Charlie Kennedy, M.D.

“My family, we had no money. By any definition we were poor,” said Kennedy, 85. “I think about how lucky and how fortunate I was that someone else believed I could do it, too, and they were willing to risk it to give me that opportunity.”

The kindness Kennedy was shown growing up inspired him to give back by hosting fundraising galas at his home in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Kennedy and his wife, Willie, raised several million dollars for the United Negro College Fund to support, among many things, college scholarships, like the ones that made his medical career possible.

“Sometimes, you need somebody to come along and put a hand out to you,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

A passion for medicine
Kennedy’s path to medicine was, at times, choppy and stunted by obstacles, but he never gave up.

Now retired, Kennedy provided medical care to generations of Winston-Salem children in a long-underserved area of town after opening his own practice on Highland Avenue.

“The kids that came through my office, they hadn’t ever seen a doctor before. There wasn’t a doctor in town that would see them,” Kennedy said. “I told them, maybe one day if they played their cards right and worked hard, they could be doctors, too.”

Kennedy’s passion for the medical field stemmed from a childhood of caring for his mother, who was often sick. Because the family didn’t have a vehicle, the doctors would perform house calls.

After high school, Kennedy couldn’t afford college so he left to serve in the Air Force as a radio operator with the promise of tuition-free college after four years.

He became the first person in his family to attend college when he enrolled in Johnson C. Smith University in his hometown of Charlotte.

“Growing up, my teachers were unusually kind and understanding,” Kennedy said. “As I look back on it, the faith they had in me was important in my decision to pursue school and medicine.”

‘One chance’
Still determined about becoming a doctor, Kennedy applied and was accepted to both of the black medical schools — Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn.

But money remained an issue and banks refused to loan him money, he said.

“You should’ve seen the look on the bank teller’s face when I walked in. He thought I was going to rob them,” Kennedy said. “At that point, segregation was still very much in play.”

Luckily, the state of North Carolina had set funds aside for black students to attend the school in exchange for serving two years in a community no larger than 15,000 people after graduation.

It was a boon that ensured Kennedy a slot at Meharry Medical College, although he still had no money to get there.

When he was told he had to be at the school by 8:30 a.m. or he would lose his place in the program, he thought it was the end of his dreams.

But a local grocer, Mr. Little, offered to give Kennedy the money — no strings attached — to cover the plane ticket to Nashville.

“I studied hard all the time because I knew I had one chance. There wouldn’t be a second,” Kennedy said. “I told myself ‘Climb the education ladder, go as high as you can go and don’t ever be in fear of falling.’”

Overcoming racial barriers
After graduating in 1963, Kennedy learned that the medical program at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center had decided to integrate.

He applied and was accepted, making a groundbreaking leap across the chasm of segregation as the first black resident at the hospital.

An educational loan provided by the Winston-Salem Foundation allowed him to overcome the financial restraint of attending.

“They’d never had a black doctor or a black student, they hadn’t seen black people in the hospital before,” Kennedy said. “The biggest thing to me, the honest truth, I did not have a single incident. Nobody called me (the n word), nobody said they didn’t want me touching their child. That, to me, was the amazing part.”

Only once, during his medical board exams in Tennessee, did Kennedy have a disheartening encounter with an examiner who was dismissive of him because of his race, he said.

“He clearly wanted nothing to do with black folks,” Kennedy said. “He asked me two questions that didn’t really have a right answer. Then he said, ‘Have a good trip back home.’ When you go into a situation like that, you just have to give it your best shot.”

But others, including the chief of pediatrics at Baptist at the time, stepped in with support and told Kennedy: “We know what happened to you in there,” and proceeded to test his medical knowledge.

The next day, Kennedy received a call and was told he had done extremely well and had passed his boards.

Kennedy went on to open his own pediatric practice in an under-served part of Winston-Salem.

For years, he was one of the few private pediatricians in town who would see Medicaid patients and was on call 24/7, he said.

In the late 1990s, he said he sold the practice, Aegis East Winston, to Baptist because the hospital promised to recruit pediatricians, general practitioners and obstetricians and build an up-to-date clinic.

“It has increased the availability of health care on the east side of the city,” Kennedy told the Journal in 1999. “In a lot of cases we had no providers available at all.”

Kennedy went on to practice with 12 other doctors on New Walkertown Road. He retired about 10 years ago, he said.

‘Evening of Elegance’
As a doctor, Kennedy made it his life’s work to help others — a philosophy he carried into his personal life, as well, with annual fundraising events.

Kennedy and his wife of 55 years, Willie, became known in the community for their swanky, glamorous fundraising galas where guests in ball gowns and tuxedos were serenaded by strolling violinists.

“I saw it as a twofold purpose to raise funds for a very, very worthy cause, but also it was the social event of the year to be invited to,” said Brenda Diggs, an attendee at several of the galas. “He was truly remarkable to open up his home and be able to do this.”

The money raised went to support the United Negro College Fund, which provides scholarships, grants, textbooks, school equipment and more to students at historically black member-colleges in North Carolina.

In 2003, the United Negro College Fund honored the Kennedys with its President’s Award for raising more than $2 million for the organization over the previous nine years.

“Education was a passion of his and mine,” said Willie Kennedy, 79, now a retired lawyer.

“I grew up in a household where if you were reading you didn’t have to do anything else, so I had a book in my face at all times.”

A handful of students, who were directly benefited by the donations, attended the parties, and were grateful and excited to be there, Diggs said.

The prestigious “Evening of Elegance” parties featured exquisite arrays of catered food amid blooming crape myrtles draped in lights and an extensive patio with a pool table and big-screen TV.

Guests were even shuttled in Mercedes-Benz vans from a church parking lot to the couple’s three-story brick home off Shattalon Drive that sits atop a hill overlooking a pond, a fountain and a gazebo.

The annual parties were themed, one year featuring a tropical tiki hut open bar and palm trees.

Each year’s party raised about a quarter of a million dollars.

Kennedy said he simply wanted to help people the way he was helped.

“So often people forget to give back when they’ve reached a point in their lives where they can do so, but Charlie Kennedy and his wife always made it a priority,” Diggs said.

“I deem them as heroes, the people that have made a difference in the lives of so many.”