Enlace para traducción en español: drive.google.com/file

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IN REMEMBRANCE OF - RAFAEL E. SILVA, M.D.

With deepest sorrow, we announce the passing of Rafael E. Silva, M.D., our father. After a 19-day struggle, he died of complications from COVID-19. He peacefully left on Friday, August 21, 2020, at St. Anne’s Nursing Center & Residence in Miami, FL. His life spanned nearly a century and touched many lives throughout his medical career, friendships, and within his family.

He is survived by his wife, Mary T. Silva, her daughter, Suzanne M. Silva Conant and 5 children from his first marriage; Lourdes S. Bravo, married to Luis Bravo, Rafael E. Silva, Dr. Eugene A. Silva, widow of Margaret Jones, presently remarried to Kristin Dolphin, Elizabeth R. Doyle, married to Joseph E. Doyle and Paul A. Silva, married to Linda Morales. He is also survived by fifteen grandchildren, and fifteen great- grandchildren.

To celebrate the life of our father, Rafael E. Silva, MD, we hope you will join us in helping the next generation of physicians by contributing to the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago. You may direct your gifts to the  Stritch Dean’s Scholarship Fund  “In Memory of Dr. Rafael E. Silva.” 

A Virtual Memorial Service is planned for Saturday, October 24, 2020 at 3:00 P.M. EST. 

REMEMBERING THE LIFE OF OUR FATHER WITH LOVE -

Rafael E. Silva was born as the second and youngest child of Alfonso Luis Silva and Maria Mercedes Silva Tablada in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, on March 4, 1921. He is preceded in death by his parents, his older brother, Capt. Luis Alfonso Silva Tablada of Havana, Cuba, and his first granddaughter, Jessica Remrey, of Miami, FL in 2013.

Rafael was referred to by friends and colleagues as “Silva Tablada” in Cuba and as “Silva” in the United States. In 1944, he graduated from Instituto Superior de Ciencias Medicas de La Habana, known in English as the Institute of Medical Sciences Medical School in Havana, Cuba. He and his graduating classmates were members of a fraternity of medical students that chose a name to identify each new incoming class. Throughout their time in medical school, his class was called “Los Pulpos” (translated as “the Octopuses”). Their mascot emblem of an octopus with a graduate cap holding a diploma with one tentacle would forever be their insignia as the class of ’44. Members of “Los Pulpos” stayed in contact for many years from graduation in Cuba to their exiles in the U.S. and elsewhere, always meeting together for reunions in Miami over the years. Rafael stayed in touch with his classmates and made it to these reunions several times in his lifetime.

After graduating medical school in 1944, he pursued a one-year fellowship in Chicago, IL in 1945. While in Chicago he persuaded his fiancé of many years, Yolanda Treto Martinez, to join him in the U.S. and they married in Chicago in December of 1945.

The couple returned to Havana, Cuba to start a family and in 1947, their first daughter Lourdes de las Mercedes, was born in August of 1947 and 18 months later in February of 1949, their first son, Rafael Enrique was born. Almost three years later, their second son, Eugenio Alfonso, was born in January of 1952. The young family lived in the upscale neighborhood of El Vedado in Havana. The children spent their years schooling during weekdays and travelling a short distance on weekends and holidays to the outskirts of Havana to visit the maternal grandmother’s farm, named “La Georgina”. This was where cousins bonded playing outdoors all day, and where adults could spend time sharing meals, music and conversations about life. During these years Rafael worked at the Military Hospital in Havana where he practiced surgery as a specialist in thoracic surgery. He also opened a clinic in Havana, Clínica Los Angeles, where he practiced with his medical colleagues from the Military Hospital.

Rafael’s career was established and flourishing in Havana, but his country was experiencing the worst of several years of a corrupt dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista that censored the press and silenced dissidents with jail, torture and executions. Rafael’s discontent with the government became more vocal among his confidants and in 1956 his friends warned him that there were rumors the government was not happy with his writings of resistance against the Regime and that he was being targeted to be arrested. He had to leave Cuba for fear of losing his freedom or even his life. The only place he knew to flee to and where he had previous contacts was in Chicago where he had studied years before. His family, business, career and comforts had to be left behind. But he and Yolanda had made a plan that she and the children would follow him once he got settled.

