An Old Soul: Ohio State’s first African American doctorate of occupational therapy
By: Akayla Gardner
COLUMBUS, Ohio – In May 2019, Chloé Williams wore a black cap and gown as she followed her peers down the steps of the Ohio Stadium to the perfectly-manicured football field. For Williams, it was the finale of seven years of education at Ohio State University.
There was not an empty seat in the overcrowded stadium, but thousands of spectators did not know they witnessed history when Williams was handed her diploma.
Williams was not only the sole African American to graduate in her class of 47 students, but she became the first African American to graduate from Ohio State’s three-year-old doctorate program in occupational therapy.
Occupational therapy is a health care profession focused on recovery and rehabilitation for people who have difficulty performing everyday tasks independently. The field overwhelmingly consists of white women. Williams is among just 6 percent of black occupational therapists, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“I didn't meet anyone really of color until like two years into my program when I started working at a hospital,” Williams said. “It was really discouraging, but understandable because I'd never heard of [occupational therapy]. No one I knew had ever heard of it.”
Williams started undergraduate majoring in biology on a pre-med track. During her sophomore year, she began exploring other careers when she realized general physicians don’t spend a lot of facetime with their patients. She wanted to walk people through their recovery.
It was in a meeting with a health sciences advisor that Williams first heard of occupational therapy. She googled it on her bus ride home from the meeting.
“I read what it is and I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, I was made to do this. This is it,’” Williams exclaimed. “I just flipped out. I was so excited.”
Williams always knew she wanted to work with the elderly, and occupational therapy gave her a pathway to work with them long-term.
“I get along with them really well. I feel like I am them. Half the time, I feel like an 80-year-old in a 20-something-year-old body,” Williams laughed.
Williams grew up in the small town of Georgetown, South Carolina. Her late grand-aunt Rebecca Burley, affectionately known as Aunt Becca, took care of her after school while her mom was at work.
“Me and my Aunt Becca would walk up the dirt road to my Aunt Sene’s house and help get her cleaned up, help change her underwear, make sure she had food and really caregiving for her,” Williams said. “My Aunt Becca wasn't that young but she was doing this for her sister.”
William’s mother, Darlene Thomas, said because of her daughter’s two grand-aunts’ influence in her life, her daughter is an old soul.
“When Chloé came out when she was born, she literally saw two old ladies standing there. They were with me,” Thomas laughed. “She literally saw two old ladies, Aunt Becca and Aunt Sene, and when she came home from the hospital and they literally took her, they took care of her...two little old ladies.”
Chloé Williams' grandmother, Fannie McCray, was one of her inspirations to pursue occupational therapy.
Williams attributes her wanting to go into occupational therapy to both Burley and her late grandmother, Fannie McCray.
“[My grandmother and I] were very close. I would call her walking from class, she would stay on the phone until whenever I got home,” Williams said. “We just would talk and she was one of my best friends.”
Thomas said she imagines that if her grandmother and her grand-aunts were alive, they would be amazed at who Williams has become.
“Just the fact that she got a college degree and then to get her doctorate, I think they would have put her on a pedestal...they would just be blown away by it,” Thomas said.
Thomas described seeing her daughter graduate as the first African American in her program as beautiful and surreal.
“I didn't want to be the first,” Williams reflected. “I wanted there to be somebody that I could ask questions or somebody that I could talk to about sometimes how difficult it is being that only person.”
Williams said because she loves her profession so much, it’s frustrating that there are so few African Americans in the field.
Today, Williams works as an occupational therapist at Mount Carmel Hospital. She is the only African American occupational, physical or speech therapist at her hospital.