Arturo del Fierro Garcia

Lolo Arturo was the family doctor of my grandfather Lolo Ambrosio (Magsaysay). Of course, he was literally part if the family being the cousin of Lolo's wife, my Lola Maling. Both Arturo and Ambrosio, aside from having the same first initials, had many things in common. They were both youths plucked from prominent families in Zambales and sent by the new American regime to the best schools in the US under it's pensionado program, all educational and living expenses paid for by Uncle Sam. Their colonial view being different from the Spanish in that bringing education and not relgion to uncivilized natives was the way to carrying out the white man's burden. It helped of course that both youths had outstanding academic records in the best schools in Manila, Arturo in Letran and Ambrosio in Ateneo.

As part of the first batch of pensionados in 1904 and 1905, Arturo went to the University of Colorado in Boulder where her he studied medicine and in 1908 secured his MD. Ambrosio at first was sent to the leading agricultural college in Ames, Iowa but civil engineering rather than farming was in his blood so he transferred to Cornell in his sophomore year and graduated in 1909.

Arturo returned to work initially in the American run and staffed Philippine Bureau of Health. He also became part of the distinguished faculty of the UP college of medicine and helped build it's premier reputation as the country's leading medical school. He was one of the core physicians at the PGH in it's early days as the teaching hospital of the UP medical school. He served as the first non-US head of the Anatomy department and later on as a Dean of the school.