots. He had been around for most of my life, but we never connected emotionally. He didn’t treat me differently because I was his stepson. It just seemed he was at a loss for how to develop a relationship with me, or even with his biological son when he reentered our lives full-time. My stepfather didn’t care much for sports, so we couldn’t bond while watching the Knicks on television or sharing hot dogs at Mets games at Shea Stadium. He always seemed to be working on cars, but he never pulled us under the hood with him for the kind of interaction that can bring a father and son together. He kept mostly to himself and played an auxiliary role, more like an uncle, transporting us where we needed to go and occasionally giving us money. He wasn’t unkind, and I know at times he must have felt like an outsider who could never quite break into the tight triangle that was my mother, my brother, and I.

  Six years into the marriage, Garland and I returned to the apartment after school one day and noticed that the VCR was missing from its spot underneath the television in the living room. We walked from room to room and discovered that in our parents’ bedroom someone had rifled the dresser drawers and left them open. We were sure we had been robbed. I called Mom as quickly as my fingers could press t
he numbers. When I told her what had happened, she started laughing. It seemed a strange response for a woman who had just learned she had been ripped off. But she knew the truth: my stepfather had packed all of his stuff and left.

  Just like that, he was gone.

  The closest thing to a father I ever knew was my friend’s dad, Shahid Jackson. Shahid, Jr., was one of the first kids I met in the new apartment complex. Everybody called him Cash. He attended Spencer Elementary, too, and we hit it off right away. He was a quiet, passive guy, and I was the big-brother type, so our personalities complemented each other. We never argued. We played video games at his house every day. His father was the coolest dad I had ever met. He treated me like I was one of his sons. He was the kind of dad who often bent the rules in the child’s favor.

  With his boisterous personality, Mr. Jackson was as comfortable talking to a crack dealer on the corner as he was chatting with the mayor. As a bodyguard to stars, including Smokey Robinson and Muhammad Ali, he traveled frequently when we were in elementary school. When he returned from his road trips, he showered us all with gifts. Whatever he bought for his two sons, he bought for me, too.

  When he eventually joined the police force and took over the Police Athletic League, we played on his baseball and basketball teams. He took us fishing and to work out with him in the gym. We often just rode around town in his van and stopped to eat at restaurants. He was the first person to take me out for Portuguese food and the first to introduce me to filet mignon, which he cooked himself. One of his favorite stops was a deli called Cooper’s, where we ordered the best triple-decker sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.