Corazon 'Cora' Buenaventura
Registered nurse and first-generation immigrant, Daly City, California
Profiles by Corazon 'Cora' Buenaventura
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Sven-Göran Eriksson (1948-2024) — Sven
Sven-Göran Eriksson became the first non-English manager ever to lead the England national football team, on top of a genuinely decorated club career across Europe, which tells me he spent his whole working life being the outsider brought in to run something that people felt should belong to someone more "traditional." I know that particular kind of pressure a little myself, having spent decades in American hospitals as the immigrant nurse in the room, trusted with people's most vulnerable moments while still occasionally treated as the newcomer. What I respect about a career like Eriksson's is that being the first often means every ordinary mistake gets magnified into a referendum on whether people like you belong in the role at all, and he still built a genuinely respected, lasting career despite that extra weight. I think about him now, near the end of his life, and hope he knew what it meant to people like me watching from outside football entirely — that the door held once he walked through it.
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Sven Hedin (1865-1952) — Sven
Sven Hedin was a Swedish explorer and geographer whose expeditions across Central Asia produced some of the very first detailed Western maps of that region, which when I first read about it made me think of my own journey — not across mountains, but across an ocean, alone at twenty-four, with nothing mapped out ahead of me except a nursing visa and a promise to myself that I'd bring my family over eventually. Hedin's maps opened up the unknown for people who came after him, made the frightening parts a little less frightening because someone had already gone and drawn what was there. I did something like that too, in a much smaller way — being the first in my family to cross, so that my parents and siblings had a clearer path twelve years later. Every explorer's map is really just someone else's fear made a little more manageable. I understand that impulse in my bones, even from the very different distance of a Cebu farm girl turned hospice nurse.
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Erik Estrada (b. 1949) — Erik
Erik Estrada is best known for starring in "CHiPs," and what I find most touching, reading about him now, is that he stayed a beloved figure for decades and turned a chunk of that fame toward being a genuine public safety advocate rather than just letting it fade quietly. In my thirty years of nursing, first in the ICU and now in hospice, I have seen how much a familiar, trusted face can do for people who are frightened — a patient's family will believe a piece of safety advice from someone they already love on television faster than from a pamphlet, and that matters more than people give it credit for. My husband Tom worked as an EMT for years before we married, and he always said the public-safety messages that actually stick are the ones delivered by someone people already feel affection for. Estrada built exactly that kind of lasting affection with an audience, and it sounds like he's spent it wisely, on something that keeps people safe.
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Chloe Kim (b. 2000) — Chloe
Chloe Kim became a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the halfpipe, dominant in her sport at a remarkably young age, which reminds me, in an unexpected way, of watching my own daughter grow into her own competence over the years, that particular pride of watching someone young become genuinely, undeniably excellent at something difficult. I've spent decades in healthcare watching young people, including my own daughter now in medical school, put in the exhausting, repetitive work required to get that good at anything, and there's rarely a shortcut visible from the outside even when the final result looks effortless on television. Snowboarding is not a world I know much about personally, my own life having been considerably more grounded and considerably warmer than any halfpipe, but I recognize dominance built on discipline when I see it described, regardless of the sport. My daughter matched into her residency this year, and watching young excellence like Kim's from a distance has made me think, more than once, about how much quiet, unglamorous preparation sits underneath every gold medal or medical degree alike.
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Elena Vesnina (b. 1986) — Elena
Elena Vesnina won Olympic gold and a Wimbledon doubles title with an all-court game that, from what I understand, meant she never had just one strength to rely on, she had to be genuinely solid everywhere on the court. I think about versatility like that in the context of my own career, which moved from ICU nursing into hospice work after fourteen years, a shift that required an entirely different set of skills built on top of the first set rather than replacing it. Doubles tennis specifically requires trusting a partner completely, reading someone else's instincts as fast as your own, which is not so different from the trust required in a good hospice team, where a nurse, a doctor, and a family all have to move together toward the same difficult goal. Vesnina's achievements are individual in the record books but partnership-shaped in how they were actually won, and I find something quietly moving in that, having spent a career understanding that almost nothing important gets done by just one person alone, however talented.
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Valentina Shevchenko (b. 1988) — Valentina
Valentina Shevchenko built a long, respected reign as UFC flyweight champion known specifically for technical skill and sportsmanship, which is a combination I don't think gets talked about together nearly enough in combat sports, where people tend to assume you have to sacrifice one for the other. I've spent twenty-eight years in nursing watching bodies under real physical strain, first in the ICU and then in hospice, and I have genuine respect for anyone who's disciplined enough about their own body and craft to stay dominant that long without it turning into recklessness. Sportsmanship in a sport built around actual physical combat is a harder needle to thread than in most other disciplines, and Shevchenko apparently managed to be both fiercely competitive and widely respected by the people she competed against, which says something real about her character outside the octagon too. I do gentle yoga myself these days, my body having earned its rest after decades of twelve-hour shifts, but I recognize discipline and respect for one's craft wherever I find it, even in a sport I don't watch much.
