“A split second decision can change the course of your life,” said Dr. Rameck Hunt. One such moment did change his life. As a young man, he had pulled out a switchblade and then realized that he would either have to use it or put it back in his pocket.
A resident of Newark, Hunt ran with a tough crowd. One time, they were confronting a crackhead, and things had escalated to the point where he had pulled out the knife. Then he had second thoughts. He knew his homies would mock him for having pulled the blade if he wasn’t tough enough to use it.
He decided not to stab the crackhead, but poke him.
“It was a wrong decision, and one that sent me to jail,” Hunt said. Although the charges were eventually dropped, this became a defining moment in his life.
Hunt appeared at St. Peter’s University on April 26 to speak before students from Jersey City high schools.
They have become role models
Hunt, and along with Dr. Sampson Davis and Dr. George Jenkins authored a book called “The Pact,” which described their journey from the tough urban neighborhoods of Newark to successful careers as doctors.
“We’re here to bring this reality and to show how you can make it when nobody else you know has.” – Dr. Rameck Hunt
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The book published in 2002 has become a textbook for how to make the transition from the street to a productive life, and a road map for other kids facing similar choices.
Hunt, Davis and Jenkins vowed as high school students to escape the hopelessness of the ghetto and support each other in their goal of becoming doctors.
He said they had great reservations about writing the book, partly because at the time they were just becoming doctors.
Hunt said that telling people that he had once been nearly expelled from all Newark schools and charged with attempted murder were not the kind of things that inspired people to seek him out as a doctor.
But he said during their time living on the streets of Newark, the reality was that nobody escaped that cycle.
“That’s reality,” said Hunt who went on to become an internist at University Medical Center at Princeton and an assistant professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “To imagine anything else is to seem crazy.”
He said many people live with hopelessness.
“We’re here to bring this reality and to show how you can make it when nobody else you know has. We made it. So it becomes reality. We want you to do what we’ve done, to do even better,” Hunt said.
He and the other doctors decided to publish the book to give others hope, to show that it is possible to make something of their lives, to make what might seem crazy real.
The three doctors were recently honored by Oprah Winfrey, who called them “superstars.”
They inspired each other
Jenkins, an assistant professor of clinical dentistry at Columbia University, said he was inspired by a dentist. Although poor, his mother insisted on having his teeth fixed, and went to a dentist at a school of dentistry in Newark.
“I had teeth so crooked I looked like a vampire,” Jenkins said.
The dentist did more than just fix his teeth, going on to inspire him to seek a medical career.
But it was meeting Hunt and Davis that kept him on the path towards a career in dentistry, giving him encouragement when he struggled early on.
“We challenged each other and I didn’t want to let them down” he said, and went on to talk about how smart the other two men were and how much he struggled.
He said having the other two as friends created a different more positive culture for him. Hunt taught him how to look at the world; Davis taught him how to study.
“We picked up on things from each other,” he said. “This allowed me to get up every time I got knocked down.”
Good and bad things happen to everybody, he said, but it is important to have a plan.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “It takes a lot of work.”
Davis said the three future doctors bonded in a way that was very like being brothers.
“We stuck together,” he said. “We didn’t want to grow up on drugs. No child is born with a gun in his crib.”
Kids tend to be more positive when they are very young, and then as the reality of their world sinks in, lose hope.
“It’s the reality of the street,” he said. “Our pact saved our lives.”
He said he got into a lot of trouble as a kid, partly because of the people he hung out with.
“But when I was with these guys, I never got into trouble,” Davis said.
In order to further these and other messages, they set up The Three Doctors Foundation.
This was part of a city wide reading program
The doctors came to Jersey City as the conclusion of a citywide reading program in which their book was featured. Schools Superintendent Dr. Marcia Lyles said she’d wanted to find a common theme for the students in the district, but credited School Board Trustee Ellen Simon with finding one.
“Not only did she find a theme, she found a book, too,” Lyles said.
Simon, however, credited Brittani Bunney, public relations professional for a local developer, with doing all of the administrative work and fund raising to make it possible for the three doctors to make an appearance in Jersey City.
“The idea of JCReads is based off of the One City, One Book program,” Bunney said later. “My hope was to bring the schools and the community together by reading ‘The Pact’ and I am thrilled we were able to achieve that. I’m so glad the authors were able to speak to our high school students and that we were able to tie it back to Jersey City by having Dr. Amer Syed and Dr. Saquiba Syed join the panel discussion.”
During the discussions, students from various high schools asked questions about the doctors’ lives and struggles
The JC Reads program was started in the Jersey City School District in 2014, said Lyles.
“Although ‘One book One City’ has been done across the country in different cities, Ellen Simon thought ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a book that the entire city read, to build community, to learn from, to talk about?’ So last year, we selected ‘The Pact’ because we thought it was very relevant to our story.”
All Jersey City eighth graders were given a copy of the book at the end of the school year and were required to read it as part of their summer reading series. Kids in lower grades will get to read a version of the book geared towards younger readers.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.