From a young age, Susan Carleton Benes, MD, MCP ’75, felt a vocation to provide medical care in areas of critical need across the world. For over 40 years, she has used her training as a neuro-ophthalmologist to benefit people in remote and often conflict-ridden areas. Her journey, however, revealed the earlier presence of another Woman’s Medical College alumna — a “lady doctor” from her own family. It is uncanny, although perhaps not surprising, that Benes’ calling to use her medical expertise in the service of others has such deep family roots and connections to the College of Medicine.

As a child in Cleveland, Ohio, Benes loved listening to her paternal grandparents’ stories of growing up overseas. Her grandmother had been born and raised in Japan, since her parents served as medical missionaries there. Her grandfather, born and raised in India, was the third generation of medical missionaries serving in that country. “I was always interested in missionary work because of them,” Benes says.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Benes spent a year teaching in England while her soon-to-be husband, James David Benes, completed the fifth year of his engineering degree. They married right after the moon landing in 1969, an endeavor toward which her engineer husband contributed. “We got married after his graphite casket helped give the power for the lunar module,” Benes says. “So that was a very exciting time.”

Benes always knew she wanted to become a doctor and volunteer overseas, but she and James also wanted to live in the same city. After they married, he sought an engineering position and she applied to medical schools. “We matched in Philadelphia,” she says. “He got an engineering job at Westinghouse in Lester, Pennsylvania, and I got into Woman’s Med, even though technically they were changing the name to MCP at the time.”

Walking into the medical college’s main building for her interview, Benes came face to face with a brass plaque that had a familiar name. The plaque read, “Dedicated in memory of Jessica Royce Carleton, MD, Missionary to India.” Carleton was her great-great-aunt, part of that second generation serving in India.

Benes recognized her name from having done a family tree, but she didn’t know Carleton was a doctor, let alone an 1886 graduate of Woman’s Medical, the school to which she was now applying. Benes’ grandfather “always talked about his dad and his granddad,” when speaking of medical missionary work, but he hadn’t mentioned Jessica. He passed away before Benes applied to medical school, so he couldn’t enlighten her about the family connection to WMC when she was applying. When she saw the plaque, though, she realized, “Holy cow. This is where I belong.”

In the ensuing years, Benes learned more about her great-great-aunt from talking with members of her extended family. Born in 1862, Jessica was one of six children living in the northern Punjab region of India with her Vermont schoolteacher mother (Celestina Bradford) and medical missionary father (Marcus Maynard Carleton). When the summers became too hot, the family removed to the neighboring mountain region of Ambala, which was primarily inhabited by Sikhs and Muslims. Benes explains that at that time, the Muslims “wouldn’t allow women or children to be touched by a man. So all the doctors in [Jessica’s] family couldn’t take care of the sick people. It affirmed her decision to get back to America, go to medical school, and come back to India and start a hospital for women and children, which is what she did.”

Just one year after graduating from Woman’s Medical, Carleton returned to Ambala and founded the Philadelphia Hospital for Women in 1887. In the 1930s, the hospital opened to male patients. Still in operation, it is now known as Philadelphia Hospital. For her public service to India, which at the time was part of the British Empire, Carleton received the Kaiser-i-Hind medal from King George V in 1927.

With such a family legacy, and her own determination to serve a broader community, Benes knew she was bound for medical service overseas. She recalls informing her husband before their marriage, “I’m not going to be a stay-at-home mom driving a station wagon and never leaving America. I’m going to be a doctor, and I’m going to go overseas whenever there’s an opportunity.” Following her graduation from MCP, internship at Lankenau Hospital, and residency and fellowship at Wills Eye Hospital, she was one of a couple hundred neuro-ophthalmologists in the county.

