Doki. Doc. Dong. Doc Avelex. RedRed. Tito Doc.
We know Dr. Avelex Salinas Amor through his many names at various stages in his life.
We first knew him as Avelex, named after his maternal grandparent, Avelino Salinas, and his paternal grandfather, Alexander Amor.
It was a name selected to ensure that both grandfathers were equally happy since he was their first apo. It also meant that Avelex was equally spoiled.
But to his parents Alex and Boots, who met in the barricades of Manila protesting against the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, he was, and always will be RedRed.
As Red, he was an impish boy, very much like his Dad as a kid. He had the run of both family houses were all his aunts and uncles also spoiled him. Except for me, I loved him so much that I disciplined him equally as hard.
We also knew him as Avelex or Lex, as he and his childhood friends went through kindergarten, elementary, and high school at Silliman University.
Our family’s abiding love for Silliman became, not surprisingly, also his abiding love. Avelex was a child of Silliman Church, this University community.
We knew Avelex as a man who eventually became a doctor, thanks to thousands of hens who laid an egg a day so that he can finish his medical degree from the Cebu Institute of Medicine. His was a medical degree earned one egg at a time.
To some extent, his fellow medical students also owe their passing of the Board to these hens. Avelex freely shared his notes, and encouraged classmates who lagged behind to finish their medical studies.
Eventually, Avelex earned diplomates in Occupational Health and Diabetes. Those diplomates were earned with the help of my brother’s underground army — an army of worms which produced earth castings for the superior organic fertilizer that his parents, Alex and Boots, continue to produce.
We first knew him as Doc who chose to open a small clinic and a wellness club in the public market of Dumaguete – and not in some fancy building or at a medical center. Through the wellness clinic, he tackled the epidemic of diabetes that is plaguing our country.
The SU Cafeteria staff knew him as Doc Avelex who ministered to their health needs while working as a staff doctor at SUMC.
He was in awe as a doctor working at the Marina Clinic in Dauin. Awe — because he was working and learning preventive health care from his idol, Dr. Fe Sycip-Wale.
We finally knew him as Doki – the people’s doctor. He was the doctor who ran up bills in the pharmacies in Canlaon, Bindoy, Sta.Catalina, Siquijor, and elsewhere Avelex was assigned because his patients could not afford the medicines they needed, when the medicines in the government hospitals were sub-prime. Chalk, he called them. Doki went into debt to ensure that his patients received the medicines they needed.
Doki was a strict doctor who did not tolerate corruption. To him, the health of his patients was paramount. To him, providing medical attention to rural Filipinos and poor people was paramount.
He could have immigrated to the US and become wealthy. But money did not drive him – service to the people was his muse.
Avelex eventually started a dormitory in a house he inherited from our aunts. The idea was that the income from his boarding house would subsidize his medical work. It worked – up to a certain extent.
Most of his boarders are government scholars whose allowances are often late. Yet, he continued to house and feed them until their allowances arrived.
We know Dodong Doc as a boarding house owner who also produced countless college graduates – notably a chemist now in Korea studying for her Ph.D., and a geologist whose success he planned to celebrate — before Avelex was assassinated last Tuesday.
What many people do not know is that the stubborn streak in him, the drive to always do what is right and fair for the people, comes from our ancestors – Don Diego de la Vina of Vallehermoso, and Don Pelagio Villegas of Guihulngan, revolutionaries who fought to liberate Negros from the Spanish colonizers. This has continued through our generation, and reinforced by his fathers and mothers of the First Quarter Storm generation.
We do not know who killed Avelex, or more importantly, the people who ordered his killing.
What we do firmly know is that God’s arc of justice will eventually bend to expose them. Let this be a warning to them: You cannot kill your way out of injustice. You cannot assassinate your way out of the corruption that deprives our people of the healthcare they deserve.
Our family and our friends have agreed to establish the Dr. Avelex S. Amor Fellowship in Medicine at Silliman University, funded with an initial endowment of P1 million. The fellowship will train doctors committed to serve the Filipino people, especially the poor in the rural areas.
Avelex, always my favorite eldest nephew, we bid you adieu — not goodbye — because we will meet again in the life after death.
Thanks be to God for the life of Dr. Avelex Salinas Amor, the People’s Doctor.
