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Thank you all for sharing your memories, stories and kind words about Dad. Here is a copy of the eulogy:
Thank you to those who have joined us via Live Stream this morning. Dad passed away on January 13th, so although the pandemic had brought... moreThank you all for sharing your memories, stories and kind words about Dad. Here is a copy of the eulogy:
Thank you to those who have joined us via Live Stream this morning. Dad passed away on January 13th, so although the pandemic had brought challenges in scheduling this memorial mass, it gave my family over a month to reflect on Dad’s life. We are grateful to Father Rodell, Incarnation Catholic Church and to Fr. Tony Pernia, my mom’s brother and our uncle, for your masses, prayers, and blessings over Dad before, and just after, he passed away. To my mom’s sister, Corazon, for orchestrating all of the music today. Thank you to all of our family members, to Dad’s colleagues, and our friends for your love and support over the past month. Thank you to the Philippine American Academy of Science and Engineering for the beautiful memorial they held for Dad on Feb 2nd. And finally, our greatest gratitude goes to two people, my brother-in-law, Nolan – who has gone beyond our expectations of what someone would do for their father-in-law -- and Dad’s caregiver, Nico; for your patience and the physical care that you gave. Mom and Dad could not have endured the last year without you both.
Dad left behind a very large family. He had 4 kids, 8 grandchildren, 6 siblings, 24 nieces and nephews on his side along with 8 brothers and sisters-in-law and another 20 nieces and nephews on Mom’s side of the family. I am Cecilia, the oldest of his four children, and with my siblings, my mom and my four kids, we make up the 20, or so, people that are here today. Raleigh, Mary Rose and Dad’s other four grandchildren, Evan, Aiden, Isabel, and Josie, unfortunately could not be here in California with us, so we send you our love.
When I was pregnant with my first baby, people would tell me, “there is nothing that will ever compare to the love you will feel the moment you give birth to a child.” That I found to be true. However, what life doesn’t prepare you for is the void and the loss you feel the moment you lose a parent. That love a parent has for a child is inexplicable, but as a child, the love we have for our parents is often taken for granted.
As a little kid, I remember sitting in the front seat of the car (with no seatbelt) between my mom and dad, and loving the feeling of falling asleep in my mom’s lap as we drove. As a teenager, however, you naturally pull away from your parents, striving for independence. As an adult, you once again look to your parents for guidance, but your time with them gets whittled down to celebrations, graduations, and holidays. If you can imagine our gigantic family reunions, even though we were there with my parents, we weren’t really together, as we were each paired off in different conversations with other cousins, aunts and uncles.
As we, his kids, became parents ourselves, our relationship with Mom and Dad focused primarily on the grandchildren. Our love for our parents changed as we witnessed how their love extended to our own kids. Thank God for the grandkids. Their relationship with Mom and Dad is something we ourselves missed out on not having living Grandparents nor our Grandy and Ima in this country, on call. The grandkids continually blessed our parents with new joys and achievements: Dad got an Ivy-leaguer, a Jesuit schooled “man for others,” three star athletes, and a set of triplets.
The eight of you, grandchildren, are Dad’s true legacy, so I want to pass along and embrace three things that your Grandpa was passionate about throughout his entire life: Education, giving and faith.
The importance of education was paramount. It wasn’t about being the best athlete, or the most talented or successful kid, but rather, for my Dad, he wanted the best education for all of us. He was motivated to teach us about culture, philanthropy, about European table manners, classical music, and history. Our family trips were to the California missions, or Robert Louis Stevenson’s house in Monterey, to the Hearst Castle, Malacanang Palace in the Philippines, all the monuments in Washington, D.C., of course, and one of our last family trips together was to Mt. Vernon, for the grandchildren. When I was sixteen years old, Dad gave me his favorite book, by William Zinsser called, “On Writing Well,” which he gave again recently to my son, Matthew, when he was 17-years old. Dad wrote a lot, and presented his research and papers, so it was essential for us to learn how to write simply but effectively. He pushed and pushed. He would say, “Shorten the sentence, make it simple.”
Simple, is also a great word to describe Dad. He didn’t want material things. He didn’t care about fancy cars, or elaborate vacations, or being the center of attention. Instead, his happiness stemmed from giving. He was a Dr., so naturally, giving and caring every day for his students and patients, was his lifelong passion, a passion that perhaps developed because of the opportunities he was given by family, particularly his oldest brother, Emilio.
As a child in the Philippines, his family suffered a major financial loss, and were forced to abandon their home during WWII when the Japanese invaded. A story that my aunts, his sisters, have told us, is that Dad graduated with honors but didn’t attend his own graduation, because he couldn’t afford a barong (the Filipino formal attire) for him to wear to the ceremony. That sense of humility stayed with him. He helped his family financially, and always made a point to give his nieces and nephews a gift of cash at any gathering we had.
When Dad immigrated to the US to continue his residency, internship, and medical studies in Washington D.C., it was Emilio who helped put him through medical school, mentored him and provided for him, whenever Dad was in need. That spirit of selflessness was instilled in him by his oldest brother, but he also made it a priority in the expression of his faith.
