Airman keeps sight of dream despite obstacles

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kiley Olds
  • 7th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
DYESS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  In 1971, 20-year-old Victor Folarin set off on a journey to achieve his dream of becoming a doctor.

During that journey, he immigrated to another country, earned five college degrees and joined the U.S. military.

Col. (Dr.) Victor Folarin, outgoing 7th Aeromedical/Dental Squadron commander here, was born April 11, 1951, in Lagos, Nigeria.

Dr. Folarin said when he was a child, an elementary education was free and available to most children. However, he had to wait to go to high school because students had to pay for their own tuition, books, uniforms and transportation.

“In Nigeria, most education is not free. High schools are expensive and highly competitive,” Dr. Folarin said. “Not everyone gets to go to school.”

Because Nigerian high schools were so highly competitive, the young Dr. Folarin was exposed to many subjects and pushed to do his very best by his classmates.

“My older brother and sister were in high school, and I had to wait until they graduated before it was my turn,” he said. “My father was an electrician, and his income couldn’t support all of us at school at once.”

The young Folarin eventually did make it to high school, but was feeling pressure to pursue other careers.

“My mother wanted me to become a pharmacist, but I was interested in practicing medicine because my grandfather, a civil engineer, was also a native herbalist,” he said. “I used to go into the forest with him to look for leaves and plants, and I helped him cook them into syrups and medicines. When I started to think about it, I decided, ‘Why be a pharmacist when I could be a doctor?’”

And so his quest to become a doctor began, a journey that proved difficult by any standard.

In 1966, two years into high school, Nigeria fell into military rule after two successful coups overthrew the government. The following year would find Africa's most populated nation mired in civil war.

After graduating high school in 1969, Dr. Folarin was accepted into a military program that trained civilians to become medical technicians. Although they promised to train the new students in a certain amount of time, they were unable to finish the training.

Nigeria's civil war ended in 1970, with an estimated loss of 1 million lives because of the conflict, ensuing hunger and disease.

While Dr. Folarin did not lose any immediate family members to the war, it strengthened his resolve to leave his homeland and pursue a higher education.

With his goal to be a doctor in mind, he decided to move to the United States.

Using college guidebooks borrowed from the American embassy’s library, he started to write down all the names of colleges alphabetically. Scribbling them on pieces of paper and throwing them into a hat, he asked his younger sister to pick one randomly, and that would be where he would apply to go to college.

His sister’s pick sent him to Boaz, Ala., which had a population less than 7,000, where he attended Sneed State Junior College.

Although he had a destination, getting there was not easy.

“My arrival in the United States was interesting,” Dr. Folarin said. “I had no relatives living there, but we did have some friends living in New York City. They were supposed to meet my plane and help me get around. Unfortunately, my plane was delayed by one day. They didn’t know that, so they went to the airport to meet me and, of course, missed me. When I got there a day later, no one met me at the plane. It was a bold introduction to the U.S., but I survived it.”

Because he was a foreign student, Dr. Folarin was not eligible to receive financial aid. Still determined to be a doctor, he earned an associate’s degree in science -- his first of five degrees -- while attending Sneed and working full time.

With a two-year degree in hand, his next move took him to Tennessee where he met his wife and earned his medical degree. There he attended Tennessee Technical University, earning both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry.

In between school years, Dr. Folarin continued working to support himself and pay his way through school. Making only $1.60 an hour, he found a benefactor in the form of the university’s chemistry department chair, who cosigned loans to help pay for school.

“It was a hardship that makes you stronger,” he said. “It teaches you to be creative.”

After graduating with his master’s degree, Dr. Folarin found himself more than $40,000 in debt.

“I also couldn’t get into medical school right away because of my foreign status, so I worked at a clinic at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., doing pharmaceutical research,” he said.

That changed in 1983 when he received his citizenship, making him eligible to apply to medical school.

With excellent grades and strong letters of recommendation, he was accepted into the college of medicine at the University of Tennessee in Memphis.

While there, Dr. Folarin experienced a bump in his path to becoming a doctor that could have proven deadly.

Living in an affordable, but not necessarily safe area of Memphis, Dr. Folarin was up late in his apartment studying for anatomy class when someone suddenly started pounding on his door. Before he had the chance to answer, a panicked male voice pleaded to be let in.

Dr. Folarin ushered his family to a room in the back of the apartment. Leaving the apartment through a back door, he maneuvered himself to see his apartment door.

What he saw shook him.

A naked man with a knife hidden behind his back was pounding on his door pleading to be let in.

Realizing his family could have been killed by answering the door, they moved to a safer neighborhood.

Because of that night, Dr. Folarin took some time off from school while he and his family dealt with the aftershocks of the trauma.

While he said he will never forget that night, Dr. Folarin overcame the obstacle and continued on with medical school -- graduating in 1985.

After medical school, he did a residency in family practice before going into private practice in Kentucky and joining the Kentucky Army National Guard as a battalion physician.

In 1993, after serving seven years in the Guard while continuing to work in his private practice of family medicine and geriatrics, Dr. Folarin decided that a change of scenery was in order and joined the active-duty Air Force in 1993 by direct commission.

“I liked the way the military set up its medical practices, so I decided to join the Air Force as a doctor,” he said. “I was up for the challenge.”

During his Air Force career, Dr. Folarin would have various duties and job titles, including staff physician, flight surgeon and squadron commander.

In 1999, 26 years after receiving his first degree, Dr. Folarin earned his fifth -- a master’s in public health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He also attended aerospace medicine primary training and completed a residency in aerospace medicine in 2001 at the former Brooks Air Force Base, Texas.

After leaving here, Dr. Folarin embarked on a new chapter in his life’s journey, taking command July 26 of the 52nd Aerospace Medicine Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.

Although there were obstacles during his journey to become a doctor, he was able to overcome them when faced with adversity. Now an accomplished Air Force doctor, his journey has taken on new meaning as he tries to be the best doctor and commander he can be.

“My intentions were to come (to the U.S.) and get a degree and then go back to (Nigeria) to help my family,” Dr. Folarin said. “But things kept deteriorating there and people who were educated would become missing, especially if they said something about the military government.”

While he was unable to return to Nigeria to help his family there, he has since found a new family in the U. S. Air Force.

“As I do more as a doctor and commander, I grow and acquire more families,” Dr. Folarin said. “The men and women of the 52nd AMDS will be my family.”

His vision as the 52nd AMDS commander is simple, he said.

“Like a family at dinner, the mission is the big plate of food on the table,” Dr. Folarin said. “We’ll take what we need to do it well and be a family that is a cohesive unit packing a heavy punch.”