Identical twin physicians who once hauled water from city parks now co-direct a Richmond hospital ER, fulfilling a vow forged after a childhood brush with callous care.
Drs. Travan and Travis Jasper run the emergency department at Chippenham Hospital together. The identical twins started as co-directors in April, back in the same Virginia city where they grew up among the poorest families on their block.
CBS News reported their path from hunger and hardship to the front lines of emergency medicine, a story built on grit, schooling, and a promise the brothers made to each other as boys.
They still live in the same building. On the job they wear different scrub colors, green and purple, so patients and staff can tell them apart.
Travan Jasper has been plain about how bare childhood was.
He told interviewers the family had no running water and collected it from a park. Hunger was real. So was the drive that followed it.
"We had no running water. We used to go and get water from like one of the parks. And we were hungry, hungry literally and hungry for success. Because for us, that was the only way we were going to get out."
That mindset, education and work as the exit, shaped everything that came next.
The turning point came when the twins were 12. Their uncle, an alcoholic with a failing liver, landed in a different Richmond hospital that no longer exists.
The boys were scared. The doctor who treated their uncle, in their account, was dismissive and said the man was getting what he deserved.
Travan recalled what the brothers did next.
"We talked about it out in the hallway."
They decided they could do better. That private vow, made roughly 40 years before their return to Chippenham, became the compass for two medical careers.
The Jaspers graduated high school as co-valedictorians. Undergraduate work followed at Stanford. Medical school took them to the University of Chicago.
None of that was handed to them. They treated school as the ladder out of the neighborhood that once left them without basic utilities.
Travis later framed the hard years as formation, not permanent damage.
"I think all of the stuff that we went through, all of the negative days, made us who we are now."
When they talk about the old promise to outdo the care their uncle received, Travis puts it simply: "And I think we have."
April brought them full circle. Both men stepped in as co-directors of Chippenham’s emergency department in Richmond.
Travis did not hide what the homecoming means.
"To be here, it's amazing. And I don't think I could have dreamt it 40-some years ago."
Patients who walk into that ER may meet twin physicians who once stood in a hospital hallway as frightened kids and refused to accept indifference as the standard of care.
The brothers did not wait for someone else to rewrite their story. They studied, competed, finished at elite schools, and came home to run the department that treats whoever comes through the door.
In an era when excuses often outrun effort, two Richmond doctors still prove the older formula works: character, discipline, and a real education can beat the zip code you started in.
