In Memory of a Lost Brother

“My brother loved Emory,” says Maria Puig, an associate professor and assistant director of the School of Social Work at Colorado State University. She recently honored Eliseo Ricardo Puig 75M’s memory with a planned gift to the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, which will support resident education.

In the early 1960s, when Eliseo was twelve years old, his parents sent him and his sister from Cuba to Florida to live with an uncle. After a few months, their mother, a lawyer, was allowed to join them; their physician father came later aboard a patient’s fishing boat.

The Puig children excelled academically, and Eliseo went on to graduate from Emory’s School of Medicine when he was just twenty-five. He practiced as an obstetrician and gynecologist for more than twenty years in Louisiana.

After retiring, Eliseo moved to Kauai, Hawaii, where, despite being a strong swimmer, he drowned in rough waters.

“My brother was a brilliant doctor. Everyone said that about him,” Maria Puig says. “He had taken all the premed courses by the end of his sophomore year of college. He could have gone anywhere to med school. He was accepted everywhere he applied, and he picked Emory.”