America's North Shore Journal

Democrat & Chronicle

Huang was an 18-year-old majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of Science and Technology of China. In his idealism, he organized a group of students to protest the Communist Party at Tiananmen Square, never expecting the military to respond by killing hundreds of protesters. The next day, Huang was told to report to the police station, placed under house arrest and forced to report back to sign confessions. “Every day, it was mental torture.”

After three years, he convinced a friend whose family worked at a hospital to declare him mentally ill so that he could return to his hometown in Shanghai. In 1993, using a fake passport, he escaped to California and was eventually declared a political refugee and a naturalized citizen.

He later earned scholarships to Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. So when he met a military recruiter at a medical conference in 2002 and heard of the shortage of neurosurgeons, he made up his mind.

“I thought I needed to give something back to this country.”

Though Huang wasn’t keeping count, he was told upon his return to Rochester that what he gave back was a 98 percent survival rate with the 1,200 soldiers he treated in Iraq. For his work, he received the Army Commendation Medal.

Please read the entire story at the Democrat & Chronicle.