2002-03 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #1825
Three Doctors’ Pact

Lewis: Mitchell Lewis, Host
F: Female voice
Jenkins: Dr. George Jenkins, D.M.D., co-author of The Pact
Hunt: Dr. Rameck Hunt, M.D., co-author of The Pact
Davis: Dr. Sampson Davis, M.D., co-author of The Pact

Lewis: All three were raised in the inner-city of Newark, New Jersey. All three faced adversities of poverty, drugs and violence in their communities and overcame the odds when they made a pact to become doctors. And they did it all before they turned 30. They’re here to share their inspiring story—next on Black Issues Forum.

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.

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Lewis: Good evening, everyone. I’m Mitchell Lewis, your host tonight. Thanks for joining us. We have three very special guests tonight. They’re the featured subjects of a New York Times bestseller entitled The Pact. It’s a story that has captured the attention and hearts of America, a study about three young African-American boys in the ‘hood who made a decision—a pact—to seal their friendship by strengthening one another through hard times and realizing a dream to become doctors. Here’s more about their story.

F: Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt became friends in high school, but their friendship took on new meaning when they applied, were accepted, and enrolled together in the pre-med program at Seton Hall. When all three graduated from medical school together on the same day, their story generated front-page news in the Newark Star-Ledger. They teamed up with Lisa Frazier Page to put their story in print, in a book entitled The Pact. The book became a New York Times bestseller. Today, Dr. Davis is an emergency medicine attending physician at Newark’s Beth Israel Medical Center; Dr. Hunt is a medical director at St. Peter’s University Hospital; and Dr. Jenkins is an administrator and assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.

Lewis: And I’d like to introduce tonight’s guests, authors and featured subjects of the New York Times bestseller The Pact. All three are doctors in Newark, New Jersey. First, Dr. Sampson Davis is a full-time emergency medicine attending physician at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center and is also the director of Community Outreach. Dr. Rameck Hunt is the medical director of the Adult Family Health Center. And Dr. George Jenkins is a faculty member in the Department of Community Health at the New Jersey Dental School and is currently working on his masters in public health. And gentlemen, welcome to Black Issues Forum.

George, I’ll start of with you. Now, the three of you are from Newark, New Jersey. How did you guys meet?

Jenkins: We all attended the same high school, as well as—Dr. Davis and myself attended the same junior high, which was University High School in Newark. And as we were in school, we noticed certain similarities about each other that sort of drew us to each other, and from that point—those similarities were the fact that we liked to get our work done, as well as we liked to have fun. In our neighborhood, you were either a nerd and you didn’t really like to have too much fun, or you were a troublemaker or an athlete, had all the fun in the world, but didn’t do much of your schoolwork. We were somewhere in the middle and we bonded on those principles, and from that point on, we were really, really close. And then when the time came to start thinking about college and careers, we kind of kept thinking together with those same principles as well, and it carried us all the way through to this day.

Lewis: Now, Rameck and Sam, you all had a few challenges facing you during your developmental years, say, those teen years. Rameck, tell me a little bit about what happened with you.

Hunt: Growing up, it was—we’re all from a single-parent home, and so, growing up, it was rough. And I think, you know, when I look back on it, it was me looking out, trying to find my manhood, and often, since I didn’t have it in house, I would go on the street and try to find people to emulate and I oftentimes got into trouble. And that one particular incident that I talk about in the book was me and my friends were behind the school where we used to hang out at, and a crack addict came up and wanted some crack from somebody. And he went behind the school—going in the dumpsters behind the school—and started smoking crack. We told him to leave and, you know, we were young guys, hotheaded—and he didn’t leave, and we beat him up. Me and my friends beat this guy up. And we beat him up pretty bad, and he had to go to the hospital, so we were arrested for that. But that incident was like a turning point in my life, because when I was in this jail cell, this juvenile detention, I realized how everybody else was resigned to that lifestyle and how that wasn’t for me and how I needed to change. And that was kind of a wake-up call, because I was always a smart guy, but I just got into a lot of trouble. And that was the turning point in my life.

Lewis: And Sam, what about you? What were some of things that you had to face as a youngster?

