Abstract :
My father, endearingly called “Pujie”, by friends and colleagues died in the early morning of the 12th of April. He was 90. His instructions to me were clear: there should be no vigil, no funeral. The cremation must be done post haste,
but he did agree to a holy mass or two. In two words – no
fanfare. How he wanted his death to be observed was
consistent, in fact, with his story arc. He was a small, quiet
boy who was barely noticed in class. But he became a
valedictorian in both grade school and high school at
Manila’s Benedictine school of San Beda. He finished
medical school at the University of the Philippines (UP,
1953). As one of the first graduates of the orthopaedic
residency program at the National Orthopaedic Hospital
(NOH), Dr Pujalte became organic in the institution that he
grew to love and serve for 33 years. He was a Colombo Plan
scholar in the early 1960s and was sent to England for a
vascular surgical fellowship. This added an extra dimension
and grit to his surgical prowess. As a permanent apprentice,
I saw and learned first-hand his tremendous skill and
precision on the operating table. His later sabbaticals brought
him to the US and back again to England for the spine and
joint replacement fellowships. He was always learning,
teaching, writing and publishing. Despite a busy schedule, he
studied again for two master’s degrees in hospital
administration (MHA) and public administration (MPA),
both at UP. No doubt, these helped him in his steady rise in
the NOH from Chief of Clinics in the late 1970s to Chief of Hospital in 1980. His people skills were legendary, and this was from his
propensity to please or connect (he was, after all an only
child). I knew his friendships were genuine because they
were few, and they would last. One such bond was with the
shoulder master Katsuya Nobuhara. A fruit of this friendship
was the more than 30 NOH fellowships in Japan. He was
paternal to his residents and would make sure that they were
sent abroad and that they would bring home the latest technology. These juniors settled all over the country and so in a way he seeded orthopaedics.
