Frank Lugo Acosta Jr. M.D.

Frank Lugo Acosta, Jr., M.D. Always left in an impression — brilliant smile and smarts. As a tiny one he was fascinated with the mechanisms at car washes and on trash trucks. As a five-year-old he was the star of his soccer team, he was fast and precise. By age eight, it was obvious his mind was also fast and precise. He loved math, he also regularly beat his grandpa at checkers.

St. Alphonsus School, was a happy home for him, he was the humble kid, who girls liked, and he could tutor the big kids without any problems. When something was interesting, he’d put forth unwavering focus. One summer he got so good at shooting hoops, that when fiesta time came around, he could win prizes on demand, something he did not like being asked to do.

He set his focus on Don Bosco Technical Institute for high school and it turned out the world of science, precision, counting units and checking them twice, was his sweet spot. He excelled. Checkers became chess and the world enormous. Not many kids get accepted to every school in the Ivy League, plus Stanford, but he did. He chose Harvard and it was there he met his first love, chemistry. He made time to tutor in math and physics at the local high school. There was comfort and camaraderie found by joining Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity, the only Latino fraternity to be chartered at all the Ivy League universities.

He stayed at Harvard for medical school, and was non-plussed when his classmates chided him
for overdoing assignments, accusing him of submitting everything as a solved problem set. He was convinced that chemistry was elegant. He spent time trying to bring back the word “dames,” but it didn’t take. He was recently pleased to learn that that the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society at Harvard Medical School is newly named in honor of William Augustus Hinton. Holmes, though distinguished had unsavory theories on race, Hinton also a distinguished Harvard faculty member and alumnus, was prevented from being a surgeon because of his race. At medical school Frank was assigned to the Holmes Society, he liked the idea of being part of Hinton now.

When it came time to chose a medical specialty he choose the rigorous path of neurosurgery. His expertise is that mysterious casing that protects the spinal cord, that part of our anatomy, that when properly working allows us to walk upright and move pain free, among other things. With his focus on spine deformity and complex reconstructive spine surgery, it’s fair to say, that there are people today, who have mobility they didn’t have before, or less pain, or maybe even are pain free, because of Frank’s discipline, focus and precision.

On his last day the air was clear, the sun was bright, the ocean endless and he gave his last tutoring lesson to his little daughter Nya. The subject: the force of gravity in the ocean and the powerful vortex it created. Frank explains a vortex as basically a whirling black hole in the ocean, one so strong that nothing could stop it, if it wanted to take something, nothing had a chance, it was stronger than everything. He was all about the science, but he also, never lost his faith and always believed in its beautiful redemptive mystery. He ended the lesson that day with a question: if the ocean is that powerful, then how powerful must God be?

For the broken-hearted he leaves behind there is consolation knowing he was fiercely loved by his grandfather Robert Márquez and his great-grandmother “gramita” Refugio González, certainly they are making his journey easier. He is survived by, daughter, Nya Maria Acosta; mother, Martha L. Campbell; father, Frank L. Acosta, Sr., and Ilona Peltyn; grandmother, Antonia Márquez; sister and niece Monique and Sydney Acosta; aunt and uncle Susanne and Robert Garcia; aunt and uncle, Michele Márquez and Kent Borg; uncle, Antonio M. Campbell; partner, Angelita Roman; and a large extended family of cousins, aunts, close friends, and dear pets.

 

 

Donations may be sent to:
Don Bosco Technical Institute
RE: Dr. Frank Acosta Endowed Scholarship
1151 San Gabriel Blvd.
Rosemead, CA 91770