By Dexter Hinson, Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008 — An Albemarle native helps individuals see better miles away from home.
Operation Continuing Promise has brought humanitarian assistance to many countries in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. It is based on the USS Kearsarge, LHD-3, an amphibious assault ship which also provides a platform for helicopters and landing craft to get us to locations that are often remote.
Since being on board this ship, Commander Brian Alexander, an opthamologist, has performed countless eye exams and surgeries, including removing an abnormal growth over the cornea of an elderly Nicaraguan woman, and correcting the complications of Strabismus, a condition where the eyes do not properly align with one another, that two twin boys from the Dominican Republic suffered from since birth.
A humanitarian to say the least, Commander Alexander has always called Albemarle home, considering that his family relocated here when he was two.
“Like many others, my first job was delivering papers for The SNAP,” he recalled during a recent interview.
He was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Elaine and the Rev. David Alexander, who served for many years as the pastor of Second Street Presbyterian Church, and is currently the chaplain at Stanly Regional Medical Center.
Commander Alexander attended Central Elementary School, which he considered a a good thing because “it meant I could stop by the library on my way home.”
After middle school, Alexander graduated at the top of his class at Albemarle Senior High, being the Valedictorian of the class of 1982.
He attended Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA, where he met the former Sandy Jones, who would later become his wife.
“The summer after my senior year, I decided that if I was going to change my life, I might as well do it drastically and get it over with,” Commander Alexander recalled.
“So I graduated college, joined the U.S. Navy, got married, and went off to medical school.”
After graduating Wake Forest University’s Bowman Gray School of Medicine in 1990 with a medical degree and a commission as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he interned at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia.
Following that, he spent time as the Senior Medical Officer on the USS Shenandoah, AD-44, then went into ophthalmology residency training at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda, where he graduated in June of 1997.
Alexander went to take over the department head position of the ophthalmology department at the Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan, and after three years there, returned to Portsmouth, we he has been stationed there ever since, taking over as the department head in 2006.
He and his wife have three sons, Andrew, 17, Christopher, 14, and Mark, 10.
Taking a gander at the old adage that “no one knows you like you know yourself,” Commander Alexander states the following:
“I guess if you could summarize my life, you could say it is a life of service: serving my fellow man as a physician; my country as a naval officer; my community in many ways such as a Cubmaster at a local Cub Scout Pack; my church as an elder, and of course my family as a husband and father.
The U.S. military has taken on many humanitarian missions in the last few years, and so I have taken advantage of this opportunity to serve those who otherwise would have little to no access to medical care.”
Dexter Hinson can be contacted by email at snaponline21@carolina.rr.com.