Davis: Similar to Dr. Hunt, I found myself sort of caught up in the matrix. I just was experiencing a lot of negativity and surrounded with a lot of negative images and I started to sort of model myself after that. And I was in a situation when I was a teenager and participated in a robbery and got caught. But at the same time, during the event itself I had got away and managed to escape, but my boys—the ones who was supposedly loyal to me and had my back—they turned me in. And it’s weird—I say that because in the streets, often your boys got your back, and loyalty’s the number one thing that you guys live up to, and it was shocking to me to find out that they turned me in. But it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me in my life because, during the time I was incarcerated in the juvenile detention center, I realized that I had to change my life around, that if I didn’t take ownership over who I was and start to focus on a more positive, that I would die, and that was serious. And that was when I started to invest in education and I often say education has saved my life. And when I got out—fortunately, I received a two-year probational sentence, and I came back to school the following year, which was our senior year of high school, and my full attentions and focus was on the pact. And right then and there I just invested more in our friendships; I got straight As throughout my senior year in high school, and the rest is history. We became doctors.

Lewis: Now, let’s talk about the pact, which is also the title of your book. George, how did you all go about making this pact? What led up to it?

Jenkins: It was basically us realizing that we had similarities and we also realized that we were missing a number of resources as we were coming up—single-parent homes; we were lacking financial resources to matriculate through college, as well as professional schools. So we kind of decided to pool our resources together and become a team to offset a lot of those disadvantages that we encountered as we were coming up, and that was really one of the best things for me, because it really helped bring the best out of me. Our friendship and our teamwork and our camaraderie has definitely brought the best out of me, and we’re trying to go across the country and spread that message—that positive peer pressure is really where it’s at. You need to prod each other to bring the best out of each other and to do well, instead of prodding each other to do negative things. And it’s the same premise—it’s exactly the same, you just have to spin that coin on the positive side and you’ll be surprised at the results, because we still are, everyday, surprised at what our friendship and our dedication to our education brings us everyday.

Lewis: Rameck, I think you really wanted to talk about this subject. You guys ended up enrolling at Seton Hall. What was your initial reaction when you first appeared on campus?

Hunt: Seton Hall was a—it was like, “Wow!” It was a different world for me. You know, I’m used to something totally different than Seton Hall was. They had manicured lawns—I mean, everything was nice and neat and it was just a shock; it was really a cultural shock. And I think that was a problem too for me, because I had trouble adjusting—and I talk about this in the book, how my first semester I got in a lot of scuffles and bumped my head a little bit. But, again, it was because I was used to responding to problems a different way and I had to actually learn it. And it took me at least a semester to kind of get it together—to learn, to see that you can’t necessarily act that way anymore; like, you don’t have to do that—because the way I knew is if you had a problem, you dealt with it with your hands. And, you know, I was pretty good with my hands back then, so it wasn’t a problem. No, I’m teasing [LAUGHTER] But it was serious, and I had to learn that that wasn’t the way to deal with things. And again, a lot of our young people are like that. Culturally, we grow up differently sometimes, particularly in the inner-city, and survival is what’s important and what’s key. And then to take me from that environment and to put me in a different environment—it was a big adjustment.

Lewis: Now, did you have any mentors while you were at Seton Hall?

Hunt: I would say my counselor, Carla Dixon—she was very, very helpful. She was a godsend, because she understood what we were going through. She was from the inner-city and she was a counselor up there; she was a Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus counselor up there. And so when I had a problem, she would talk to me and she spoke to me in a language that I understood at the time, and she spoke to me, and I really knew that she understood what was going on. And then she was able to help me navigate through that problem and how to better handle it the next time, and so she helped me become a better person overall.

Lewis: Sam, what type of academic challenges did you face at Seton Hall?