From the U.S., Rafael closely followed the everchanging news about the evolving revolution with which he sympathized in his country. He maintained the hope that perhaps within a year or two he could return with his family to their country, to a new and more equitable government that would lift its people up from the many years of corrupt dictators and censorship.

Yolanda came to Chicago to visit Rafael in the summer of 1957 and a final decision was made that they would not return to Cuba whether the revolution was won or not. After that trip, Yolanda discovered she was carrying a fourth child. In early December of 1957, Yolanda packed their suitcases then she and their three children, Lourdes, age 10, Rafael, age 8 and Eugenio age 5 followed Rafael to Chicago to start a new life in America. They all were transplanted from the warmth of their tropical home in Havana to the shock of snow and the freezing cold north of America. They would never return to their country and their country would never again be Cuba as they knew it.

Just months after arriving in the United States, in April of 1958, Rafael and Yolanda welcomed a fourth child, their second daughter, Elizabeth Ruth. The name choice for their future children from that day forward would change because they had experienced English speakers unable to correctly pronounce the names of their first three children, changing them to Lou, Ray and Eugene. As it was, Elizabeth got changed to Lisa.

The family lived for about 10 months in Chicago until Rafael was presented with the opportunity of a job in a state facility that would provide him the time to study for his State Medical Boards, housing for his family and a physician salary. He moved his family to live on the grounds of the Dixon State School in Dixon, IL, a state institution for children and adults that were mentally and physically challenged. He and his family joined other doctors and their families to live in medical staff housing quarters, and to work as physicians for residents at the facility.

Rafael had a great deal of medical experience in Cuba and in Chicago which included treating respiratory diseases, diagnosing Tuberculosis, and performing surgery when needed. Many of his patients at this institution posed the challenge of having abnormally small mouths and airways to insert the size laryngoscopes available at that time. Rafael put his inventive skills to work drawing and designing a smaller steel device which a company created for him. The instrument had an angled curvature that allowed for a smooth access into these airways. As part of this device he included a curved needle to insert through the neck into the trachea to obtain specimens of infected lung mucous. Over the years he kept improving on this design, registering his patents with the last U.S. patent being issued in 1994.

After passing his boards in 1960, he purchased a practice in a small rural town near Dixon, IL, called Franklin Grove from a doctor that was moving out of state. He provided medical care for the rural community and extended his surgery practice at a nearby hospital, Katherine Shaw Bethea (KSB) Hospital in Dixon. Four years later, in 1962, the growing Silva family welcomed their fifth child, their third son, Paul Andrew. In the year after moving to Franklin Grove, Rafael learned of his brother’s tragic death in an over water plane crash during the Bay of Pigs Invasion on April 17th of 1961, which was heartbreaking to him and his parents.

In the following year Rafael arranged for his grieving parents to come from Cuba to live in their Illinois home, and Yolanda arranged for her mother to join them as well — creating an extended family that provided comfort to these elders as they suffered the loss of their loved ones and their homeland. The experience of the grandparents in the house also strengthened the Spanish language and Cuban culture for the children. As U.S. Naturalized Citizens, Rafael and Yolanda sponsored and helped many other relatives and friends from Cuba and helped them find where to live and work in their new country.

By 1965, Rafael was planning on moving from Franklin Grove to the larger town of Dixon for better education and sports opportunities for his children. After renting a house for a year in Dixon, the family purchased a home along the river. In Dixon, his two older sons graduated from high school, his oldest daughter’s first marriage was celebrated. His two youngest children, like a second family, attended the local public schools and grew up having the full American experience. As always, Rafael and Yolanda encouraged bilingualism for their children, so the Spanish language was spoken at home most often, though with the younger children, over time they found themselves speaking more English.

Somehow in his spare time he practiced his self-taught drawing skills, creating some very large charcoal drawings that he hung in their home. His three oldest children finished college at area universities in Illinois: Lourdes at Northern Illinois University (she later completed a Masters of Art Education degree at Florida International University, Miami), Rafael at Bradley University and Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Eugene at Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois, Medical School Chicago Campus. Dr. Rafael E. Silva practiced medicine as a General Practitioner and surgeon in the Northern Illinois area for 14 years.

