REFLECTIONS
BOOK EXCERPT
SHARING MY
JOURNEY by DR. FREDERICK BURROUGHS
BUILDING BLOCKS, CHALLENGES & TRIUMPHS My integration of the Rex Hospital staff in 1977 was not to go unchallenged. The mid 1970s welcomed the arrival of a number of young, energetic African American doctors to Raleigh and Wake County. At that time, Rex was located at the corner of Wade Avenue and Saint Mary’s Street. That medical staff had been devoid of African American physicians. The frequency of my acquisition of patients who had come to my practice after being delivered at Rex Hospital prompted the Wilkerson siblings, Drs. Annie Louise, Louis, and Charles, to encourage me to join the Rex medical staff. I had developed a respectable relationship with the Wilkerson physicians once it was revealed to them that their father, Dr. Charles B. Wilkerson, Sr., delivered my wife, Geraldine at home on South Blount Street located in Southeast Raleigh. I applied for staff privileges, and with the Wilkersons as my sponsors, was granted full staff privileges in the Department of Pediatrics.
MAY 20182016 | 107| 115 NOVEMBER
