This April 21, 2020, while most of the world social distances, two young men, Carl and Clarence Aguirre, will turn 18 in New York, the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak. They were not born as two, but joined at the head or craniopagus. They were not native New Yorkers, but had spent their infancy in a humble sugar central worker’s house, without running water or electricity, in Silay, Negros Occidental. Their journey to New York, and toward becoming two separate individuals, was made possible in large part through Dr. James T. Goodrich, a renowned neurosurgeon who had performed a series of surgeries with a team that included Filipino neurosurgeon Willy G. Lopez.
On March 30, 2020, Dr. Goodrich became another casualty of COVID 19.
How Dr. Goodrich got involved in the case of the Aguirre Twins, as they are known, was due to the late Dorita Holland Urrata of Children’s Chance-CT (Connecticut). Dorita had spent her early childhood and World War II in Manila, where her father Albert Holland worked for the Ossorios of Victorias Milling Company. She credited their survival to her Filipino yaya and to Dr. Fe Del Mundo, who had sheltered the frailer Allied nation children in the Holy Ghost College, Mendiola. Thus, Children’s Chance-CT sent several Filipino children for treatment to Boston Children’s and Yale Medical Center through Philippine Airlines. As I was the PAL Foundation’s executive director then, we worked closely together.
Before Jim Goodrich would commit to Dorita about separating the Aguirre Twins, he asked Willy G. Lopez, his fellow resident at Columbia-Presbyterian, to do the groundwork. The PAL Foundation brought the one-year-old twins to Manila and housed them with the Religious of the Good Shepherd in Paco. Dr. Lopez got Dr. Kenneth Tan of Cardinal Santos MRI to donate the twins’ imaging tests, so that he and Dr. Goodrich’s team at Montefiore Medical Center-New York could study them. Dr. Fe Del Mundo personally examined Carl and Clarence. Cardiac, pulmonary, and neurology specialists from her medical center cleared the twins for their long-haul international flight. When the US non-immigrant visa consul initially refused to give them visas, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and its media partner GMA-7 brought the power of mass media and public opinion (thanks to JV Rufino) into play. Jim Goodrich and Willy Lopez went on helping Filipino children in need, referred to them by the PAL Foundation. Another notable case was Kenneth Villa, a Morquio Syndrome patient on whom Dr. Lopez again operated for free. In another medical miracle multiplier effect, all his other colleagues donated their services too, including Dr. Tan’s meticulous MRIs. For Kenneth Villa, who to this day needs a mechanical ventilator to breathe, Jim Goodrich sent over two surplus Siemens ventilators.
Jim had been to Boracay once and saw our poverty, though he remembered the lush mangoes best. Knowing Filipino charity patients cannot afford to rent vents, he periodically sent more and other surplus but still useful medical equipment and supplies for donation to the Philippine General Hospital. Dorita H. Urrata helped to get these to the PAL Foundation, till she became incapacitated and retired.
Dr. Goodrich, age 74, may have died on a vent himself. It’s another of the continuing tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a loss to us all.
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Carmen Aquino Sarmiento, former executive director of the PAL Foundation, is an award-winning writer and a social concerns advocate.