Every Sunday, he was an Usher at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington DC. It was the long mass – the 10am Latin mass, so he’d drive all the way into Washington D.C. and often would drive back and join mom for his 2nd mass at their church, St. James in Falls Church. Though he was blessed twice on Sundays, even at age 80, Dad still felt like he needed to work on his faith to get closer to God.
He graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, and was passionate about St. Thomas Aquinas, who is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. Aquinas is regarded as the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood. In his free time, Dad would read book after book on St. Thomas Aquinas, researching his work. He even visited the birth and death place of Aquinas, climbing with Fr. Mike to the top of Rocca Secca in Italy where he prostrated himself and kissed the ground at the very place where St. Thomas was born. Late in life, in his 70s, Dad also decided to study theology at The Dominican House near Catholic University. His quest for knowledge and passion for teaching carried through every day up to the last days of his life.
Many of the stories all of you have shared with us, include a time when Dad had helped each of you with a health issue or guided you to a specialist for care. Over the last year-and-a-half, we watched him doctor his own health challenges. Dad strived for excellence and education along with his faith. A story my cousin Cherina passed along from her Dad, Emilio, was about when Dad was in medical school. My Dad got 100% on his final anatomy exam, but no one had ever gotten 100% so they thought he had cheated. The school decided to give him a harder exam – but ORALLY in front of a panel of Deans and teachers, which he aced again to their amazement!
On May 15, 2016, Dad was awarded the honor of his lifetime -- the distinguished title of Professor Emeritus. He was supposed to retire after that, but continued riding the Metro into Foggy Bottom, and eventually only worked one day a week. In 2019, that “one-day-a-week” happened to fall on a Tuesday, January 8th, his 80th birthday. Though many of you have heard this story, I bring it up again to reinforce our faith. Dad hadn’t been feeling well, and by chance and God’s grace, he ended up having lunch in the faculty dining room at GWU with Dr. Marco Mercador, a cardiologist who immediately diagnosed Dad and took him into surgery for a pacemaker that same afternoon.
After that day something significant changed in Dad’s attitude. Our Dad, the quiet, humble, simple man, started asking for things. It took a month or so for me to realize that he was going through a wish list: He wanted to go to Lincoln Center in NYC in March. He wanted to build a bonsai garden. He wanted to have a big 80th birthday party celebration with both the Velasquez and Pernia sides of the family, and he would start to consider retiring BUT if so, he wanted to be closer to his sisters and he wanted to volunteer-teach at USC. We were able to surprise him with the party he asked for on July 13, 2019. Seeing the joyous expression on his face when he saw us all in the room, is something we will never forget. Six weeks later, in August, Dad suffered a debilitating stroke.
When we brought Dad home from the hospital after his stroke, he had several physical challenges – one of which was loss of language expression. His things in the house had been untouched for months, and he was frustrated with his limitations. But even so, one day he stared at a pile of papers on the dining room table and began searching through them. Immediately, he motioned to us to “call Susie.” He was able to show us a paper he had written – and communicated that he wanted Dr. Lew to finish it for him. It was one of his final wishes.
On November 16, 2019, he received the Walter Lester Henry, Jr., MD Award for Lifetime Teaching Excellence by the American College of Physicians. This award was the culmination of his life’s dedication to education and an honor for which we are grateful to Dr. Alan Wasserman, Chairman of the Department of Medicine at GWU.
The letters and emails we have received over the past weeks have not only been comforting, but also have given us an even greater sense of pride in who Dad was. You have described him as having “infectious enthusiasm, indefatigable curiosity, delightful explosive laughter, passionate conversation, and a deep sense of faith.” He was an “enthusiastic medical researcher,” “a dedicated, inspiring mentor,” a man with a “fascination with science” who was “so well prepared and thorough in his science and so ‘warm and joyful’ in his interactions with others.” He never stopped his “pursuit of knowledge” and many said it was a pleasure to “learn from him.” “His temperament was always upbeat, his smile memorable, and his demeanor always gracious.” He was a “sincere, wise and devoted colleague, and a consummate physician.” At the memorial celebration hosted by his colleagues at PAASE earlier this month, we learned from Dr. Pedro Jose, that Dad has at least 80 scholarly publications, one publication has 439 citations, and he has a HIRSCH Index of 22. Dr. Jose explained that the HIRSCH Index is an author-level metric, that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. HIRSCH estimated that after 20 years, a successful scientist would have an H index of 20. Dr. Felix Buot reflected on his conversations with Dad saying that ,”Manny knew quantum physics better than some physicists.”
These are things that we never knew about my Dad, and surely took for granted.
Dad’s last work, co-authored by Dr. Susie Lew, titled “Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis in Diabetes Mellitus,” was published in the Philippine Science Letters in 2020, Volume 14, Article 1, and available online January 31, 2021. We are so grateful to Dr. Susie Lew and to Dr. Giselle Conception in the Philippines for fulfilling his final wish. So much for “simple” writing, and while Dad never sought recognition, I’ll keep tabs for him. That’s #81, coincidentally finished at age 81.
