Please God, Don't Call Me to Preach

Book excerpt: Please God, Don't Call Me To Preach was the heartfelt prayer of a little boy, a Methodist minister's son, in Jackson, Mississippi. At age 12 a lonely childhood was transformed by summers at Lessidale Plantation and its loving Gerald family, with a lasting bond between three boys; Nelson, Clay, and Bus, the cook's son. Little did he hope that God would answer his prayer so dramatically: make Clay a physician. He worked once with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and locked horns with Gov. George Wallace, fighting for the rights of African Americans. Dr. King and Dr. Wells led this fight, which integrated health care in Alabama. He was one of the two Anglos in the congregation at the funeral of the four little girls killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Dr. Wells headed for Cal Berkeley in the late '60's and continued OB-GYN practice and teaching career that would take him to medical schools in Louisiana, Alabama, Idaho, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and finally Arkansas. This memoir doesn't spare anyone, and some pompous souls may find their profiles unsettling.