Dr. Arnaldo R. Torres

In Memoriam
Arnaldo Rafael Torres, MD
1 May 2024

With profound pain, but an abiding sense of privilege, I join the exequys for Dr. Arnaldo Torres, my colleague and long-time friend who was called to eternity on 26 April 2024, in hopes of calling attention to his life and death by these insufficient words – a death harsh, tumultuous, and untimely but a life exemplary in myriad ways. Close to him at his passing were Sandra, his loving wife of nearly 40 years, and a small number of close-by family and friends. But for the circumstantial unexpectedness, his death would have occurred in the company of innumerable family and friends, Arnaldo being so well-loved by so many. May he be remembered always as the sunshine he represented to all those around him.

He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1961. He received his education, both undergraduate and medical, at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and launched his career in the residency program for obstetrics and gynecology at the University’s Medical Center. He met Sandra, the love of his life, in 1985, and they were married in 1988. A daughter, Ashley, arrived in 1991, a son, Giancarlo, in 1994. His professional career began in San Juan and soon transferred to a position as Attending Physician at the Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois, the Institution to which he loyally devoted over four decades of his life. The most recent joy of his life came with the arrival of a grand-daughter, Lily, in 2021, who promptly became the apple of Glanpa’s eye. How tragic that this nascent relationship would become so prematurely and so swiftly truncated! Arnaldo obtained all the hoped-for credentials (licensures, board certifications) that excellent medical practitioners aspire to and expect. He joined a prestigious group of obstetricians and gynecologists in the Western suburbs of Chicago and soon became one of their most senior and respected members. He was exceedingly esteemed and sought after by the overwhelming core of the medical staff at Central DuPage. He was not only one of the principal “go-to” gynecologists, but he was seen by so very many as a true friend, consultant, and confidant. The foundation for this attitude of trust in Arnaldo by so many, was simply the loyalty that he projected – not only to the Institution but toward all his colleagues. And he was not only a medically gifted, responsible, and loyal colleague to them; he was their friend in every true sense of the word: generosity, affection, integrity, disinterestedness, cooperativeness, solicitousness – in brief, heart-felt concern for their well-being and interests. I can simply say, succinctly, that these were Arnaldo’s “bench-mark” characteristics: loyalty and true friendship. He was a superb clinician, a fine mentor to his younger partners, well read and with a great deposit of medical knowledge, a fine and skilled surgeon, and perhaps as importantly he had a
great capacity for devotion and generosity to the women he cared for and to the medical staff assisting him. I have personally always cherished the memories of the dozens of patients Arnaldo and I attended to and performed surgery on. In his Summa Theologica St. Thomas Aquinas observed that the perfection of order is governed by the attention devoted to the very small details (that’s right, it was St.Thomas who said it, not the devil and not John F Kennedy). Arnaldo was probably not well versed in St. Thomas, but the strength, integrity, quality, and proficiency of his work was based on these small basic details. And all these small details devoted to applying medical skills were somehow amalgamated by an abiding sense of service to his patients. While Arnaldo was not overwhelmingly religious, at least in his outward demeanor, he certainly lived a life and practiced a profession in ways befitting a follower of Jesus Christ – characteristically a sense of service and love for his family, his friends, his co-workers, his patients. For many years he did pro-bono work for the Access DuPage program, caring for the indigent patients who sought medical care at his Institution. He was always amiable, hopeful, charitable, and just. If we consider the virtue of justice as an appreciation of the presence of Christ in others, I believe Arnaldo had the internal vision and capacity to align his life and his work with the esteemed tenets of his Christian faith. Arnaldo leaves behind a large family: Sandra, his loving wife who would have been celebrating with him their 36th anniversary in a few days; Ashley, his beloved daughter whom he would have led to the altar of matrimony in 4 months; Giancarlo, the son who is father to grand-daughter Lily; Rosa Nilda, his mother, and the memory of Roberto, his deceased father; his brothers Roberto (deceased), Jose Juan, Hector, and Walter; his father-and-mother-in-law Ruben and Mirna Miranda; his sisters-and-brother-in-law Marga-Mari, Sylmarie, Hector, and Viviana. He will be missed by all others in the extended family and by so many of us close friends! With sincere condolences and heart-felt sympathy, we join Arnaldo’s family in the conviction that he has now passed on to perpetual reward and eternal peace. And to the joyful reunion with his father and brother.