In 1970, his marriage of 21 years ended and in 1971 he married Mary T. Silva of Chicago. Mary’s adult daughter, Suzanne was adopted by Rafael. In January of 1972, in his fifties, he decided to return to medical school at Loyola University, Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine, to add a specialization of anesthesiology to his medical degree. By the summer of 1972, Rafael moved with Mary to Phoenix, Arizona to complete his residency in anesthesia at Maricopa County Hospital and Loyola University in Phoenix. During his short stay in the Scottsdale and Phoenix area of Arizona, Rafael organized a Cuban American Club to gather the many Cubans he encountered in the area. The group was his way to maintain his language and culture, and to socialize with fellow Cubans through monthly meetings, newsletters, sharing traditional Cuban food and supporting local politics. Rafael fell in love with the history of the American Indians in the Southwest, the art and the jewelry. From this point forward, he threw out his neckties and his signature neck ware became the bolo tie, many he owned were custom made with stones of the southwest.

A great opportunity to work with a group of anesthesiologists in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma became available to him in 1974. Rafael and Mary moved for a second time to another southwestern state with another distinctive history and culture of American Indians and Cowboys. This history fascinated Rafael and he read as much as he could about it, collected art and added boots and cowboy hats to his bolo ties to amplify his style and assimilation to the southwest.

His true embracing of Oklahoma was culminated when he purchased a 10-acre farm, outside of Oklahoma City, in Cashion, OK. An arched wooden entry gate with the name he chose over it, “Rancho Alegre,” became his refuge from working long hours and days in the city. He dabbled in maintaining a horse, a small fruit orchard, tractor riding and raising baby pigs for a catering business he developed to encourage the traditional Cuban pig roasting for Americans to enjoy eating. He also opened a seafood storefront in Oklahoma City because he felt there was no good seafood for people to buy in his community. He even took up some drawing and painting again in his bit of spare time. Again, he discovered all the Cubans that were living in the area and organized another Cuban American Club in Oklahoma City. This time he called it the “Cubokies Club” of which he was President and again they supported local and national political groups. He always found a way to create a living vibrant part of his own Cuban culture to be ever present in his life as he knew he’d never return to Cuba. The group again gathered monthly and joined to celebrate holidays and share Cuban cooking. His practice in anesthesia flourished over the next 25 years as he worked in several hospitals in the Oklahoma City area. His youngest daughter, Elizabeth (Lisa) went to college for one year in Oklahoma City at Oklahoma City University to later finish another three years at Florida International University in Miami with a B.S. in Education. His youngest son, Paul, who moved to live with him in 1976, completed high school in Cashion, OK and college at the East Central University of Oklahoma, in Ada, OK, with a B.S. in Industrial Technology.

As he began slowing down his case load in practicing anesthesia, he decided he wanted to teach Spanish in the local high schools as a substitute teacher. He enjoyed teaching but still had a yearning to help patients in managing pain and his fascination with eastern medicine led him to bridge his medical knowledge with the study of acupuncture. Again, he gained another certification, this time in his seventies. He became a certified Medical Acupuncturist for treatment of pain. He opened an office and practiced for ten years in northwestern Oklahoma City.

In December of 2002, at the age of 81, he moved to Miami, FL to live with his wife in retirement and to be closer to 4 of his children living there, while his son living in Rockford, IL could visit him and family together more easily. In 2002 he decided again, in his early eighties, that he wanted to learn another form of eastern healing, Massage Therapy. He completed a series of courses in Miami but never completed his state licensing.

Though in his later years he suffered from gradual dementia decline, his children were able to include him in their lives and in their homes for social events and holidays with their families. During his last four years of living at St. Anne’s Nursing Home, he had many medical complications. The loving Spanish speaking community of staff and professionals and their gentle care made his life richer. The cheerful atmosphere, weekly live music, and time he could spend with his wife Mary, who lived at the same home, brightened his life and hers in his last years.

Due to the lockdowns in nursing homes and the many restrictions in place to prevent the transmission of the COVID19 pandemic, his children had not seen him since February and early March of 2020. His wife and his children were not allowed to be by his side during the time he fell ill with COVID19. In his last 24 hours of life he was allowed to return to his room and he passed without his family by his side, though he could feel the touch and hear the voices of the many loving second floor nurses and staff, social worker, nuns and priest who knew him and cared for him for over 4 years at St. Anne’s Nursing Center & Residence in Miami. His family will forever be grateful to these professionals for providing the love, kindness and comfort to him in his last hours and for extending a way for family to say good-bye through virtual phone sessions.