Watching the 2001 movie Men of Honor starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro, took surgeon Surgeon Dr. Louis Ivey back almost half a century to his stint in the US Navy aboard the battleship USS New Jersey.

Based on the true story of Carl Brashear's struggle to become the first African American to achieve Master Diver status in the Navy - something he achieved after losing a leg in an accident aboard the USS Hoist - the movie had some similarities to Dr. Ivey's own real life experiences as he fought discrimination to become the first African American Naval officer aboard the battleship USS New Jersey. Coincidentally, both stories began unfolding about the same time, 1953 for Brashear and 1954 for Dr. Ivey when he reported for duty in Norfolk, Virginia.

"I can relate to the diver, absolutely," said Dr. Ivey. "The integration of the military allowed him to make Chief Petty Officer and all the things he was subjected to were the same things that we all were as minorities at that time.

"The average minority in the Navy was, if they were aboard a ship, relegated to some place where they were waiting tables and serving officers. If you look at Pearl Harbour in 1941 and Dorie Miller who was a cook, he ran up and grabbed a gun and was shooting at airplanes, but his job was in the galley."

Dr. Ivey entered the Navy after completing an officer training programme while in college.

"First I was in college at Penn State University which was, at that time, one of 52 universities in the country that had what was called a Naval ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) programme and it was comparable to the United States Naval Academy," explained Dr. Ivey, a frequent visitor to Bermuda where he provides treatment for Venous Diseases at the Hospital.

"These 52 universities provided the same curriculum as the academy and there were not enough spaces in the academy to train all the officers that they needed. So I graduated from that programme and I was the first black in that programme at Penn State University. I graduated in `53 and went into active duty in 1954.

"Of course, Harry Truman being President, had decreed that the Armed Forces be integrated. This was before the general population was integrated."

Added Dr. Ivey: "I was assigned to the battleship New Jersey at that time and as the first black officer on that ship, I encountered all the things that we encountered outside all the time. The Navy was one of the last to integrate and it is a smaller service and there is a lot of history to it.

"Many of the officers have come from families of officers so it is generational and most of them were southerners. That's how the military prospered as far as the officer ranks are concerned."

Boarding at night, the young ensign went to his quarters to find his white roommate asleep. In the morning, Ivey awoke to find that the man had moved out.

"He didn't want to be in the same room with me," Dr. Ivey related in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer in January of this year when he went back on board the USS New Jersey to launch an annual community award in his name. The ship has been turned over by the Navy and is now a museum, moored in New Jersey.

The Louis A. Ivey Award will be given to a Camden resident and Dr. Ivey had the honour of presenting the first award to Camden (New Jersey) County Prison Warden David Owens Jr. in recognition of Owens' efforts on behalf of Camden youths.

The ceremony took place on the battleship's forecastle - the forward part of the main deck - where shipboard ceremonies are traditionally held.

The reception Dr. Ivey received that day was much warmer than the one he received when he reported for duty, ready to serve his country.

One Navy officer who did not mind becoming Louis Ivey's friend has remained a firm friend ever since. Even though they came from different backgrounds, they found they had something in common as they bunked together - they both experienced discrimination.

"Being black was not `in' in 1954 and, in the Navy, being Jewish wasn't in, either," Robert Nishman, now a lawyer, said in the article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Because we were both kind of outsiders, we found each other."

Mr. Nishman, now a lawyer, drove from his home in Brooklyn, New York to be at the event honouring Dr. Ivey in January. It is a friendship that has stood the test of time.

"One of my best friends to this day I met in the Navy," said Dr. Ivey, referring to Bob Nishman. "There was no warm, fuzzy feeling for Jewish people at that time either."

During the ceremony Dr. Ivey was presented with an American flag that once flew on the New Jersey. The flag was folded in a case fashioned from pieces of the vessel's teakwood.

"I stayed on that ship for two-and-a-half to three years and then I was assigned to shore duty in Germany," Dr. Ivey recounted. "One of the requirements for that was to be able to speak the language, and German was my minor in college. I was in Germany about three years."

He faced discrimination there, too, but was never deterred.

"The US Navy covered the Rhine River and the Rhine River was divided into three sectors, one was British controlled, one French controlled and one US controlled, and each unit had a brigade of German nationals that were working for the US Government, so I had German and American sailors that I was in charge of," he explained.

"The white people who you were dealing with who were senior to you had not had an experience with a black officer, and that didn't change overnight. From `54 to `58 is the period when integration began and I was the only black officer in Germany, the only black officer on the ship.

"We were sent on various excursions into the country to see what was going on and we would always go in civilian clothes and of course the officers of the Navy had to speak a language other than English.

"I was sent to Hanover in northern Germany with a colleague of mine who was white and of Italian descent and he spoke Italian. The two of us went in and checked into the hotel and I'm asking the desk clerk for the information in German.

"He looks around and responds but responds by looking at my Italian colleague who didn't speak any German. When I began to speak the desk clerk kept looking at my colleague as if he was a ventriloquist, that it couldn't be coming from me talking to him in German."

Added Dr. Ivey: "These are the things you encountered, not only in the US but around the world. That was something that we had to go through, at a time when integration was not present.

"The problem that Dr. Martin Luther King and others were having is that there were no laws that protected the minority. The big change came with the passage of the Civil Rights Act which gave blacks and minorities laws to protect them from discrimination.

"The Military was up front before the rest of the nation in terms of laws that protected the minority."

Dr. Ivey says he has no regrets about his stint in the Navy, remaining on active duty until 1958 and retiring from the reserve as a captain in 1984. Neither did he try to discourage his two sons, Louis III and Mark, from serving in the Navy. Louis III was in the Navy as a physician and served in Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf while Mark was stationed in Beeville, Texas as a Lab Technician.

"My exposure in the Navy was most beneficial, I enjoyed it and made good friends," he says with pride.

"Things have changed a lot. With my older boy, the military paid his way through medical school, in return for which he served on active duty as a surgeon. He is now a general surgeon in California."

Louis III is the third generation of family doctors, following both his grandfather and father into the medical profession.

Dr. Ivey Jr was the first African American thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Cornell Medical Centre in New York. He now has a private practice in Bethesda, Maryland and is still a clinical professor of surgery at Howard University.

"I started in undergraduate school with the idea of going into medicine," he admitted. "The Korean War was on so it was to your advantage to prepare to go into the military because you were going to be drafted.

"When I got out of the military I pursued my basic desire which was medicine. My speciality is vascular and as you get older you want to give up some of the intensive things you used to do. I've done heart transplants and aorta coronary by-pass surgery but I have shifted my interest into the venous arena. I was sent to Japan to be the cardiovascular surgeon for President Jimmy Carter on the surgical team in 1978."

Dr. Ivey has been coming to Bermuda almost every month for about six years after first coming here to consult with some local physicians. He provide a much-needed service at the hospital that enables patients to have venous treatment here instead of having to go abroad.

"Most of the venous problems are in the legs - ulcers, swollen legs, varicose veins - everything relating to the legs," he explained.

"As you stand all your blood drifts to the bottom and that's where the legs are, so the legs have all these problems. That's an underserved area in medicine generally, not just here. There is more disability relating to leg problems than anything else.

"Historically, surgery has always been the answer to treating these things, but I was one of the pioneers to come up with the ultrasound diagnostic work with regard to veins. And that's how we treat them, with ultrasound-guided instrumentation.

He added: "Seventy percent of my patients are women, but men have the problem too. My youngest patient was 14 and the oldest 83.

"Ultrasound is the direction that all medicine seems to be going. It's non-invasive and yet helps us significantly in diagnostic and therapeutic work in many different areas."