There is an article in this week’s “Vanderbilt Medical Center Reporter” about the Churchwell brothers. All three of these young men are physicians on staff of Vanderbilt University Medical school and are being homored in Atlanta with the Trumpet Award.
Pediatrician Kevin, who was the CEO and executive director of the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, just left to be the senior vice president and CEO of the Nemours / Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del.
Internist, brother Andre is a cardiologist and the associate dean for Diversity in Graduate Medical Education and Faculty Affairs. Keith, like brother Andre, is an associate professor of Medicine and Radiology.
In speaking of the award Andre said:”As in most thing like this, this is all a reflection of our parents and our upbringing and what they ingrained in us. We’re standing on their shoulders as we always do.”
“Our parents conveyed to us that it’s very important to have goals and to achieve them and to have service as an important part of your adult life,” Keith told the newspaper. Unfortunately, Kevin was in Delaware and unavailable for comment.
Why am I telling you this? Because parents often fail to realize just how important they are in the development and success of their kids. I told my patients’ parents over and over again, that their kids would become them. I’m not telling you that the Churchwell parents were physicians, they were not. But they had that contagious courage, drive, spirit, and attitude that propelled them and their sons to success. Their dad began his career as reporter for a Black Newspaper, and later became a reporter for the Tennessean. When he accepted that job he was not allowed to have a desk in the newspaper’s office, but he persevered and became a popular local writer.
The Annual Trumpet Award celebrates and honors African-American achievers. Too bad their parents aren’t alive to see their sons’ most recent accomplishments; had the award been around 15 years ago they surely would have received it themselves!
From this outstanding family we learn that we don’t have to be “Tiger Moms” to raise outstanding kids, we just need to be the kind of person we want them to become!