Charlayne Hunter-Gault writes tribute to her friend Dr. Hamilton Holmes

Jet, Jan 22, 1996

TV news anchor Charlayne Hunter-Gault recently shared warm memories of her late friend Dr. Hamilton Holmes in an article she wrote for the New York Times magazine.

The two were high school classmates at Atlanta's Turner High School where Holmes was the co-captain of the football team and Hunter-Gault was the homecoming queen in 1959.

They later became the first two Black students admitted to the University of Georgia in 1961.

Hunter-Gault went on to become an award-winning journalist and is currently an anchor for the Public Broadcasting System's (PBS) "News Hour With Jim Lehrer." Holmes went on to become the first Black graduate of Emory University's medical school and a distinguished orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta until his death late last year (Jet, Nov. 13, 1995)

"Hamp, a straight-A student, was more deeply hurt than I was by the university's year and a half of ruses to keep us out," Hunter-Gault writes in the article. "The officials had rejected him as unqualified during the admissions procedure, and after we were admitted, they refused to let him play football."

The two served as pillars of support for each other during their time at Georgia. Hunter-Gault remembers how Holmes was first at her bedside when she was inflicted with a stomach illness "of unknown origin."

"You all right, Char?" he would ask. "And whatever was on my mind or in my gut would recede. This must have been the manner he later brought to the bedside of his patients, after he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and then became the first Black graduate of Emory University School of Medicine."

Holmes, Hunter-Gault remembers, introduced her during a recent function for her book, In My Place, saying her friend flashed a big brilliant smile and said, "Of course, she's a lot nicer now than she was then."

"He had told me that his book, were he ever to write it, would probably tell our story a bit differently than mine did, and I allowed that he was probably right, especially given the importance he attached to proving to Whites that he was as good as any of their best," Hunter-Gault writes.