I first met Ming Wang in 1999, during my U.S. Senatorial re-election campaign. As a fellow physician and Harvard Medical-school alumnus, it was with a sense of camaraderie that I learned of his many accomplishments in science and ophthalmology, but what I remember most about that first meeting is Ming’s love for our great country that he now calls his own.
Most of us cannot imagine what it would have been like to grow up without the freedom we enjoy as Americans. Ming grew up in China during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, a period when millions of youth were deported to some of the poorest parts of the country to endure a lifetime of hard labor and poverty. The opportunity for education was stripped from Ming when he was only a teenager. It looked as though his dream of joining his family’s long line of physicians was dead. Yet through his tenacity and his parents’ tireless efforts to instill hope where it could be found, Ming fought the communist regime and made his way to the United States to gain freedom and build his future.
Over the years, Ming and I have kept in contact. When I was the U.S. Senate Majority Leader, he visited D.C. and we discussed issues of culture concerning the East and West. When I was teaching at Princeton University, we discussed commerce in China.
We are all capable of making a profound difference when we work hard and put the needs of others before our own. As long as I have known Ming, he has worked hard and selflessly. He has built a prominent ophthalmology practice, and people travel from all over the globe to consult with him about their vision. Many of my own family members have had laser vision surgeries performed by Ming. He also established the Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that has helped many patients—including children—regain their sight. Without Ming’s efforts, many of these patients would have lived in total darkness for the rest of their lives.
I, too, have peered into the darkness that is lit only by the hope of healing. In Sudan, on the last day of one of my medical relief trips, I was called in to see a patient recovering from a horrific injury. When I walked into the one-room building where he was recovering, I found him huddled in the corner on a bed. He caught my eye, and his smile pierced the shadows in the dim room. I asked what I could do for him, and he told me that two years before, his wife and two children had been murdered during the civil war in Sudan. He had lost his leg and hand to a land mine only eight days before our conversation. What struck me the most was that even in that moment of devastation, this man had called me in to thank me for being there. He said to me, “Everything I’ve lost—my family, my leg, my hand—will be worth the sacrifice if my people can someday have what America has: freedom! Thank you … not for being a doctor, but for being an American.”
I carry that man and his story with me, a symbol for what my work as a doctor and a Senator—and what Ming’s work as a doctor and a philanthropist—is all about: the freedom, opportunity, and compassion at the heart of who we are as Americans. I consider Dr. Ming Wang a friend and a fine American.
From Darkness to Sight chronicles Ming’s remarkable journey from the search for freedom as a teenager in China to building a new life in America, escaping deportation, fighting racial discrimination and financial hardship, and ultimately becoming a world-renowned eye surgeon and philanthropist. His is an inspirational story of moving from East to West, from atheism to faith, from fear, poverty, and discrimination to healing—for himself and others. From Darkness to Sight challenges us to imagine a life without freedom, and shows how hope, determination, and faith helped one man take it back.
William H. Frist, MD
Former Majority Leader, United States Senate