ICYMI: When Dr. Horatio Cabasares succumbed to the COVID-19 virus that was killing thousands of Americans during the Christmas holidays in 2020, his death was immediately felt by this small town where he was its only surgeon for 40 years.
“Our entire community is going to suffer a very difficult void with Cabby not being in it,” Perry Mayor Randall Walker told the Houston Home Journal newspaper on Dec. 16, 2020, the day the doctor died.“Cabby” is the famous nickname of the Filipino doctor who immigrated to the United States in 1973, settled in Georgia and built a successful medical practice as a general surgeon at the local Perry Hospital where he performed thousands of surgeries, including lifesaving operations.
The death of Cabasares a few days before Christmas was a devastating tragedy to his family. His death, too, magnified the huge toll the pandemic was taking on Filipino American families of doctors and nurses fighting on the front line. “My dad anonymously paid for the lifesaving surgery of a woman who could not afford the procedure,” said Leigh Cabasares Wolk, 42, the doctor’s only daughter.For many immigrants, the life of Cabasares also personified the so-called American Dream.Dr. Horatio Cabasares at the Georgia hospital where he is remembered as a hero for saving countless lives. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Derided by some politicians as “sellouts” for causing the “brain drain” in the Philippines, this generation of doctors and nurses still returned home for herculean relief work after major disasters hit the country, proving their worth to their motherland.
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