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FALL 2017 / 17
In 1950, Robert Lerer was a boy of
Eastern European heritage playing with
his friends in Havana, Cuba. His parents
had moved there after eeing Poland for
France during World War II. His parents
never talked about the war. Their lives
before his birth in 1946 were a mystery
to him, although he knew that many of
his Jewish family members had died in
the Holocaust.
In 1953, Lerer was a boy of 7 years
old, being raised in the Catholic Church
on a northern Caribbean island where
a revolution was just beginning—a
revolution that would last for ve years,
ve months, and six days.
In November of 1960, Lerer was a boy
of 14, whose parents told him that they
were taking him and his brother away
from Cuba to a city in America: Miami.
They were part of a historic wave of more
than 100,000 refugees who emigrated
from Cuba to countries around the world
after Castro-led revolutionaries overthrew
the Fulgencio Batista regime in 1959.
In the summer of 1961, Lerer’s family
moved to Birmingham, where his father,
Joseph Lerer, had been admitted to
the University of Alabama School of
Dentistry. Both of Robert’s parents were
already dentists before leaving Europe; his
father had been an oral surgeon in Cuba,
and his mother was a teacher in Cuba.
Robert attended Ramsay High School.
As he applied to colleges throughout
Alabama, he thought maybe one day he
could be an engineer.
These were the moments in history that
marked Lerer’s path to BSC in 1962. It was
at BSC that his path changed course.
“A chemistry professor, Wynelle
Thompson, changed my life,” he said.
“She saw that I was more suited for
something else.”
In 2017, Lerer is an esteemed
physician with a long career of service,
decades spent in service to the place he
lives and the place from which he came.
He is associate professor emeritus of
pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati
College of Medicine and Cincinnati
Children’s Hospital Medical Center
and is one of the longest serving health
commissioners in the state of Ohio;
he volunteers in underserved areas
around the world; and this fall, he will
be one of the honorees receiving BSC’s
Distinguished Alumni Award.
After graduating
magna cum laude
—
and as valedictorian of his class—with
a bachelor’s in chemistry in 1966, he
attended Johns Hopkins University
Medical School and excelled there.
“I would not have been third in my
class at Johns Hopkins without my
education from BSC,” he said. From
there, he continued his post-graduate
education in pediatrics at Yale University
and became chief resident. He is an expert
in neonatology and has reviewed and
consulted on thousands of newborn cases.
“God gave me skills and intelligence
and drive, but all of that really developed
while I was at college,” Lerer said.
“Birmingham-Southern made all the
difference in my life.”
Long before the phrase “lives of
signi cance” became common on
campus, it was a way of life on the
Hilltop.
“Being a servant to others, being a
person of integrity, and having a purpose
in life was very important,” he added.
“It’s one of the reasons I chose to go into
pediatrics. Pediatricians become advocates
for children.”
A lasting impression
As much as his early years were marked
by revolution, Lerer’s time at BSC also
occurred in the midst of unrest.
“Birmingham was still segregated at that
time, as was BSC,” he said. “It was only
natural that I became friendly with groups
that, at that time, felt like demonstrating
openly our displeasure with the Jim
Crow laws. I remember vividly going
to work after chemistry lab—I worked
at Birmingham Book and Magazine
Company downtown and parked my old
beat-up 1956 DeSoto near Kelly Ingram
Park—and seeing Bull Conner using hoses
and dogs. I witnessed those things with
my own eyes.”
On May 3, 1963, 60 young people
were arrested in the vicinity of the park.
The next day, thousands more arrived to
demonstrate. In April of that year, Martin
Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a
Birmingham Jail.”
Lerer recalls another time when the
segregation of the South was made clear
to him personally.
“Not being from the United States, this
had a very deep impact on me,” he said.
“In Cuba, there were no outward signs
of discrimination; brown children and
black children and white children played
The thing about history is that before it becomes
history, it’s a series of days in someone’s life.
Bottom photo: Lerer with a team of
medical faculty from Christian Medical
& Dental Associations