Obituary of Domingo Juco De La Fuente

Domingo J. de la Fuente of Northbrook, IL and Evanston, IL, passed away peacefully before dawn on Sunday, June 30 in Bloomfield, where he had lived since 2015. Visitation will be from 4PM - 8PM on Friday, July 5 at The Hugh M. Moriarty Funeral Home in Montclair, NJ. a Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 10AM at St. Cassian’s Church at 187 Bellevue Ave. in Montclair.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Ateneo de Manila in 1959, “Babes” (as he became known to his friends and family over the years) completed his medical studies at the University of the Philippines, which included a year on exchange at the University of Kansas. After marrying Elena Gamboa in 1966 and the birth of their first son, Bobby, in 1967, the young family moved in 1968 to Utica, NY, where he had been granted a research fellowship in cardiac electrophysiology at the SUNY-Upstate Masonic Medical Research Laboratory.

Following the birth of their second son, Joel, the family moved west to Chicago in 1970, where Domingo honed his expertise in cardiology over the next 15 years at the University of Chicago, first as a fellow and subsequently as a professor. Settling in the Chicago suburbs, Domingo and Elena had a third son, Benjie. Until his retirement, Domingo maintained a private practice in Oak Park, IL while serving as an attending physician in urban and suburban community hospitals - notably at St. Anne’s Hospital in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago and Westlake Community Hospital in Melrose Park.

His story is a story of a boy, born in the Philippine provinces amidst the strife of World War II, who found his way to the United States - first as a student in the heart of the heartland, next as a young father in the northern reaches of Upstate New York, and finally as a full-fledged American, whose lifetime of serving and treating patients from all walks of life embodied the most humane and noble principles of his profession and of his country.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Domingo’s memory may be made to the American Heart Association.