Davis: Well, college—actually, my education throughout high school—I was ill-prepared. All of us were ill-prepared, and when I got to college I had to sort of go on to these fast-paced courses to catch up. So we had a program that we took part in—the Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus summer program that we took part in—to help us sort of catch up, just to even the playing field. So that benefited me in a lot of ways, because it helped me to develop my math skills, my English skills, so when the fall semester rolled around my first year, I just was better-equipped and better-prepared to handle what I was doing. So the college became pretty much almost like a breeze-through, and I was able to do well and stay on the dean’s list and I really was upset after they kicked me out after four years, because I was doing so well and having so much fun. [LAUGHTER] But med school, on the other hand, was really challenging; it just was a lot of material in a short period of time that I had to incorporate, and I often found myself sort of lost. And a lot of my colleagues had had physicians in their families who used to teach them different things when they were a child, like how to use a stethoscope, how to use an otoscope—different equipments in medicine and different language in medicine that I didn’t have. So I used to have to find ways to sort of speed up and catch up and learn different antics and techniques that I wasn’t prepared for prior to starting medical school. So that was challenging and sometimes it made me want to quit, but just standing strong and staying on pace with the pact helped to keep me going.

Hunt: I think one of the biggest challenges for us was financially. You know, it wasn’t so much academic, particularly in Seton Hall; it was staying off of financial probation, not academic probation, because every semester we had the challenge of—like, I couldn’t register for my classes for the next semester, because my bill wasn’t paid. And I would have to go to the bursar’s office and beg him to “please release the hold on my account and I’ll pay you whatever way I can.” And we got part-time jobs and we worked—you know, I worked two full-time jobs over the summer just to pay my tuition, because otherwise they were going to kick me out of Seton Hall, and I wasn’t going back to my neighborhood without my degree, so I had to do what I had to do.

Lewis: George, how was your situation?

Jenkins: Our situations were almost identical. I mean, we all faced similar challenges, and that’s what I think helped us to bond so close together and helped us to trust each other. I think our similarities really boosted the pact itself and our friendship, and we really helped each other. I mean, we all suffered from—we all came from single-parent homes; we all were poverty-stricken, for the most part, and were lacking in resources, and we were all together in these bursars’ offices, begging for our academic lives every semester. So it was exactly the same.

Lewis: Do you think that the percentage, perhaps, of students at Seton Hall—did that have anything to do with it?

Davis: With…?

Lewis: As far as it was 90% white—do you think that that had a…?

Lewis: Absolutely. As Dr. Davis likes to say, oftentimes, you know, the majority’s needs are met most of the time, and you have a small population of minority students who oftentimes get overlooked, in terms of their needs and what it takes to make them comfortable on that college campus. So oftentimes they feel isolated; they feel more likely to go home to what they’re used to. We had those feelings as well, but we had each other to offset them, because I had two other guys that were from where I was from for me to express those feelings to. But there are tons of young people out there who don’t have the benefit of having two buddies with them to balance that off with, but it was definitely a problem. And hopefully the awareness that we’re bringing to a lot of these issues and a lot of the things that we’ve gone through—hopefully, administrators at college campuses and professional school campuses will take heed to what we’re saying, and to hopefully initiate programs at their institutions to address it.

Lewis: So you guys graduated in 1999, all three of you as doctors. Well, you were a dentist.

Jenkins: Yes.

Lewis: And the other two were doctors.

[OVERLAPPING COMMENTS, LAUGHTER]

Many people would think that, at that point, “Hey, I’ve made it.” But you guys didn’t sit on your laurels, you went back to your neighborhood. Rameck, why did you feel that that was necessary?

Hunt: It was very important to go back and give back, because, again, me growing up not seeing—I didn’t want to become a physician until that recruiter came from Seton Hall to talk to us about careers in medicine, and the reason is because I never really saw any physicians in my community, never saw any lawyers. I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do; I just knew that I had good grades and that I should be able to do something with it. And the guidance counselor said to me, “Well, you’re good at math, so you should be an engineer.” And so I said, “Okay, I’ll do that,” but I wanted to be a teacher, so I was a little confused. But when that recruiter came from Seton Hall and talked to us about careers in medicine, that’s when it clicked; that’s when the light bulb came on. I said, “This is what I want to do.” And that’s one of the reasons why we go back, because we want to let people know that doctors do come from your communities; lawyers do come from your communities; architects, whatever it is—they come from your communities. And it’s important for them to see us, because otherwise they won’t believe it; they won’t believe it can happen. They do know drug dealers come from their communities; they do know a lot of other negatives stereotypes come from their communities. We want to bring back a positive stereotype, so it’s important for us. And with the statistics out there, we really need—our kids need help. And so we have to take that responsibility to help our young people.

