Dr. Melquiadito Allego Jr., Founder of Bathalad Sugbo
The founder of Bathalad Sugbo or Bathalan-ong Halad sa Dagang, Inc., established on August 19, 1969, is a doctor and a poet. It was while he was studying Medicine in Southwestern University when he organized the ALBICALARIVI Poetry Group (taken from the first syllable of all the members’ family names).
Dr. “June” Allego is a certified nuclear medicine practitioner, having graduated at the SWU Mathias Memorial College of Medicine in 1968. He went to the United States for his internship at the DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, from 1974 to 1975. Then he had his residency for Diagnostic Radiology at the Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. He later took further studies on Nuclear Medicine at the Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital affiliated with the University of Missouri Medical Center in Columbia, Missouri, from 1978 to 1980. Dr. Allego is a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, the American Roentgen Ray Society, and the Bisaya Medical Association.
He is a bilingual poet and writer. His poems were published in the Radiology Journal, the Missouri Medicine Journal, Our Western World’s Greatest Poems, and big publications in the Philippines.
Dr. Allego is a recipient of the Golden Poet Award given during the World Poetry Press in 1985 and included in the “Who’s Who in the Midwest”, XXI Edition, 1988/1989.
His poem “Ang Taknaan sa Bungbong,” placed first in the contest organized by the LUDABI (Lubas sa Dagang Bisaya) in 1964. The writings of the founder of Bathalad, and son of Tuburan, Cebu, were published in 2000.
Dr. Mel Allego married Thelma “Babe” Desquitado, a registered nurse. Their children Carmel, Melanie, and Meljun (Junjun) live in the United States. Dr. Allego, because of his utmost love of the Visayan language and poetry, comes home every year to attend the Bathalad Convention.
In 2012, Dr. Mel Allego was awarded the “Garbo sa Sugbo for Literature” by then governor Gwendolyn Fiel Garcia. During the Golden Jubilee Convention of Bathalad on February 25, 2019, Dr. Mel was awarded as one of the top 15 literary writers in Cebuano in the post-World War II era with the Don Vicente Sotto Memorial Award.
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