ER Doctor Sampson Davis Inspires Inner-City Youth

Newark native Dr. Sampson Davis has been watching the highly-touted Sundance documentary "Brick City" and finds himself disappointed by its heavy emphasis on crime, since it feeds the perception that nothing good ever comes out of his hometown.

"It almost turned out to be 'The Wire,' part two," said Davis, 36, who currently resides in South Orange and recalls being embarrassed to tell fellow medical students at Robert Wood Johnson where he came from. Today, Davis is a board- certified emergency medicine physician at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark, Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy, and Easton Hospital in Easton, Pa. Along with two of his childhood friends who also graduated from Seton Hall in 1995, he's the co-founder of the Three Doctors Foundation, which aims to inspire at-risk children throughout northern New Jersey through education.

Though Davis grew up three miles from Seton Hall, he had little notion of what lay beyond Newark's borders until he was accepted to the university's pre-med program. A graduate of Newark's University High School, he had good grades but no financial wherewithal to pay for his education, but he had scholarships and paid the balance of his tuition with jobs including tutoring and toll collecting on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Though he arrived on campus with the built-in support system of two friends, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt, who were also pre-med, and found the university community to be welcoming, he couldn't help but be daunted by the obvious fact that many of his classmates were born with more.

"I was showing up with just my pencil, and that's all I was bringing," he recalled.

In medical school, Davis gravitated toward emergency medicine after completing a rotation in the ER at Emory Hospital in Atlanta. For his residency, he ended up at Newark's Beth Israel Medical Center, where he was born. Though he had been aiming for a top 10 program, he now considers his placement to have been fate, since he entered the process "not knowing that coming back home would be chicken soup for the soul."

He stayed at Beth Israel for three years and launched the Three Doctors Foundation with Jenkins and Hunt, with whom he has co-authored three books, "The Pact," "The Bond" and "We Beat the Street." They initially relied on small donations and donated services of professionals like a Web designer and grant writer, but they now employ two full-time staff members and run programs like the recent sickle cell awareness blood drive at Seton Hall.

Davis enjoys the flexibility that a part-time schedule at three hospitals affords him to travel for speaking engagements. On Tuesday, he worked a 12-hour shift at Newark's Columbus Hospital—which closed last year, along with St. James, though its ER temporarily remains open as a satellite—but he was scheduled to be in Baltimore on Wednesday to address a group of children.

His goal is to give inner-city children a sense of possibility and goals to work toward.

"They're somewhat delusional in the sense of thinking a career's going to fall in their lap," said Davis, who explained that he tells children interested in music about audio engineering and explains the concept of being a sports agent to the ones hoping to be professional athletes.

Davis has lived in South Orange since 2005 and says it reminded him of certain aspects of the South Ward neighborhood of his youth, which was a tight-knit community that respected its matriarchs and patriarchs.

"I felt that South Orange still had a lot of that community feel," he explained.