Mayor, doctor, baker rolled into one

I’d heard good things about him. He is an orthopaedist who became city mayor, who paints, plays the piano, raises flowers and herbs in a farm, and is currently making with his own hands a brick oven for baking pizza and bread. I finally met him in a mutual friend’s house last week.

He is Dr. Ferdinand Amante Jr., a 69- year-old bone surgeon who was once a punong barangay in the town of Ampayon, and mayor of Butuan City for two terms. Butuan is a first class, highly urbanized city in Agusan del Norte, and the regional center of Caraga (Region XIII).

He had been practicing his specialization for 18 years when he decided to enter public service.

Ferdie, as he is popularly called, first ran and won as punong barangay of Ampayon in the 2007 local election. When he ran for mayor in 2010, he won. “It was not a landslide victory because I was a newcomer and I was up against a political dynasty in our region,” he told me. He ran for the same post again in 2013, and won.

“I believed that one has to be an agent for change in society. And this has become a moral aspiration for me. Jesus Christ commands us to be the salt and the light of the earth. To effect a greater impact would be to become the local chief executive in the city, and to influence more people in a shorter time.”

Under his leadership (2010-2016) the number of business establishments doubled during the first three years of his term; illegal logging was stopped due to a combined public and private partnership in support of former President Noynoy Aquino’s logging ban; the public and private sectors planted ten million trees in keeping with the Plant Millions of Trees national program. As a result of the city’s policy of good governance and transparency, Butuan was declared by the Institute for Solidarity in Asia as one of “Islands of Good Governance.”

Ferdie ran in the 2016 city election but his time has passed, and he turned over the mantle to the present mayor, who I am told, is also doing a good job. So Ferdie is back full time to his medical practice. After nine years in public service, he thought his surgical decision-making and skill would be diminished. It did not. He said, “Having been a surgeon for 18 years prior to my political career the transition from public service to private practice was smooth.”

But his being chief executive of a thriving city (Butuan population: 337,063 according to the 2015 census)  opened his eyes to the needs of the less privileged. “There was a transformation in me – I learned to appreciate more deeply each case, especially those patients who can hardly afford medical services. I witnessed the prevalence of financial difficulty in the community which a local chief executive never fails to observe and internalize.”

Ferdie’s brother, Samuel Allan, also dabbled in politics. He won as punong barangay (2010-2013), and was No. 1 in the Sangguniang Panglungsod election (2013-2016). He owns “Uncle Sam’s,” known as serving the best burger and crispy spare ribs in the region.

Ferdie’s late father was a civil engineer and his mother, Tellie Magdamo, a Silliman alumna, teaches music and English. Aside from their two sons, they have a daughter, a registered nurse, living in Colorado, USA.

Ferdie finished medical technology at Silliman University and the medical course at UV-Gullas College of Medicine in Cebu City.

Now half of Ferdie’s practice is in Butuan City, the other half in Gingoog City, an hour-and-a-half ride west of Butuan. “I like practicing in Gingoog City with Lipunan Hospital as my base. Gingoog is an orthopeaedic frontier since no orthopaedic fellow has established his/her practice in this fast growing city.”

Butuan City, he said, “shares with the common diseases in the country – heart and lung diseases are the most common. Diabetes is also on the rise; also malignancy. As far as trauma is concerned, vehicular accidents are very common what with the increasing easy access to affordable motorcycles and establishment of concrete highways to and from any part of the city.”

“Majority of osteoporosis are in women. This is because as women get older, they progressively increase their tendency to lose calcium from the bones as the hormone estrogen secretion diminishes over time and eventually the ovaries stop producing it in menopause. As life expectancy nowadays has increased, so does the incidence of osteoporosis and its dreaded complications.

Ferdie’s wife, Ivy, is a clinical nurse and partner in his private practice. They were part of a medical outreach program known as “Loving Presence Foundation.” Together they extended their practice to Bislig in Surigao del Sur, to surgically correct and reconstruct pediatric patients with clubfoot and other extreme deformities like poliomyelitis and cerebral palsy – all for charity.

At present, the doctor works with other orthopaedic surgeons in Butuan to support a program launched by the Department of Orthopaedics of the Philippine General Hospital where he trained, known as Fracture Liaison Service aimed to capture early and fix immediately fractures particularly of the hip in the elderly. In consonance with the other specialties in the hospital, this is aimed to prevent the complications of osteoporosis-related bone fractures.

Ferdie and Ivy have three children: Theresa Isabel, 21, a registered medical technologist who plans to pursue a medical degree; Fernando Mateo, 19, who is taking up pastoral studies leading to minister, and Joshua Miguel, who will take up foreign studies this year.

Ferdie tries to paint using any medium available, from watercolor to acrylic and oil, to oil pastel, colored pencil and even coffee as alternate medium. He also sings and plays some instruments and bakes pizza and bread.

He and Ivy are often in their farm in Civoleg, in the foot of Mt. Sumagaya (Lumot) in Barangay Lunotan, a picturesque haven 3,500 ft above sea level. The night temperature can easily go down to 16 degrees centigrade. They plant vegetables, herbs, flowers, and some pine trees.

They have just returned to Butuan after 97 days of being locked down by the coronavirus in Quezon City. To break the monotony Ferdie learned to prepare and cook chicharon and Ivy to make ice cream, and they cultivated the backyard into a garden. “Of course, we regularly watched live-stream church worship and listened to sermons in You Tube.”

“One good thing that COVID-19 has done to us is that we became closer to God as our healer and hope,” said Ferdie. “It is our hope through our faith that He will continue to sustain us over this highly contagious disease.”

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