Alvin Russell Graham Sr.

Alvin Russell Graham, Sr. Departed this realm on July 28. 2024. He came into this realm on February 28, 1933 and journeyed through it with purpose and love.

The journey started after a strict but loving upbringing by his father, Herman Octavious Graham, a presbyterian minister who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica and his mother, Janie Johnson, the daughter of former slaves from Florida. His mother started his musical journey by teaching him to play the piano. Her father played the violin. Growing up in Baltimore he attended Dunbar High School and from there went on to attend Cornell University for two years. He then transferred to Lincoln University a presbyterian college in Pennsylvania. He left Lincoln to attend Meharry Medical College in Tennessee in 1954. He graduated in 1958.

He started his medical career by interning at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. His next step was completing a family practice residency in San Luis Obispo, California. An opportunity to serve as the only doctor in town for a small coastal California town called Cayucos presented itself. He was a man of love and purpose saw the world as it was at that time and despite the fact that he would be the only black resident of the town he still wanted to provide the needed medical services to the residents of this town, He accepted the call. But before starting his practice there his father urged him to find a wife thus his marriage to Marva Melvin on January 21, 1961. Cayucos was primarily a retirement community and in those days there was no Medicare. He treated many patients there with greatly diminished fees and sometimes no fee. He cared for the citizens of this town for 6 years. His first child, Alvin Russell, Jr. was born during this time.

He then decided to leave family practice and to train as a surgeon. But before starting the surgical residency he decided to first spend some time as a medical missionary in Guatemala. While in Guatemala he and his wife Marva were blessed with the arrival of twins, Carlos and Courtney. Now he traveled to Portland, Oregon and started a surgical residency but alas his friends and neighbors wanted him to serve his country.

He was drafted into the Army in September 1967, served one year in Vietnam in a mash unit. He refused to carry a rifle while there. He was discharged in September, 1969 as a Lt. Colonel. Since the Army had given him a short course in radiology upon leaving service he began and completed a radiology residency in Baltimore, Maryland. His wife Marva also started a medical career upon the completion of his radiology residency and entered medical school in Portland, Oregon, Supporting his wife in this endeavor, he accepted a job as a radiologist for the Kaiser medical system. He worked as aa Kaiser physician for 23 years. He retired in 1994. He and his wife moved back to the east coast to the Baltimore area in 1995. In 2005 they moved to Atlanta, Georgia, their current residence.

Alvin is survived by his wife Marva, his son Alvin Russell, Jr., his son Carlos, his daughter Courtney Perez, his grandchildren Gianni, Tomas, Nicolas, Rafaela, Jonah, and Mina, his nieces, Sydney Gabriel and Jennifer Clinkscales and his nephew Herman Octavious Graham the third.

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