“We go where our loves draw us.” So said a wise philosopher who could very well have been speaking of Dr. Lance Washington's life journey. That journey landed Dr. Washington in Kokomo, Indiana, where he has practiced internal medicine for nearly 30 years. Although Kokomo is not the destination Dr. Washington envisioned, he has grown to love his patients, and they return that love. The love that Washington exudes has its foundation in his close relationship with God, a relationship that drives his love for his patients, wife Lisa and their three children. It was that trust in God that enabled Washington to listen when he was lured to Kokomo, where there was a need for primary care physicians, in the late 1990s. “I thought I would be in San Diego or Chicago,” Dr. Washington said. “I never guessed I would be in Kokomo taking care of mostly white patients. But I fell in love with this town.”

Dr. Washington’s parents are of Jamaican descent and had immigrated to London, England, in the early 1960s. He was born there in 1965, but because of economic trials, the family relocated to the United States in 1979. Son Lance was in the eighth grade at the time.

Racism had reared its ugly head overseas when young Lance scored the highest on a standardized test, only to be denied entrance into the best school. But in the States, race seemed to be a daily factor. “I really didn’t understand I was Black until I moved here,” Dr. Washington said. But his parents challenged him to combat the prejudice with academic excellence, and the young man was determined to do so.

He graduated from Northwestern University in 1988 with two degrees, chemical engineering and biomedical engineering. He quite likely is the first person to ever graduate from the university with those two degrees. He landed a job with Polaroid but found the job an insufficient challenge for his active mind. That dissatisfaction led him to enroll in the University of Michigan School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1993. During residency in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Lance met a young woman named Lisa. The two married Aug. 12, 2000. (Of Lisa, Washington asks, “Have you ever loved someone so much it hurts?”)

Washington’s impact has gone beyond his family and the hundreds of patients the popular doctor has served during his three decades here. He has organized blood drives through the Red Cross; given Town Hall presentations on health initiatives through the Minority Health Alliance, a local nonprofit that works to eliminate health disparities through research, education, advocacy, and access to health care service; participated in the Black Barbershop physician network healthcare efforts; provided free physical exams for various organizations; and participated in fundraisers for Project Access, a service program of the Howard County Medical Society created to provide access to healthcare services for uninsured residents of Howard County.

What is Washington most proud of? He does not hesitate in answering: “My faith and my family.” He and Lisa have three children, Jesse McMillan, Anissa and Milan, but family also includes his parents and his “Granny,” who embodied the Christian faith for Washington and his brother. “Our faith is everything. I get up every day with joy looking forward to what I do,” Dr. Washington said. “I would do this for free.”