Sams' medical career started at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, from which he graduated in 1942.
He then attended Emory University School of Medicine for a semester and then joined the United States Army Medical Corps.
After serving from 1943 to 1947 and seeing action in France, Sams returned to Emory to continue his medical studies.
In 2001, he became the nineteenth recipient of Kappa Alpha Order's highest honor, the Distinguished Achievement Award.
Sams's works of fiction developed from the act of writing his own memoirs of growing up in rural Fayette County for his posterity.