Dr. Fernando Antonio Esmeralda Astilla, who delivered thousands of babies during more than 25 years as a New Orleans obstetrician, died Monday at his home in Houston, where he had lived six months a year since Hurricane Katrina. He was 77.
Astilla, widely known as “Dr. Fern,” was born in 1939 in the Philippines. He was a child when the Japanese occupied the island nation from 1942 to 1945.
In 1949, his father was assigned to open a Filipino consulate in New Orleans. His wife and seven children, ages 2 to 12, followed a year later.
The move to the United States was “a significant financial setback” for the Astillas, according to Fernando Astilla’s daughter Lissa Tucker, but they wanted their children to be educated in the United States and to pursue their dreams. The children, including Fernando, “worked from young ages to help the family,” Tucker said.
Fernando Astilla graduated from Gretna High School and the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now UL-Lafayette, and earned his medical degree from LSU in 1966.
He married the former Lourdes Janer in 1965. A native of Puerto Rico, she was visiting an aunt in New Orleans when she met her future husband and never went back, Tucker said.
From 1970 to 1972, Astilla served in the Air Force, stationed at Loring Air Force Base in Maine. In 1972, he returned to the New Orleans area and started a solo Marrero obstetrics and gynecology practice, now the Labadie Group.
Dr. Juan Labadie said he was recruited from Puerto Rico in 1978, as Astilla’s practice was growing. Labadie said he initially rejected the suggestion from his cousin Alberto that he abandon his own young practice to move to Louisiana, “but I decided, for Alberto, I would pay a courtesy call to decline. … I’m still here.”
Labadie recalled that when he arrived in 1978, Astilla was doing cutting-edge work in the use of laser technology for gynecologic surgery, working with Dr. Joseph H. Bellina, who was called “the father of gynecologic laser surgery.”
“When I arrived, he and Dr. Joe Bellina had been developing it for almost a year,” Labadie said. “Fernando was primary in the development of a technology that has become a standard tool. We all were. Someone asked me who taught us the technique, I replied that we did. We learned from each other.”
Astilla was also instrumental in the establishment in 1984 of Meadowcrest Hospital, now Ochsner Medical Center-West Bank.
“We worked together until he retired in the mid-’90s,” Labadie said. “The practice has delivered thousands upon thousands of babies. Everywhere we go — to eat or to a mechanic or to a gas station — people would say, ‘Dr. Fern, you delivered me,’ or ‘Dr. Labadie, you delivered me.’ ”
“The first thing I think of to describe Fernando was that he seemed tireless, and you had to stay on your toes to keep up with him. … He ran a very organized practice and he treated employees like family. He was well-trusted and well-loved.”
Astilla was a fervent New Orleans Saints fan. New Year’s Eve was also a time for celebration, with plenty of fireworks, Lissa Tucker said. He ran three marathons, including the New York Marathon, and enjoyed playing golf.
Pope John Paul II called Astilla’s birthplace in Cebu “the birthplace of Christianity in the Philippines,” and Astilla was a devout Catholic, worshiping at St. Joseph Catholic Church in New Orleans and St. Cletus in Gretna.
Survivors include his wife; three daughters, Lissa Tucker of Montgomery, Alabama, Lena Saavedra of The Woodlands, Texas, and Kristy Christoff of Anthem, Arizona; five siblings, Fenita Camacho of Honolulu, Carmelo Astilla of Kenner, Sonia Tablan of Harvey, Manuel Astilla of Durham, North Carolina, and Maria Valen of San Francisco; and nine grandchildren.