Virginia Union gets major scholarship donation

The Richmond Community Hospital Foundation is donating $1.3 million to Virginia Union University to be used for a scholarship and internship program.

Dr. Frank Royal, the foundation's board chairman, presented the check during a breakfast meeting at Virginia Union, a historically black school in Richmond's North Side community. The school, in a partnership with Bon Secours Richmond Health System, will create an internship program for students pursuing health care management-related careers.

Virginia Union acting President Claude G. Perkins said the gift was the largest to the school from an African-American organization. The organization that became Richmond Community Hospital was established in the Jackson Ward community, and later moved to the campus of Virginia Union University in 1932. The Richmond Community Hospital Foundation was created in the mid-1990s when the hospital, now in Church Hill, was sold to Bon Secours Richmond Health System.

Royal, who is African American and has practiced medicine for more than 40 years, said that when he came to Richmond Community Hospital, "it was the first time in my life I had ever been in the front door of a hospital." Racist attitudes relegated African Americans to entering at back doors.