Lewis: Just to back up a little bit—while you were at Seton Hall, were you able to integrate with the other students there?

Davis: I mean, we developed relationships with everybody, so it wasn’t like—we had our pact; we stayed true to who we were and stayed within ourselves, but we developed; we grew. So we started to have relationships with other races, other genders, and different ages. Part of growing is development and exploring and seeing new opportunities and actually attaching yourself with like-minded people. So whoever was going in the direction we were heading, we would partner with and form relationships with, and along the way many people contributed to our success, and that’s why we’re responsible and eager about getting out there and putting this face to health and education, which we’re adamant about doing.

Lewis: George—and either one of you can chime in on this—how important has the family—because you were talking about—the three of you were saying that you were from single families—how important is the family to you, now that you have graduated from college and now that you are doctors?

Jenkins: I actually even got a good feeling about how important it was while I was in dental school for the most part. I was really, as I said, strapped for resources the whole way, all of the eight years of school. And my mother has a large extended family—she has eight siblings—so they would all pool together for various things that I may have needed that my mother couldn’t afford, even with the two jobs she was working. So they’re directly responsible for me sitting here today, and it only kind of strengthens my resolve to make sure that I create a strong family unit and to really push that to my kids as well and give them the things that I didn’t have as I was coming up from, being from a broken home.

Lewis: Rameck?

Hunt: Same thing. I mean, my family was very supportive. There were a lot of challenges in my family too, but we all, again, kind of band together to help everybody else out. Interestingly enough, it was like—since I was the one in college, since I was the one in medical school—a lot of people looked to me, actually, for help. And that was a bit of a strain, but they saw me as that hope; they saw me as somebody that could take that weight on their shoulders, and I stood up to the challenges. So it was a lot of give and take, because there were times that I couldn’t be so strong, and they helped to lift me up as well, so there was a lot of give and take in my family.

Lewis: What was it like for you, Sam?

Davis: It was a similar situation. All of our families actually have contributed to our success. They just stayed behind us; they pushed us forward. Anytime we needed a meal or words of encouragement they were there to support us along the way. And it’s good, especially now that we’re done, we’re able to help them and they see what we’re doing and they want to be a part of it. We had a big fundraiser about a week ago, actually, with Meredith Vieira from “The View,” who came out and took part in our foundation event, as well as Rita Owens, Queen Latifah’s mother. And all our families were there, and my brother came up to me at the end and he said, “Listen, I want to help you guys; I want to be a part of what you’re doing.” And it’s a good feeling, because not only were they there for us during our transition from high school to college to medical school, now they’re trying to help us to give back in a big way.

Hunt: And, you know, each of our families help each other. Like, for instance, when I was in medical school, I wanted to go down to Howard University to do a rotation in emergency medicine, because I just wanted to see if I would like that field. And I didn’t have a place to stay, didn’t have any money; couldn’t afford an apartment. So George’s aunt—she opened her doors and said, “You come here. I’ll feed you, give you a place to stay and take care of you.” And it’s that kind of bond that we have and our families have with one another. So it’s actually not just my family; it’s George’s family and Sam’s family. So it’s a good thing.

Lewis: Now, you all have formed an organization, the Three Doctors Foundation—aptly named. George, tell me a little bit about the organization.

Jenkins: As Dr. Davis said, we really had our official kickoff a week ago and we were really excited, and it was really successful. It’s a non-profit organization that we decided to form to give back to our community. And things that we needed as we were coming up—any sort of conflict or adversity that we may have had—we’re interested in thinking of programs and initiatives to address those disadvantages that young people are having, as well as to bring awareness to health, education, mentoring, economic development. We’re just interested in a number of things that our community needs. So we’re just interested in soliciting the funds and hopefully developing more and growing more so we can do a number of things and hopefully change even more lives than we’re hopefully in the process of doing now.

Lewis: Well, what do you guys plan on doing? I understand that there is a clinic that’s in the process—tell me a little bit about that.

