Memorializing My Father

It’s 7:35 a.m. on Monday, May 28, 2018—Memorial Day—and I’m sitting in a plane on the runway of the Victoria Regional Airport after spending the weekend with my parents celebrating my father’s 80th birthday. As the twin-engine’s propeller blades begin to spin, I imagine them as the hands of a giant clock and I’m reminded how quickly time flies. I don’t know where I’ll be when I’m 80 years old, but my hope is that I will have lived a life as ambitious as my father’s.

My father was born in 1938 in Medellin, Colombia, at a time when the city was transforming itself from a sparsely populated town into the country’s leading industrial center. Connected by both rail and air, Medellin’s population increased from 60,000 in 1905 to more than 350,000 by 1950 (currently estimated at 2.5 million). A booming textile industry produced economic prosperity and urbanization, but not even the Andes Mountains surrounding Medellin could shield it from the political unrest sweeping across the country.

The assassination of a prominent leader of the Liberal Party in 1948 ignited a wave of partisan violence between the Liberals and Conservatives. Known simply as “La Violencia," this undeclared civil war spread throughout the country, including the rural lowlands outside of Medellin, and ultimately claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 Colombians. The partisan fighting continued for the better part of a decade until the feuding parties formed a new coalition in 1957 and ousted the country’s military dictator.

Although civilian rule was restored, the new coalition barred any other political parties from entering the election. This did not go over well with the Colombian Communist Party or with Marxist guerilla groups, like the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which continued a violent government resistance from the countryside. A rural-to-urban migration ensued in the 60s as hundreds of thousands of poor farmers moved their families to cities like Medellin, which was beginning to grow faster than its infrastructure could support.

My father was a 22-year-old medical student at the prestigious University of Antioquia Medical School in 1960. He graduated at the top of his class in 1962 and immigrated to the United States in search of opportunities Colombia couldn’t offer at the time. He started as a pathology intern in the sleepy town of Elyria, Ohio, located outside of Cleveland, and a year later he moved to Chicago to begin his residency. (Pictured above, sitting second from the right).

In 1966, one year shy of completing his residency, he was drafted into the U.S. Navy. The “Tet Offensive” of 1968 marked the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War, and my father was sent to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Guam to help with an influx of new patients. The hospital’s average daily census spiked from 100 patients in 1965 to 700 in 1968, and temporary facilities called Quonset huts, where my father lived during his stay, were built to accommodate the growing number of wounded soldiers.

My father made it back to Chicago and finished the last year of his residency in 1970. His career as a pathologist led him to Texas a few years later, and he eventually took a position in Victoria located 125 miles southeast of Houston. That’s where he met my mother who was working at the same hospital. They later married in 1980 and raised three boys, one of who was me.

On Dec. 10, 2010, my father officially became a U.S. citizen, almost 50 years after he first arrived from Medellin. I’m grateful for the sacrifices he made and the courage he had to leave his home for a foreign country. He rarely talks about his early life in Colombia or his experiences working at the Naval Hospital in Guam during the height of the Vietnam War. I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like for him to fight for a country not yet his own. Maybe it was a way of giving back to the U.S. for supporting Colombia in its own fight against Communism in the years leading up to and after his departure.

Fast forward to my father’s 80th birthday this past weekend. We celebrated with a couple of day trips to Port Lavaca and Rockport, where we ate a medley of Mexican food, seafood, and rich desserts. The Memorial Day festivities were in full swing, and the stars and stripes waved proudly along the store fronts. It’s because of the men and women, like my father, who sacrificed in the name of freedom that I’m able to pursue my passions as a writer and continue working toward the fulfillment of my dreams, and for that I say thank you.

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