Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 18, 1951. His mother wasn’t very educated but wanted a better life for her son so she pushed her sons to read and to believe in themselves. Ben Carson was poor growing up. He had many ups and downs as a student but he eventually was accepted to Yale medical school. As a doctor, he became Neuron Surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33, and became famous for his the surgery he made on two conjoined twins.
Benjamin Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 18, 1951. He was the second son of Sonya and Robert Solomon Carson. Ben grew up in the hard streets of Detroit. Ben was eight and Curtis his brother was 10 when Sonya was left to raise her sons on her own after she and their father had divorced. The family was very poor, and to provide Sonya sometimes took on two or three jobs at a time usually cleaning houses.
Both Ben and his brother both had a hard time in school. Ben fell to the bottom of his class was made of for it by his classmates. He became a wild and violent temper and he was known to attack other children when he was angered. The poverty he lived in and the difficult times he went through in school seemed to be the reason anger and rage.
She was determined to turn her sons around so Sonya limited their TV time to just a few programs and wouldn’t let them go outside to play until they finished all of their homework. Her friends criticized her for being so strict they said the boys would grow up to hate her. But she was determined that her sons would have an easier life than she did and would have more opportunities.
After Ben graduated with honors from high school he knew he wanted to pursue a medical career. But because his mother did not the kind of money he would need Ben had to work most of his years in college. The automobile industry was declining in Detroit in the 1970s so it was it tough for him to get a summer job. But Ben was determined to achieve his goals. He knocked on doors looking for summer work and usually was able to be given one. From this work, and a scholarship, he attended Yale University and earned a bachelors
degree in psychology.
After he graduated from Yale in 1973 Ben enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan he chose to become a neurosurgeon instead of being a psychologist. In 1975, he married Lacrena Rustin who he met at Yale. Carson earned his medical degree and the two of them moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he became a resident at Johns Hopkins University in 1977.
In 1987, Carson attracted attention by performing a surgery to separate two 7-month-old craniopagus twins from Germany. Patrick and Benjamin Binder were born joined by their head. Their parents contacted Carson and he went to Germany to talk with the parents and the boy’s doctors. Because the boys were joined at the back of the head and because they had separate brains he felt the operation could be performed.
In 2002, Carson was forced to slow down his practice after developing prostate cancer. He took an active role in his own case, reviewing X-rays and talked with the team surgeons who operated on him. He fully recovered from the operation and was rid of the cancer. The near death experience caused him to change his life to spend more time with his wife and their three children, Murray, Benjamin, Jr., and Rhoeyce.
Carson still keeps a busy schedule, performing nearly 300 operations a year and speaking to various groups around the country. He has written three books include that his autobiography Gifted Hands, The Big Picture, and Think Big are about his personal thoughts on success, hard work, and his faith in God. Because of his dedication to children and his many medical breakthroughs he has received more than 50 honorary doctorate degrees and is a member of the Alpha Honor Medical Society.
