Black History Month Spotlight: Dr. Henry Wicker Jr.

For one Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center (SRMC) surgeon, the passion to become a physician and break boundaries runs deep in his family. Not only was Dr. Henry Wicker Jr. the first Black surgeon in the Fredericksburg region in the early 1990s, but his Air Force-trained father was the first Black ophthalmologist at George Washington University Hospital in the 1960s and his great-great-grandfather earned a medical degree in New Orleans in the 1880s.

“My great-great-grandfather was an inspiration to me,” Wicker said. “Of course, I didn’t know him, but we all know his story in my family. He was the son of a Frenchman and a slave, and he grew up to be a very prominent minister and also had a medical degree from Flint-Goodridge Hospital.”

Wicker followed in his family’s footsteps and went to the Tulane University School of Medicine and said that his father encouraged him, but didn’t push him, to become a doctor.

“When I went to Tulane, my father remarked that when he was my age he couldn’t even walk on the same side of the street as the Tulane campus, and now I was there as a student. That impressed him,” Wicker added. “It was back in the ‘70s and there was not legal segregation, but certainly implied segregation. It was a matter of course of living in the South.”

When he opened his own practice in 1990, he was greeted with a mix of reactions from the Fredericksburg community. It was especially challenging because he had to rely on patient referrals.

“Some people looked at me like I came off the spaceship from Mars,” he said, “and other people were excited to see me. They were enamored with me being there and being a Black surgeon.”

Wicker has spent the past 32 years in Fredericksburg and has operated out of SRMC since the facility opened 11 years ago. And while he has dedicated his life to saving others, he said a big part of his work is bringing equality to medical care and ensuring that the underserved, underprivileged, and unrepresented are receiving the same kind of healthcare as others. HCA Healthcare allows him to focus on bringing that kind of care to each patient.

“HCA’s commitment to providing healthcare across the board means I don’t have to worry about who has insurance and who doesn’t when I’m at the ground level at my practice,” he said.

And when he’s not focused on operations, medical inequality, and helping patients? He can be found in the Virginia wetlands growing his portfolio of wildlife photography.