By Nate Abraham Jr.
COMMENTARY
Once in a while, a man needs to be reminded about the importance of what he does for a living.
Last Friday, I attended the annual banquet of the Palmetto Medical Dental & Pharmacists Association, the organization that represents the interests of South Carolina’s African-American doctors, dentists and pharmacists. I was seated between a doctor and a dentist.
The doctor was Dr. Karen Johnson. She said that she was cleaning out items in her home when she discovered copies of an article that we wrote about her over three decades ago. She had just made history as the first African-American doctor hired by the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She took pictures of the article on her phone to send to her son, and was able to share them with me. Dr. Johnson said that it was the only time she had ever been recognized.
The dentist was Dr. Gary Bethea, owner of Bethea Family Dentistry in Columbia. He thanked me for doing a feature story on the launch of his dental facility in 2018. He said that the article helped him get his dental practice off the ground, and that he was getting ready to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his practice.
After the banquet, a fellow came up to me and thanked me for a story we did on him a few weeks ago. He said that he didn’t realize that the story had run until a friend of his in New Jersey called him. Apparently, his friend reads the paper online every week.
As I was leaving, I ran into a pharmacist that I met at last year’s PMDPA meeting in Charleston. We did an article on his pharmacy in an attempt help him save his struggling business. Unfortunately, it was too late as the pharmacy closed a few weeks later. Despite this, he thanked me for our efforts, and said that he was going to seek us out when he reopens.
I went home grateful to have attended the event. I want to thank Dr. Rodney Reid for following his father’s tradition of inviting us to the annual banquet. Because of his invitation, I was reminded of something my father always told me: Always print stories “that mean something” to the people in our community. At the banquet, I was able to talk to four people who we were able to help over the years. One article was so important to someone that she had a photocopy of it on her phone over three decades after it was published.
This is our 38th year of publishing news “that mean something” to the people of our community. That mission will continue.
