Pediatric neurosurgeon and best-selling author Dr. Ben Carson speaks during a meeting of The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Tuesday, November 19, 2013, at Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center in Benton Harbor, Mich. (AP Photo/The Herald-Palladium, Jody Warner)

Ben Terris, THE WASHINGTON POST

 
DETROIT (The Washington Post) — Ben Carson had just started a stump speech to his staff, the one about freedom, and political correctness and the nation being on a dangerous path when he stopped. He clasped his hands and pressed his forefingers into the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a whisper as his staff members sat silently. “I started thinking about my mother. I got some news today that she is dying.”

Just a few hours earlier, in his hotel room in his home town of Detroit, Carson had received a text from one of his cousins that just read: “Is this a good time to talk?”

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“I knew she wouldn’t be calling me about just anything, knowing it was the day before the announcement,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. He was less than 24 hours from announcing that he would seeking the Republican nomination for president, and he was about to find out that his mother, who has had Alzheimer’s disease since 2011, probably would die within days.

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