Dad’s health struggles gave us the opportunity to discover a part of him we never knew about, and the chance to learn more about his work through your visits to him in the hospital. Most of our lives, we had only heard the names, Dr. Juan Bosch, Dr. Paul Kimmel and Dr. Susie Lew. But during Dad’s hospital stays we were introduced to a few more. We met Dr. Raj, the Director of the Division of Renal Diseases at GWU, Dr. Samir Patel and his wife Dr. Shirley Kalwaney, who were all there to decipher medical terminology and guide us through Dad’s hospital stays. It was by chance – again, a gift from God – that Shirley worked at INOVA and came to visit and check-in on Dad as he recovered from his surgeries there in 2015 and 2019. Shirley was not a student of Dad’s but Samir was, and it was Samir who had the honor of presenting Dad the Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award, alongside Dr. Wasserman and Dr. Scott Cohen. In our own family, my cousin-in-law, Dr. Manesh Nachnani, was instrumental in Dad’s rehabilitation at Virginia Hospital Center and was there to support us when Dad asked to finally go home. There was this entire network of Drs. who we have come to know, appreciate and respect for their expertise, care and friendship with Dad.
During those visits, Dr. Bosch shared a time that Dad had brought my little brother Mikey, who was 11 years old at the time, to a meeting at GWU, and Dr. Kimmel would reminisce and uplift all of our spirits. So thank you Dr. Bosch for inviting Dad to join your Division in 1986 and bringing him back to Washington D.C., and a university where he loved to work. If it hadn’t been for your patience and kindness, my family’s life could have been so different.
And lastly to his colleagues and friends who were his actual doctors; To Dr. Kaitln Roth and to Dr. Marco Mercador for giving us more time with Dad, and to Dr. Jeff Canceko at Keck USC, who led Dad’s care this past year - we are indebted to you all.
Dad may have chosen theology over golf as a hobby, but he did have one other passion…gardening. The solace he took in the peace and meditative state of gardening, is what in his last year of his life brought him the most joy. He had started a bonsai garden at each of their houses in Falls Church and in California. Through the Stay-At-Home quarantine of the pandemic, Dad immersed himself in You Tube videos of the UK’s renowned, self-taught bonsai artist, Peter Chan, and despite Dad’s physical limitations from his stroke, he managed to get out into the garden in his wheelchair and trim his bonsai trees at the table.
His bonsai trees sit in a rock garden that he designed…his “zen garden,” we called it,
where I’m sure he contemplated his work and his faith.
My siblings and I were fortunate to spend more time with Dad during the last year of his life. If a love for a parent can grow, each of ours surely did. We learned more about his brilliant mind, and what his work, and the people with whom he spent every day in his professional life, meant to him. We learned deeper about his passions, like Chinese porcelain, the performing arts, and how to care for different species of bonsai trees. And we finally got the chance to help him after years of him helping us. The years that we may have taken for granted, we got the chance to gain back.
When the grandkids were saying their virtual goodbyes to Dad, Aiden asked him to watch over all of us, and to send us a sign. Two mourning doves lingered around the house the entire day and the hours before Dad passed away. As we sat by his bedside, my sister Chin, told Dad about the doves and that they are a symbol of peace and the presence of the Holy Spirit. She reminded him to send us a sign to let us know when he makes it safely to Heaven, just like we would call him when we made it safely home after traveling. Dad passed away peacefully after midnight that night. The next morning, Chin went outside to look for a sign. A mourning dove swooped in and landed on the peak of the roof of our house where it sat for 20 minutes. We know that Dad is with the Holy Spirit and finally at rest and not suffering.
The morning Dad passed away, his colleague Dr. Dominic Raj wrote this:
“Dr. Velasquez passed on January 13, 2021
Or did he pass from us?
I have never seen anyone
Who is so brilliant, yet so humble
Who gave everything, yet claimed nothing
Who loved the division like no other, yet asked none in return
Who was the oldest, yet a child who found joy in small things
Who taught so much, yet willing to be taught
I never missed any, yet every day I miss him
He might be gone, yet has he?
He left a big void in the division, which was never filled nor it ever will be.
He loved the division, physiology, and Saint Augustine. Here is a quote for him from Saint Augustine
“The Kingdom of Heaven, O man, requires no other price than yourself. The value of it is yourself. Give yourself for it and you shall have it”.
Thank you Dr. Raj, for your poignant and eloquent send off.
We miss him so much already, but we will remember his joy whenever he had his family around him, his love of education, his devotion to helping others and his humble faith in God, our Father.
Dad, none of us would be where we are without you. Thank you for giving us life, for your unconditional love, for always providing for us, (your children, grandchildren and extended family) and for teaching us through your actions, kindness, generosity, respect, gratitude, faith and humility. You gave us everything and asked for nothing. We honor you and hold you in our hearts forever.
We love you Dad. less
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