Monday, January 04, 2010

Benjamin S. Carson Sr., director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, will be the keynote speaker during the University of North Carolina Wilmington's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Thursday, Jan. 21. The event will begin at 7 p.m. in Kenan Auditorium.

Admission is free, but tickets are required and are available at the Kenan Auditorium Box Office from noon to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, call 910.962.3500.

Carson is a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. As early as he could recall, Carson wanted to become a physician, but that dream began to fade due to the hardships of being raised in a single parent home and challenged by poverty. Yet his mother, with only a third-grade education, challenged her sons to strive for excellence, so Carson persevered. Today, he is living his dream.

Early in his career, Carson performed the first and only successful separation of craniopagus (Siamese) twins joined at the back of the head and the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins in 1997.

With awards spanning the last decade, Carson most recently was presented with the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal by President Bush in 2008. That same year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. Carson also was recognized as one of "America's Best Leaders" by U.S. News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership (Nov. 2008). In 2009, a movie highlighting his life, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, (www.tnt.tv/movies/giftedhands), starring Cuba Gooding Jr., was released on the TNT network. An inspirational speaker and author, Carson has written four books, Gifted Hands, THINK BIG, The Big Picture and Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose and Live with Acceptable Risk. His books are available through the UNCW campus bookstore.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu