2006.02.26: February 26, 2006: Headlines: Application Process: Courier-Tribune: Deborah McRoberts never did join the Peace Corps, but the day she went to sign up changed her life
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2006.02.26: February 26, 2006: Headlines: Application Process: Courier-Tribune: Deborah McRoberts never did join the Peace Corps, but the day she went to sign up changed her life
Deborah McRoberts never did join the Peace Corps, but the day she went to sign up changed her life
“The application was all about skills — things like medicine, education and farming. There was no place for runaway teenagers. As I look back, my heart was in the right place, but that day set me straight. At 15, I had no skills.” So without missing a whole day, she sheepishly went back to her high school in Candor and did some thinking. The next day she told her guidance counselor that she was going to be a doctor. “I had realized that you have to achieve something before you have something to offer. Medicine became my single-minded goal.”
Deborah McRoberts never did join the Peace Corps, but the day she went to sign up changed her life
Doctor now has heart, and life, in right place
By Mary Anderson -- Staff Writer, The Courier-Tribune
Posted: 02/26/06 - 08:42:45 pm CST
ASHEBORO — Dr. Deborah McRoberts never did join the Peace Corps, but the day she went to sign up changed her life.
“I was 15 years old and convinced that I could save the world.”
McRoberts laughs now when she tells the story of her youthful naivet/.
“The application was all about skills — things like medicine, education and farming. There was no place for runaway teenagers. As I look back, my heart was in the right place, but that day set me straight. At 15, I had no skills.”
So without missing a whole day, she sheepishly went back to her high school in Candor — the one in upstate New York near Ithaca, not the one in Montgomery County — and did some thinking. The next day she told her guidance counselor that she was going to be a doctor.
“I had realized that you have to achieve something before you have something to offer. Medicine became my single-minded goal.”
[Excerpt]
With her credentials and interests, she could have easily slipped into elite society anywhere and made her fortune. The idea makes her cringe. The doctor still has a missionary’s heart.
“I always wanted to do missionary service. You don’t have to run away to a third-world country to find people in need.”
She has never made a lot of money because her practice is top-heavy with indigent care and Medicare and Medicaid patients. She couldn’t live with herself knowing someone was sick and couldn’t afford medical care, she said.
When she first came to Montgomery County, McRoberts was befriended by Dr. William Hanham, one of two family practitioners in Troy. When he recently passed away, she lost a close friend who was her mentor as a young doctor starting a practice.
“I was also inspired by (the late) Dr. Buck Scarborough by how much his patients loved him,“ she said. “I always wanted to be a good doctor — competent, compassionate and conscientious — doing the right thing when it is the right thing to do. I pay attention to what my patients say and anticipate what else could be wrong.”
When this story was posted in March 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy issues Executive Order #10924, establishing the Peace Corps as a new agency: "Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy. There will be no salary and allowances will be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and meet basic needs. Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they are stationed--doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language. But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps--who works in a foreign land--will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace. " |
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Story Source: Courier-Tribune
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Application Process
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