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A former medical reporter and longtime doctor has retired after decades of treating patients in North Carolina.
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Dr. Allen Mask, once a familiar face on WRAL, most recently had been working part-time as a physician for the city of Raleigh. His last day on the job was Friday, July 31.
“Seeing patients and caring for their health was enormously satisfying,” Mask told The News & Observer in a Monday, Aug. 3 email. “There is no other field that provides more meaningful work.”
After Mask spent years serving people through local TV segments and urgent care visits, we’re taking a look back at his career.
Mask, who is Black, grew up in North Carolina during segregation. He is from Hamlet, a city in Richmond County and a roughly 80-mile drive southeast from uptown Charlotte.
“My father took me to a doctor’s office that had separate waiting rooms for ‘Whites’ and ‘Coloreds,’” Mask wrote. “It was very offensive to us. My dad still had us wait in the ‘Whites Only’ waiting room. To our surprise, no one ever objected but we were quickly ushered back to see the doctor.”
“That was a memory I never forgot. Fast-forward 20 years, I finished medical school, residency and opened my own medical center in Southeast Raleigh with ONE large waiting room for all.”
Mask entered the healthcare field after he earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974 and 1978. He also had stops in Trinidad and Massachusetts before returning to the Triangle, the school wrote on its website.
In 1985, Mask started the Raleigh Urgent Care Center, where he enjoyed the process of quickly treating patients. Then in the 1990s, he said he landed the “dream job” of being a medical reporter on WRAL.
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“Whether we do updates on diabetes treatments, cataracts, dandruff, or urinary tract infections, it’s all-important,” Mask told Aging Outreach Services, a resource for older people in Moore County. “The beauty of it is that I get to go on a Duke Life Flight helicopter, or inside the Duke hyperbaric chamber or in the operating room for bariatric surgery, or work out in a gym to learn an exercise to increase your core strength, or do hot yoga.”
Mask told The N&O he enjoyed working with the TV station’s team on “incredible stories,” including one about two teens who received heart transplants and went to prom together. He also gave former anchor David Crabtree his annual flu shot while the cameras were rolling.
The doctor said he appeared on WRAL several times a week until 2018, then was a contributor until 2024. In comments on a recent Facebook post, former viewers paid tribute.
“After more than 4 decades serving your patients and the community, Dr. Allen Mask and his wife, Dr. (Deirdre) Batch are taking some well-deserved time for themselves,” WRAL anchor Gerald Owens wrote Saturday, Aug. 1 in a social media post. “Happy retirement…you’ve earned it.”
Most recently, Mask had been giving physical exams and vaccines to city of Raleigh workers. Though he’s stepped back from that role and his medical practice, he still plans to play an active role in the community.
“My work now is mentoring young people who are seeking careers in medicine,” Mask wrote. “I continue to do a lot of public speaking. I lecture each year for Biology 117 at UNC-CH on my journey through medicine.”
This story has been updated.
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This story was originally published August 4, 2026 at 2:20 PM.