Davis: Our ultimate goal when we first graduated medical school was to go out and save as many as we can, and we thought a clinic would be great idea. And that’s still a work in progress. We had a lot of promises—empty promises, I like to call them—in the beginning that weren’t fulfilled. So we’re still hoping to do that, but right now—through our foundation, through the project of writing this book, The Pact, itself—we’re giving back to the communities across the nation so they can see what positive peer pressure can do; that there still is hope within our communities; that each one should teach one. If you’re in a position of leadership, you should give back in a certain way. So we’re trying to give education the glamour, the glitz that it deserves; we’re trying to give helping others, being a best friend to someone, following like-minded people sort of a flavor, some jazz to it, as well. So we’re trying to set a new fad, a new trend within our neighborhoods. And others have done it before us, but we’re just trying to do it on a larger level and blaze a new trail.

Hunt: Like last summer, we had a lot of programs at the Boys and Girls Club in our area, where we have mentoring programs, health education. Our website, which is threedoctorsfoundation.org, has a lot of health information and lot of information you can get about us. That, as well as threedoctors.com—we have two websites—and we’re going to start a Pact Scholarship for young people. We’re trying to work with some corporations to help us get that started, where young people will pledge to help one another through school. And the reason we’re doing this is because we realize that there was a formula created that helped us and we want to duplicate that formula, package it, and then give it out to the young people so that it can help them as well, because we realize that a lot of young people from our community—there’s not a real formula on how to help them navigate through all of the obstacles that they have to navigate through, and I think we found a good one and we want to kind of spread that throughout the country.

Davis: And we duplicate that within the book itself. And we’d like to thank everybody out there who has supported it, because it did make the New York Times bestseller list; it was number one in Essence magazine for a few months. So people are running to the bookstores to get this book, because they see the importance in instilling this—not only within themselves, but within their children, within their neighbors. They can see our blueprint—which we didn’t have a blueprint—but somehow, some way through God and through faith alone we were able to channel our way through and make it happen.

Lewis: Did you expect this much success from The Pact?

Jenkins: I was thinking about that just today. It’s just amazing to see the response. We were really apprehensive about releasing some of the things and some of the troubles that we may have gotten into and some of the facts about our family and things of that nature—it was really tough. We were really having anxiety attacks prior to putting out the book, so it feels good to now be on the other side of that decision, and for it to be a positive response—an overwhelmingly positive response—we were really excited.

Lewis: And my final question: Since you have been so inspiring to other people—especially with what you’ve gone through and what you’ve overcome—do you have any advice to youngsters or adults about how to be successful, and in so, how important is it to have a good support group around you? George?

Jenkins: That’s one of the major things I think that would contribute to young people’s success—is to really create that support network, because it will bring much more out of you than you ever thought you had. And you can learn from that support network to help make you better. I mean, so many of my weak points and weak traits were enhanced because I knew these guys and it was their strong points. So they kind of rubbed off on me, and likewise. So that made us all better men as we were growing, so I really encourage that. But I also wanted to note that stepping out there on faith is really also one of the big, big key messages, because, you know, we were trying to get from point A to point B and we didn’t know how we were going to get from point A to point B. And oftentimes our young people in our neighborhoods are afraid to make those initial steps, because they’re not sure how they’re going to make it. But we like to encourage young people to take those initial steps, because there were so many people waiting to help us once we took those steps off of point A that we wouldn’t have met if we would’ve stayed on point A—that I’m glad I took those initial steps, because they were waiting for me, but I didn’t see them when I took those initial steps. So we want our young people to go for it.

Lewis: Well, gentlemen, I appreciate you coming by and talking with us. And the book is The Pact. And gentlemen—continued success.

Jenkins: Thank you.

Davis: Thank you.

Hunt: Thank you.

Lewis: And I’d like to thank Doctors Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt for being with us tonight. If you would like more information on tonight’s program, or for a transcript, please log on to the Black Issues Forum website at www.unctv.org/bif, and when you visit, be sure to send us your comments and your program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIF-line at 919-549-7167. Join us each and every Friday night at 9:30 for another edition of Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. Good night.

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