American heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz has been called one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People,” Esquire’s 75 “Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum.

When Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gave Dr. Oz an archival Kolo Newport photo album filled with Oz family photos and documents of his ancestral past, it was a trip down Memory Lane for him.

He remembered stories of his parents’ humble beginnings in Turkey and the courage of his father, who immigrated to the United States to work as a doctor even though he spoke no English.

And he recalled one conversation he had with his dad that would shape the rest of his life. Dr. Oz was seven years old, standing in line at an ice cream shop. His dad struck up a conversation with a boy next to them, asking what he wanted to be when he grew up. The boy answered, “I don’t know. I’m ten.”

Later, Dr. Oz recalled, his father said to him, “Don’t ever give me that answer that that kid gave me. I don’t care what you’re going to become. I don’t care if you change your mind a hundred times, but always know your goal.”

For more about Dr. Oz and the PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., go here.

- Ugo