Dr. Clarence E. Beverly, MD was born in the famed U Street area of Washington, DC. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Coast Guard and was able to take advantage of the GI Bill after the war. While he dreamed of going to medical school, he studied pharmacy at Howard University. He was then recruited by Florida A&M, a historically black college (HCBU), to be the first professor of pharmacy with the hopes of developing a degree program there.
Dr. Beverly went on to open his own pharmacy but was noticed by Nashville’s HBCU, Meharry Medical College. He sold the pharmacy and moved to Nashville to fulfil his medical school dreams. He became the University of Maryland’s first black anesthesiology resident. Dr. Beverly had a long career at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. He was also a member of the intensive care team and later founded the first ICU in the hospital in Barbados, West Indies. He also worked at the Rockefeller Institute for Research Medicine.
In his semi-retirement, Dr. Beverly pursued a master’s degree in public health from John Hopkins University. Later he fully retired to his adopted country of Barbados. There he opened the country’s first dedicated private practice in alcohol and drug abuse counseling after having won his own struggle with substance abuse a decade earlier.
When asked how he beat his addiction, he said, “I simply got on my knees one night and prayed that God would take away the cravings of my addiction. When I awoke the next day, the cravings were gone.” He has been sober for over 30 years and was a counselor at the Alcoholic Anonymous meetings in Barbados for years. His nephew regularly fields calls from former drug abuse patients that begin with. “Hello, you don’t know me, but Clarence saved my life…I’m just calling to check on him.”
Annandale Healthcare Center