Benes’ first experience overseas was in 1980 teaching the inaugural class of ophthalmology residents at Tumutumu Hospital in Kenya. Realizing that this particular group of residents “did not seem service-oriented,” Benes and her American colleague, Randy Whitfield, MD, decided to teach locals “the easiest thing we could teach them.” The pair then traveled to the 49 tribes in Kenya to assess the prevalence of blindness and eye disease.

As they traveled from village to village, they recognized a prevalence of blindness in people over 30. “They already had cataracts,” she says. At this particular place and time, once people lost their vision, they could not contribute to community life. “So we would have a vote,” Benes explains. “The tribe would nominate who they trusted for me to teach. Randy and I would teach that clinical worker how to take cataracts out.” In this unconventional way, the young adults with cataracts were able to contribute to their tribes as they had in the past. Of this challenging experience, Benes reveals, “Of course it was addictive. I wanted to do more.”

Benes returned to the States, and for most of her professional career was a professor at The Ohio State University. She’s a national expert in neuro-ophthalmology, orbital diseases and orbital surgery. A mother of three and grandmother to five, Benes relocated to Colorado in 2017, where she practices with the Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center.

Yet alongside the professional and family growth, Benes continued to volunteer overseas. In the resulting decades of medical service, she’s traveled to Ecuador, Peru, the Galapagos, the Marshall Islands, Turkey, the Republic of Georgia, Mongolia and Ethiopia. “All the places I went, I learned so much. And I loved working there so much,” she says.

A few experiences stand out: The United States government invited Benes to travel to the Marshall Islands to assess the prevalence of disease in the aftermath of nuclear testing in that area. Thyroid cancer was rampant. Benes and her colleagues discerned a heartbreaking chain: Nuclear radiation had been absorbed by the sand, which in turn was taken up by palm trees. The inside of the palm fruits was radioactive, which was then consumed by palm crabs. The crab’s iodine-rich exoskeleton became radioactive as well, and when people consumed the crabs, the radioactive iodine attacked their thyroid, leading to the prevalence of thyroid cancer.

In 1995, Benes traveled to the Republic of Georgia, where medical care was still crippled after the collapse and withdrawal of the Soviet Union a few years prior. When the Russians left, they took the fresh water, electricity, equipment, medicine — everything. Hospital doors were locked since “the doctors in the Republic of Georgia couldn’t take care of their patients. The Russians had even taken the mattresses off the cots. It was stunning,” Benes recalls. She and her colleagues arrived with medicine and surgical supplies, with the goal of teaching refresher courses to the local physicians.

Most recently in 2019 and 2020, Benes traveled to both Mongolia and Ethiopia with the Denver Lions Club. In Mongolia, where there is a strong nomadic tradition, she was able to teach students and perform much-needed surgeries in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Then, in Ethiopia, she visited many villages, screening hundreds of children and adults. In collaboration with the five teaching hospitals and the Lions Club, Benes instructed residents in ophthalmology and orbital surgery before her service was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since graduating from MCP in 1975, Benes has been a loyal and supportive alumna. Yet her gratitude extends beyond herself. She donates in honor of her great-great-aunt, the first woman physician in her family, Jessica Royce Carleton. She has also contributed to the College Archives — as well as the Presbyterian Historical Society — donating funds and gifting items and photos from Carleton’s life. Carleton’s actual diploma from Woman’s Medical, however, resides with Benes.

Reflecting on a lifetime of global medical service, Benes is currently weighing the pros and cons of retiring from that aspect of her medical career. “It never occurred to me to quit,” she says. “I hate the thought of giving up going overseas and serving. What I loved about working overseas was just that everyone was not working for themselves,” she says. “They were working for the good of people. It was just completely different. I enjoy being with others who want to be of service.”

Through the generosity of the Benes family and other alumni, the Drexel University Legacy Center Archives & Special Collections is curating exhibits depicting the rich history associated with the pioneering faculty and students from our legacy institutions like Carleton. Fundraising for this project is ongoing, with design underway and the newest exhibit, planned for the second floor of the Health Sciences Building, slated for completion in March 2026.