It was the first day of school for William Jews at Johns Hopkins University, and he was feeling intimidated and scared.

The future CEO couldn't help noticing he was the only black person sitting in that freshmen biology class as the professor began taking roll. "Jews?" the professor said. "Present," William Jews answered. "You're going to have problems here," the professor commented as he continued calling names.

Mr. Jews' heart sank.

He thought about dropping the class. But he was not going to walk out of that door without clearing up the professor's comment. "After class, I went up and asked him why he said that," Mr. Jews said.

It turned out the professor was simply attempting a humorous comment about Mr. Jews' last name. "He explained that there were a lot of Jewish people at the school," he said. "That's all he meant."

Years later, the man who is president and chief executive officer of Dimensions Health Corp., among the top four health systems in the state, sits in a Cross Keys restaurant recalling the incident. This is also a man who currently sits on more than a dozen boards and committees, including Maryland National Bank, the Abell Foundation and the President's Round Table, which is an organization of black chief executives of Maryland corporations. A man who is helping shape Baltimore's future as vice-chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the business group that represents the region's largest employers. A man who frequently lunches with the governor.

At 6 feet 7 inches, the broad-shouldered William Jews cuts an imposing figure. There is a brusque, no nonsense air about him that is tempered by the politeness he shows to everyone from the busboy to the businessmen who interrupted him during a recent breakfast.

He likes to be prepared to a fault. "I tend to have a plan for everything I do," he said.

He has devoted so much time to following his "strategic plan" to get where he is today that his personal life has suffered somewhat. "I have probably put my career first," said Mr. Jews, who has never married.

Now that he has turned 40 and has a successful career, the "strategic plan" is evolving. "I'm moving to another phase," he said. "I'm going to begin to take a little more time to enjoy things like vacations and my hobbies [tennis, photography and carpentry], and for the appreciation of friends and colleagues."

While growing up an only child in Cambridge during the '50s and '60s, William Jews planned early on to be something important. He was a good student and a promising athlete.

"I played basketball, obviously," he said, a reference to his towering height. He could easily have focused on developing an athletic career rather than a scholastic one. However, a television interview he saw cemented his desire to concentrate more on brain power than brawn power.

He was 15, sitting on the floor at home watching the tube. A black athlete was being interviewed after a football game. The athlete was notably inarticulate during the interview, Mr. Jews said.

"I thought it was really unfortunate that college had provided him with a chance to play football but not an education," he said. It was then he decided it would never happen to him. "I wish I could remember who that athlete was so I could thank him," he said.

His mother, Mabel Jones, isn't surprised by her son's accomplishments. She and her late husband, William Jews Sr., figured he would be successful. "I always felt there was something different about him," said Mrs. Jews, who still lives in Cambridge.

He, in turn, credits strong parental support for his success. "They helped me focus on always doing better," Mr. Jews said of his mother, a teacher, and his father, a barber and carpenter.

In many ways, William Jews had a typical small-town childhood. "I had a lot of close, good friends. There was respect for values. Everybody worked hard," he said of life on the Eastern Shore. But being black in the Cambridge of the 1960s left some disturbing memories.

Such as the time during the early 1960s when racial riots erupted in Cambridge, and Mr. Jews found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. He was about 11 years old and watching the riots from some distance.

He started running home and bumped into a National Guardsman who pointed a rifle in his face. "He said, 'Halt.' I turned around and ran," Mr. Jews recalled. He slowly shakes his head at the memory.

When he accepted an academic scholarship to Hopkins, it was a whole new world for a black kid who had spent his life in largely segregated settings on the Eastern Shore.

Once out of the safe, close-knit cocoon of family and friends, his insecurities surfaced. "I remember the apprehension, the fear and the intimidation," he said. He recalls the roommate he had from New York City. "He had already had advanced-placement calculus and chemistry," Mr. Jews said. "I hadn't."

It forced him to take a cold, analytical look at the situation and figure out what he had to do to survive in that atmosphere. "I found out that I was not necessarily the best or the brightest," William Jews said. "But if I worked harder, I knew I would succeed."

Succeed he did, graduating with more credits than he needed in social and behavioral sciences.

He selected hospital administration as a career after carefully checking out the field. "In my junior year, I walked over to Union Memorial Hospital" to find someone in hospital administration and talk about that line of work, he said. He met Ken Richmond, then assistant director at Union Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Jews made a favorable impression on Mr. Richmond.

"It was quite obvious that he was a bright, sensitive and compassionate individual," said Mr. Richmond, who is now the administrator of Dorchester Hospital in Cambridge. "What would have been a short discussion turned into a lengthy discussion because of his zeal."

If that conversation had anything to do with Mr. Jews settling on hospital administration as a career -- and Mr. Jews says it did -- then Mr. Richmond is proud of it. "I'm glad to have had anything to do with this blessing on our industry," he said of Mr. Jews.

William Jews can actually make the job of hospital administration sound exciting. "It's like running a small city," he said. It's the combination of managing, and providing a necessary service for the community that appeals to him.

There was a time when Mr. Jews incensed some of the community members he wanted to serve. About six years ago, the predominantly black Provident Hospital -- a West Baltimore neighborhood fixture that had gone bankrupt -- was facing a court order to merge with a solvent hospital or close.

Mr. Jews, who by that time was running Lutheran Hospital, was given the charge to merge the two institutions into the new Liberty Medical Center Inc. He wasn't prepared for the strong emotional attachment that some in the black community had for Provident, and their desire that it remain independent. Their vehemence caught him by surprise.

"I guess to a large degree I felt isolated, abandoned and alone for a while," he said in an 1990 Baltimore Sun interview about the merger. From that experience, he said, he will never forget "that an awful lot of people in the community really care deeply" about their health institutions.

It took a year of wooing by Dimensions Health Corp. to get Mr. Jews to join the company. "He didn't try to dazzle me with fancy footwork," said Secretary of State Winfield M. Kelly Jr., who was CEO at the time and looking over candidates to lead the corporation, which includes two full-service hospitals, a for-profit and a not-for-profit nursing home, a free-standing emergency/ambulatory surgical center and a for-profit, venture-partnership corporation.

Giving Mr. Jews the job "is among the best decisions I have ever made in my public or private life," said Mr. Kelly. "It has turned out even better than I expected."

Mr. Jews, who took over the corporation in March 1990, thinks he has obeyed one of his father's last wishes. "He told my mom before he died that I was to always respect the family name. I remember that. I will always remember that."

THE JEWS FILE

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Born: Jan. 30, 1952, in Cambridge. --Current residence: Homeland.

Occupation: President and chief executive officer of Dimensions Health Corp. Outside affiliations include: President's Round Table, Morgan State University Board of Regents, Greater Baltimore Committee, Mayor's Life Science High School Study Project.

Education: Johns Hopkins University, B.A., social and behavioral sciences, 1974. Morgan State University, master's in urban

planning and policy analysis, 1976.

First job in a hospital: Administrative assistant for planning and

development at University Hospital.

What helped him succeed: "Great parents who instilled in me values. We have got to get back to strong family structures."