The Mystery Doctor Who Did What Was Right - An Inspirational Story byRobert Schuller

This story is excerpted from the book, "Be an Extraordinary Person in an Ordinary World".
It is entitled "Saved by the Mystery Doctor" in the book.


A dear friend of mine, Algetha Brown, is a beautiful singer.... Algetha is married to an air force career man. Right after the Second World War, they were assigned to Germany.

The Nuremberg trials were happening. As Algetha said, 'At that time there were many scared German citizens, because the word was out that if you were a Nazi or if you were a close friend of the gestapo or if you were a good friend of a Nazi, the odds were that you might be called in for questioning. You might be arrested....'

She said, 'Dr. Schuller, my husband and I met so many good, beautiful, wonderful German people who weren't Nazis, but they knew the wrong people so they were in hiding.'

At the time, Colonel Brown, his wife, Algetha, and their two sons were living on the fourth floor of an apartment building. One day, her oldest son came down with the mumps. Algetha kept him in his room. Since it was a warm day, his window was open. Soon the little boy got restless, walked over to the window, sat on the sill, and watched the changing scenes on the street below.

Suddenly, a gust of wind came and slammed the shutter, throwing the boy off balance. He fell four floors, ripping through a balcony iron railing two floors below, and landing on a cobblestone street. In a matter of minutes, the ambulance picked up the unconscious boy and brought him to the nearest civilian hospital.

Because he was a military officer's son the military doctors came and examined the boy, finding multiple compound fractures on the right arm....they said that the arm would have to be amputated. There was no way it could be saved.

When the doctors left the room Algetha cried at her little boy's side and looked at the arm that would be coming off in twenty-four hours. The nurse, a German woman, walked up to Algetha, put her arm around her, looked at the beautiful little boy, unconscious on the bed, and said, 'I probably shouldn't say this, but I know a German doctor who might be able to save that arm. I don't know if he'll come. He's in hiding. He had the wrong friends during the war. I do know where he's hiding.'

Algetha said, 'Would you ask him?'

Late that night Algetha was almost asleep at the bedside of her little boy, praying for his surgery in the morning, when a stranger in shabby clothes entered the room, looking furtively around. Seeing no one other than Algetha, he walked up to the bedside. Algetha looked up and asked, 'Who are you?'

Whispering, he said, 'I am the doctor the nurse talked to you about.'

'Oh, thank you for coming!'

The doctor said, 'I'm just going to check him. I must leave quickly before people find out I'm here.' He checked the arm and said, 'Mrs. Brown, that arm could be saved. I could save it.'

The distraught young mother said, 'Oh, would you, please?'

To her dismay, he said, 'I can't. I'm awfully sorry.'

She said, 'Is it because I'm black?' He didn't even answer her. He merely turned and left the room.

The next morning, as the boy was being prepared for surgery, the nurse came in and said, 'Mrs. Brown, I just got a call from the doctor. He said that he can't let them take the boy's arm. He said he would come out of hiding to do it, but we must keep it a secret.'

An hour later he was scrubbing up. Two hours later, with the military surgeons standing back, the German doctor went to work. It was the first of seven operations that took out every little piece of stray splintered bone. The arm was saved.

But the news got out about the miracle surgery. Headlines read, 'Black American Boy's Amputation Saved by Mystery Doctor.'

Investigators read it. They said, 'There's only one doctor who could have pulled that off. It's the one we've been looking for.' They found him, of course. They arrested him and brought him to trial. He received a sentence of five years in prison.

As he was being led away, handcuffed, Algetha said, 'Why did you do it?'

He answered simply, 'You always have to do the right thing, no matter what the risk is, don't you?'

Be an Extraordinary Person in an Ordinary World