Monday, October 4, 2021

Good morning, and many thanks to all of you for coming to this very important meeting, I only regret that there are some who wanted to come but due to the constraints of the COVID restrictions, travel bans, personal and health reasons were unable to come, but then there are also those who are averse to coming to an  SPSA Meeting, hopefully we could do enough to change the atmosphere. Danny and I have coapted the unforgettable  MasterCard Ad, the experience in playing with us in our Maharlika Golf Club, PRICELESS!!

We had unfortunately lost a few members, who were regulars and pillars of the Society for many years, in fact they had their imprint and became the face of the Society, wedded to a set of values, that when in this era of the Woke Generation and openness, a little challenge to their authority in the choice of the process made, was too wide a bridge to take and chose to leave the organization, and yet, a change in the way we do things is necessary to survive and prosper in this era.

Let me just cite a couple of examples of how we have alienated members and prospected members over the years. We have a couple of surgeons right in our golfing association, close friends of ours, to attest to it. One said after being asked why he never  became a member of the SPSA and he answered, SPSA don’t recruit guys like me who are from the “boonies”, yet he is a Board Certified Surgeon and an incoming President of the UE Alumni Foundation. The other one replied, the SPSA took me off their list!, and when Danny said, that he was still on the list of members, he said, they have no communications with me.

These are the kind of examples why we have embarked on a monumental task of contacting all members of the Society who are on the list and asking if they want to be contacted and kept abreast about the activities of the Society, without dues of course, but donations will be fine.

Despite all these events, we have made the necessary appointments and  replacements and forged on towards the preparation for the 50th anniversary of the SPSA and to commemorate it, we’ll have a Golden Anniversary Book, by one of the founding fathers, Hernan, with collaboration from members of the Society. Beyond that, we are also celebrating SPSA the “new generation” not the woke generation, we have no need to be woke, just turn on the GPS!

And with that brief introduction, let’s move on to the business at hand.

Honorio M. Cruz, MD, FACS

SPSA President