Trailblazing Beaufort doctor enters local hall of fame

Elijah Washington knew what was going on across the road when the midwife showed up with her little black bag.

But the precocious 8-year-old couldn't know that what he was about to see would guide his life -- and change the Lowcountry.

When the midwife went inside, the boy pulled a 5-gallon paint can up to a window. Windows weren't made of glass 60 years ago in the back woods of Beaufort County, where the boy's illiterate father worked the farm on Huspah Plantation, and his mother was a "domestic" inside. Windows in the shotgun houses of Washington's Sheldon neighborhood were boards nailed together. When the young boy peered through a hole between boards, he thought he was seeing a woman bleed to death.

"I did get caught, but I saw it," recalls Washington, who would spend 30 years as a trailblazing obstetrician in Beaufort.

"That did something to me," he said. "When that baby came out, and I heard the baby cry, it was a different feeling. It's a good feeling. Ten thousand babies later, there's still no way I can explain that. It does something to you."

Now it's hoped that Washington's story can do something for today's children. Long after they leave the sterile hospital delivery rooms, too many are peering into a future that lacks hope or inspiration.

Earlier this month, Washington was one of the first 22 inductees into the Beaufort High Alumni Hall of Fame. Principal Dan Durbin wants his students to see successes from right here. He likes to walk through the hallway where the plaques now hang and ask students: "What could put you up there?"

More than degrees

What put Washington up there could be a matter of degrees. He was in the Class of 1959 in the old segregated Robert Smalls High School in Beaufort, one of the three schools that became what is today Beaufort High. He got a degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta, served in the Navy, and studied medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville and the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.

He was the only OB/GYN provider with the Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services from 1975 to 1983. At that institution, which continues to serve the poor in a poor region, those years are called "the Elijah Washington Era." Its community health center in Sheldon was named for Washington in 1980.

Washington then had a private practice in Beaufort, where he helped break color barriers. He said the only black doctor before him to be able to admit patients to Beaufort Memorial Hospital was Dr. Mont Kennedy.

Washington retired in 2005. By then he'd earned a degree from Bethany Theological Seminary in Dothan, Ala., and was serving as pastor in his second local church. He was pastor for six years at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Lobeco. For the past six years, he's been pastor at First African Baptist Church of St. Helena Island.

He's 67 and lives on Lady's Island with his wife, the former Joyce Brown of Beaufort. They have two sons, Elijah Washington Jr., who attends Beaufort High, and Jordan Washington, who attends Beaufort Middle School.

But Washington says it takes more than degrees to get to the Hall of Fame.

Outside influences

His mother, Mariah, knew the value of education because she'd tasted it. She went through eighth grade, then cared for younger siblings. His father, Paul Washington, didn't go to school.

"He saw the value of working, and being honest and all that," Washington said. "But with my mother, it was constant. You've got to go to school. You've got to do better than we could."

Washington and his three older sisters were in church on Sundays and in the three-teacher Sheldon Elementary School during the week.

In the community, Washington was helped by Alex Ferguson, the supervisor at Lobeco Farms, where his father worked when he was in middle school and high school. Ferguson was an Englishman who gave young Washington jobs, even if they really didn't need to be done. That's how Washington paid the $25 application fee to Morehouse College, which gave him a scholarship and let him work in the kitchen.

At Robert Smalls High, Washington was guided by the knowledge that his sisters had already done it. His only surviving sister, Eva Mae Saxon, is today a registered nurse in the emergency room at Beaufort Memorial Hospital.

He also was pushed by Principal W. Kent Alston, who often called him over with, "Come here, buddy."

Alston wanted Washington to go to Howard University to study pharmacy. In part because of that influence, two other members of Washington's class became doctors: George Douglas Smalls and Ralph E. Bailey.

Washington said that all through school, he was called the teacher's pet.

"I would just read, read, read," he said. "And those teachers pushed me. They kept pushing me."

The big difference-maker was his 10th-grade biology teacher, Gladys Whitworth Bray, now of Washington, D.C. She wasn't an easy teacher, but "she was my role model," Washington said.

"He was like an adopted son," Bray told me.

She recalls taking him to science fairs at S.C. State University.

They remain in close contact.

Prescription for success

"I'm not knocking anybody, but teachers in my experience were not the same as today," Washington said. "At least it appeared that the teachers in those days had more connections, not only to the children but to the parents."

Teachers made home visits, and they often were required to go to church, he said.

"The principal wanted people in the community to know that the school and the community were together," Washington said.

If a child had trouble at Robert Smalls High, Washington recalls, Principal Alston would see the parents face-to-face before the sun set.

Washington believes we need more discipline.

"In those times, our teachers had paddles -- that's the kind of discipline I'm talking about," he said. "It makes a difference in the home as well. The Bible tells you not to spare the rod. They've taken that away from the schools, literally. Now your hands are tied, and the kids know it. And they take advantage of it. They'll say, 'If you hit me, I'll call the law.' They tell their parents that."

Washington warns young people they will face many obstacles, and choices. And they must make sacrifices.

"In making that choice, look at those things that would be positive and go after those," he said. "Look at it with the idea that if you want it, you can get it. There will be a way to achieve whatever you want to do."

Few would have thought that possible, looking at the little boy standing on the paint can 60 years ago in the back woods of segregated Beaufort County.

"Never give up," Washington said. "Never give up."