The Surgeon Who Almost Wasn't

When Ben Carson was thirteen years old, he was the worst student in his fifth-grade class at Higgins Elementary in Detroit. His classmates called him "dummy." He believed them. His single mother, Sonya, who could barely read herself, looked at her son and saw something he couldn't see — not a failure, but a future. She turned off the television, handed him a library card, and required two book reports a week.…