Graduated Harvard Medical School Class of 1951
Harold May was born in Peekskill, New York in 1926. He entered Harvard College in 1944 as part of the accelerated program during World War II and entered the Air Corps in 1945, becoming part of the Tuskegee Airmen program. After the war, Dr. May returned to Harvard, and entered Harvard Medical School in 1947.
After medical school, Dr. May completed a surgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was interrupted by eye surgery. During his convalesence, he traveled to Haiti, and after his residency, returned to Haiti where he worked at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital. He also served as Director of Community Health at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Medical Director of the Wrentham Developmental Center, and as Founder of FAMILY, Inc. a non-profit which creates secure and nurturing environments of mutual supports in which all children and families can thrive.
"And so all of these factors just entered into who I am and who I have been in my life ever since."
"But December 7th, 1941 was a turning point for my life and the life of every boy in our nation because we knew that we were going to be at war."
"We were going to Tuskegee because of segregation, overt segregation."
"I went to Dr. Churchill and said, 'Dr. Churchill, I want to give my resignation because I’m going to have to leave the residency because I can’t see.'"
"And I couldn’t shake that image that what Haiti needs, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what Haiti needs is Tuskegee. It needs development. And so education is critical."
"And I wondered what is my role here. Here I am. I knew I needed to be in Haiti. And I was expecting to be there for the rest of my life. I was fully expecting that. But in the back of my mind I had this nagging concern, how about our own -- how about the United States."
"So it seems that I would be a strange person to pick to take leadership of the division of community health or -- they called it community medicine. Me, with my experience in Haiti, just this beautiful but very very poor country which is rural. And here I was in urban America. But that’s what the challenge was."
"I love America. I love America and I praise God that I was born here. That’s a blessing. But I think the light has to start shining here. There has to be a light. There has to be a beacon that says, 'Look, this is the way.' And this is the way, the fact is we’re one family."
Photographs courtesy of Harold May.