A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A remarkable story about the power of friendship. Chosen by Essence to be among the forty most influential African Americans, the three doctors grew up in the streets of Newark, facing city life’s temptations, pitfalls, even jail. But one day these three young men made a pact. They promised each other they would all become doctors, and stick it out together through the long, difficult journey to attaining that dream. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt are not only friends to this day—they are all doctors. This is a story about joining forces and beating the odds. A story about changing your life, and the lives of those you love most... together. "Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins-- M.D., M.D., and D.M.D., respectively-- are something more than the sum of their degrees." -- Newsday "[A] prescription for success." -- The Philadelphia Enquirer "Eye-opening and moving... The Pact is a lesson in the power of peers." -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "A powerful message of hope to inner-city youngsters." - -The Dallas Morning News "While their story is sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and sometimes remarkable, it is always inspirational." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Will inspire and entertain... The Pact is the impressive true story of three teenag boys from Newark, New Jersey, who became outstanding men." - -Essence "Starkly honest... a dramatic firsthand narrative detailing how each doctor managed to rise above the ills of city life-- violence, drugs and poverty-- to achieve what once seemed like a far-fetched dream." -- The Newark Star-Ledger "It is probably the most important book for African-American families that has been written since the protest era... Get The Pact. It just may change a teen's future." -- Chicago Sun-Times George Jenkins, Sampson Davis, and Rameck Hunt grew up together in Newark and graduated from Seton Hall University. Davis and Hunt received their medical degrees from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Jenkins received his dentistry degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry. The three doctors are the recipients of the Essence Lifetime Achievement Award. All three continue to live in Newark. Lisa Frazier Page is a national award-winning writer for The Washington Post. The Pact Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream By Sampson Davis Riverhead Books Copyright © 2003 Sampson Davis All right reserved. ISBN: 157322989X Introduction WE TREAT THEM in our hospitals every day. They are young brothers, often drug dealers, gang members, or small-time criminals, who show up shot, stabbed, or beaten after a hustle gone bad. To some of our medical colleagues, they are just nameless thugs, perpetuating crime and death in neighborhoods that have seen far too much of those things. But when we look into their faces, we see ourselves as teenagers, we see our friends, we see what we easily could have become as young adults. And we're reminded of the thin line that separates us?three twenty-nine-year-old doctors (an emergency-room physician, an internist, and a dentist)?from these patients whose lives are filled with danger and desperation. We grew up in poor, broken homes in New Jersey neighborhoods riddled with crime, drugs, and death, and came of age in the 1980s at the height of a crack epidemic that ravaged communities like ours throughout the nation. There were no doctors or lawyers walking the streets of our communities. Where we lived, hustlers reigned, and it was easy to follow their example. Two of us landed in juvenile-detention centers before our eighteenth birthdays. But inspired early by caring and imaginative role models, one of us in childhood latched on to a dream of becoming a dentist, steered clear of trouble, and in his senior year of high school persuaded his two best friends to apply to a college program for minority students interested in becoming doctors. We knew we'd never survive if we went after it alone. And so we made a pact: we'd help one another through, no matter what. In college, the three of us stuck together to survive and thrive in a world that was different from anything we had ever known. We provided one another with a kind of positive peer pressure. From the moment we made our pact, the competition was on. When one of us finished his college application, the other two rushed to send theirs out. When we participated in a six-week remedial program at Seton Hall University the summer before our freshman year, each of us felt pressured to perform well because we knew our friends would excel and we didn't want to embarrass ourselves or lag behind. When one of us made an A on a test, the others strived to make A's, too. We studied together. We worked summer jobs together. We partied together. And we learned to solve our problems together. We are doctors today because of the positive influences that we had on one another. The live