C is for Colored

Dr. Larry James Ford was born September 1, 1951, in Albany, Georgia. In 1956 at the age of four, his family moved to Aberdeen, Maryland, and later to Havre de Grace, Maryland, where he grew up and attended the Havre de Grace Consolidated School, C1, a legally, racially segregated school, from 1957 to 1964. He attended Havre de Grace High School, an integrated school, from 1964 to 1969, graduating as vice president of his class, a lettering member of the football team, and an officer in the National Honor Society.

He has four siblings, an older sister, Patricia, and three younger, Wayne, Pamela, and Pelbea. Continuing his education, he attended Syracuse University for one year, and then transferred to the Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated in 1973. He then attended the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City, graduating in 1977. Afterwords, he did an internal medicine residency at the University of California- San Francisco. He began his practice in Georgia in the US Public Health Service and has also practiced in Alaska and California before retiring in 2011.

Dr. Ford's retirement from medicine came after being diagnosed with systemic mastocytosis, a rare clonal disorder, which affects a white blood cell important to the immune system, affecting multiple organ systems. There is no specific treatment, and the disease has an incidence of 1 in 10,000 people, or a total of 30,000 individuals diagnosed in the U.S. with it.

One of the most memorable experiences he has had, related to the book, was sitting down with one of his teachers from the Consolidated School, Mrs. Mabel Hart, before starting to write. At the time of the release of the book, she was 104, and had recently published a book of her own. Throughout his professional life and journey, he was able to repeatedly call upon the commonsense knowledge and wisdom imparted by his teachers, which was needed to handle the many challenging situations he would face.

In 2020, he returned to his hometown, where he completed "C is for Colored," and continues to enjoy his passion for playing music, spending lots of time with his guitars (playing anything slow), reading and honing his photographic skills. He has twin daughters, Lauren and Leslie, and he tries to hang out with his grandchildren, Isabel, Eli, and Karina, whenever possible. They call him "Lolo," and all remember and laugh about him, as being moderately obsessed with anything having to do with mathematics, and the related game of craps.