Dr. Susan Black from the Brunswick Coastal Rotary Club has been selected by the Rotary International Board of Directors to receive the 2022-23 Service Above Self Award. This award is considered Rotary International’s highest honor to bestow on a member. Dr. Susan Black’s 54-year career as a family doctor became the good fortune of Rotary as Dr. Black took on the sick and the poor. She joined the Rotary Club of Johannesburg South Africa in 1990. She had the heart of a Rotarian whether she was tending to AIDS victims in South Africa or serving women and children in the Lowell Massachusetts Hospital and Community Health Center.
Dr. Black’s volunteer work flourished in 2014 and 2017 when she volunteered as a physician at Village Health Works, a community health facility in Burundi.
When Dr. Black moved to Maine, she carefully chose to transfer her Rotary membership to the Brunswick Coastal Club as they had completed several projects in South Africa throughout the years. She understood the advantage of boosting her philanthropic leanings with the power of Rotary. The "Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene” area of focus attracted Dr. Black as she understood the importance of preventing diseases. From her travels in Burundi, she knew that the Kigutu village was in dire need of a clean water supply. She also knew that a standard well or borehole would not work in this remote village. Her creative solution was a source of water using gravity and became a $50k Global Grant. Dr. Black was a convincing speaker as well and received pledges from five of the District Clubs to contribute to this grant.
Most recently, a $74K grant shared with District 9150 in Bujumbura, proposes training community health workers and providing an ambulance to improve “Maternal and Child Health.” Dr. Black had seen too many newborns and their mothers succumb before arriving for medical help at the health center.
These two Global Grants are a credit to Dr. Black’s perseverance and generous spirit. However, Dr. Black improved the lives of many poor and sick on a daily basis. Whether she was traveling to Tijuana Mexico to assist at a refugee pop-up clinic, serving the poor and sick in Lowell Massachusetts, or tending to birth in Burundi, Dr. Susan Black was a woman who lived the motto of “Service Above Self."
Susan took every opportunity to improve her knowledge and skills as a doctor. Dr. Black took a course in Palliative Care in Great Britain. She was one of only seven doctors in South Africa with this special training. She taught a course in Street Medicine - a course she designed. Dr. Black traveled with a group of medical students to Australia to learn about alternate ways of treating disease. She also traveled to India to teach the doctors how to create a Family Practice program in a local hospital. Not surprisingly, she joined an international medical group in Kosovo in order to teach doctors how to best treat war-time injuries.
Dr. Black was a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and worked with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
Susan traveled to Haiti after an earthquake to tend to the injured and also to secretly provide contraceptive advice to the women who were desperately injured and tired. Dr. Black was one of the first volunteers to care for radiated residents after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
As with many Rotarians, Susan Black did not divide her life into Rotary and non-Rotary. “Service Above Self” followed her in every area of her life. She was a remarkable woman, medical doctor, fundraiser, friend, and Rotarian. Dr. Susan Black peacefully passed away on September 5, 2022. Her children will be hosting a celebration of her life on June 3; please click here for details.