When Roxbury residents began planning in the mid-1960s to open agroundbreaking clinic, they wanted more than just good doctors.
While creating the first comprehensive health center in thenation that would be under community control, Roxbury residents on aplanning committee paid particular attention to the attitude eachjob candidate had about the clinic and the neighborhood. In Dr.David M. French, they found a skilled physician who had set aside apotentially lucrative career as a pediatric thoracic surgeon tofocus on community medicine.
'I became aware of overwhelming health problems in the marches inthe deep South,' he told the Globe in 1969, 'but later realized thaturban health problems with regard to delivery of services are justas difficult.'
Dr. French, the first medical director of the RoxburyComprehensive Community Health Center and the first chairman ofwhat then was Boston University's department of community medicine,died of renal failure Thursday in University Hospital inCharlottesville, Va. He was 86 and had been living inBarboursville, Va., in the ancestral home of his late wife.
His career at BU took him in the mid-1970s to Africa, where heran a 20-country health program launched by institutions andorganizations that included the university and the World HealthOrganization.
For the Roxbury residents, though, Dr. French's medical andacademic credentials made him an appealing candidate. He was freshfrom a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where hesupplemented his medical degree from the College of Medicine atHoward University in Washington, D.C., with a master's in publichealth.
He had also directed medical care for historic marches in thecivil rights era, including one across Alabama from Selma toMontgomery. His daughter Lynn of Washington, D.C., said that forthe James Meredith march from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., in 1966, Dr. French and his wife, Carolyn, used the family van as a de factoambulance.
In 1969, when Dr. French arrived in Boston, the city was a fewyears from court-ordered busing to desegregate its public schools.He needed only to read the Globe headline heralding his arrival toknow race drew public scrutiny: 'Black Doctor to Head HealthCenter.'
His jobs at the Roxbury clinic and as a professor at BU straddledthe disparate worlds of academia and urban strife.
'A social contract is being established here between thecommunity and a social establishment, Boston University MedicalCenter,' he told the Globe in June 1970. 'There is suspicion on bothsides.'
Dr. French was a good choice to allay those fears, for reasonsthat went beyond his training and social justice background.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, he moved with his family to Columbus, thestate capital, just before kindergarten. There were benefits, hebelieved, to growing up far from what he saw as the pretentiousnessof the East.
'He would tell you in all seriousness that people from theMidwest are the best people in the world,' his daughter said, 'andof those best people of the world, the creme de la creme are fromOhio.'
Dr. French's father attended Howard University, but dropped outfor financial reasons during the Great Depression. Though he landeda secure job with the US Postal Service, he and his wife emphasizededucation for their sons, David and Joseph, who both becamephysicians.
As a child, Dr. French was a talented violinist, but he wanted topursue medicine. For two years he attended what was then WesternReserve University in Cleveland, until he was drafted by the USArmy, which sent him to medical school at Howard.
While there, he met Carolyn Howard. They married in December1945, and he graduated from medical school in 1948.
During postgraduate training, he was chief surgical resident atFreedmen's Hospital in Washington and practiced in Detroit beforereturning to teach at Howard. He established a division of pediatricsurgery at Freedmen's while becoming involved in the civil rightsmovement.
As a founding member of the national Medical Committee for HumanRights, Dr. French decided that working as a surgeon would notsatisfy his need to focus on social justice, so he returned toschool for a master's in public health at Johns Hopkins, graduatingin 1969.
In the early 1970s, he was part of a group that US Senator EdwardM. Kennedy of Massachusetts sent on a study mission to SoutheastAsia. The group reported on the destruction by US bombing ofschools, homes, and hospitals in North Vietnam and on the burgeoningrefugee crisis.
When he directed the multi-country health program in Africa, Dr.French lived with his family for several years in the Ivory Coast.Nominally retired after returning to the United States in 1986, hewent on to work on medical matters for Helen Keller International, a nonprofit in New York that works on health issues worldwide, andfor the service and development branch of the African MethodistEpiscopal Church.
'Like few people I have known, our father was restless,' his sonHoward of New York City said at a family graveside service whereDr. French was buried next to his late wife, who died two years ago,in the family cemetery in Barboursville.
'He was hungry for growth, insatiable even, and he had theunfailing courage to pursue this instinct wherever it led him. Butwhat was most remarkable to me was his generosity of spirit. Thiswas a man who lived a life of urgency, but never an urgency in theservice of self, but rather in the service of the society, ofmankind, of others. . . . Here was a man never overly impressed withhis own achievements, however great; never once in my memory givento boasting.'
In addition to his daughter and son, Dr. French leaves threeother daughters, Mary Ann of Barboursville, Dorothy French Boone of San Antonio, and Bertha of Amsterdam; three other sons, DavidJr. of Barboursville, Joseph of Oakland and James ofJohannesburg; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. April 26 in St.Luke's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.
Having lived in Ohio and Boston, Detroit and Newton, Washingtonand Africa, Dr. French was an astute observer of how people viewoutsiders who arrive with good intentions.
'I think we're perceived here as Americans first, blacks second,'he told The Los Angeles Times in 1979, while directing the healthprogram in Africa.
'When I first visited Africa eight or 10 years ago, I had thefeeling there was some disdain on the part of Africans toward blackAmericans. We were suspect, first, because we ended up in the UnitedStates in the first place and, second, because we put up with all wedid for 300 years. Now, I get the impression that Africans areasking themselves, `Where are the most educated, prosperous,technically trained blacks in the world?' Well, they're in theUnited States. And the Africans are saying, `If you've got somethingto offer, come on over and join us.' '
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bmarquard@globe.com.
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