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Nadia Murad (b. 1993) — Nadia
Nadia Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her advocacy on behalf of survivors of violence and persecution, and I think about her work with the particular reverence of someone who has spent twenty-eight years sitting with people at their most vulnerable, watching what it actually takes to turn one's own suffering into something that protects other people afterward. That transformation, from survivor to advocate, is not automatic and not easy, and I have deep respect for anyone who manages it without letting the advocacy harden into something bitter. My own faith shapes how I think about suffering more than politics ever has, and Murad's work strikes me as a genuinely spiritual kind of labor even outside any one religious frame, the labor of insisting other people's pain be seen and believed. I came to this country with very little and built a full life here over decades; Murad's path involved a different, far harder kind of survival entirely, and I don't want to compare the two so much as simply say her willingness to keep speaking, on behalf of others, deserves to be named plainly as real courage.
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Wolfgang Puck (b. 1949) — Wolfgang
Wolfgang Puck built a career as a celebrity chef and restaurateur and then used that platform to raise real, significant money for hunger relief, which is the kind of second act I find myself drawn to after decades in healthcare, watching what people actually choose to do with success once the initial climb is over. Food, in my experience, is never just food — I still watch teleseryes with my mother over meals, and in hospice work I've seen more families bond over one last shared meal than over almost anything else in those final weeks. Puck clearly understood food as connection long before he turned that understanding toward feeding people who genuinely needed it, not just people who could afford a nice restaurant. I sent money home for over a decade before the rest of my family could join me here, so I recognize something in anyone who takes what they've built and redirects a real portion of it back toward people with less. It's a specific kind of generosity that requires real, sustained follow-through, not just a nice gesture.
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Hans Zimmer (b. 1957) — Hans
Hans Zimmer's scores for "The Lion King," "Inception," and "Interstellar" are some of the most recognizable in modern film, and I think anyone who's sat with a dying patient and their family in a quiet hospice room knows exactly how much music can carry when words simply run out. I've had families ask me to play certain songs in those last hours more times than I can count, and it's rarely the lyrics that matter, it's the feeling underneath them, which is really Zimmer's whole gift as a composer — carrying feeling without needing a single word attached to it. My daughter is in medical school now, following a path I only got to watch from the outside, and I think about how much of good medicine, like good music, is really about presence rather than explanation. Zimmer apparently built an entire career on understanding that some of the most important moments in a story don't need dialogue at all, just the right sound underneath them, and after twenty-eight years of nursing, I understand that instinct completely.
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Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) — Diego
I am not an art historian, and I'll say that plainly before writing anything about Diego Velazquez, but even I know 'Las Meninas' by sight, the way you know a face from your own family even after years apart -- some images just root themselves in the world's memory, and his clearly did, centuries before anyone had a word like iconic. He painted during the Spanish Golden Age and his portraits are still studied and copied and argued over today, which tells you the work itself carries something that doesn't fade the way fashions and fame usually do. I think about permanence differently than most people, working in hospice as long as I have -- I've learned that very little of what we build outlasts us, and that most of what does isn't what we expected. Velazquez apparently built something that has genuinely outlasted him by four centuries and counting, a kind of quiet miracle when you consider how much of everything else from his lifetime is simply gone. Salamat sa mga kamay niya, I think, thanks be to his hands, for leaving something real behind.
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Julie Taymor (b. 1952) — Julie
Julie Taymor took 'The Lion King' to Broadway with puppetry and design nobody had really seen attempted at that scale before, and became the first woman ever to win a Tony for directing a musical doing it, which means for a very long time the industry simply hadn't let a woman get credit for that kind of large-scale, technically daring vision, even though plenty surely had it. I think about barriers like that from my own field sometimes -- nursing has its own hierarchies, and I failed my U.S. licensing exam once before passing it the second time, an old shame I still remember clearly even now, decades later. What Taymor built wasn't just a hit show; it was proof, permanent and visible eight times a week on a Broadway stage, that the vision could come from a woman and still be the most ambitious thing on the block. My daughter is starting medical school soon, in a field that still has its own version of these ceilings, and I want her to know that someone eventually has to be the first, and that being first is its own kind of hard, quiet work nobody fully sees from the audience seats.
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Rachel Weisz (b. 1970) — Rachel
Rachel Weisz has built her career choosing roles that show complex, intelligent women instead of easier, flatter versions of femininity, and she's put real support behind refugee rights alongside that acting career, which tells me the choices on screen weren't accidental -- some actors just pick whatever's offered, and some clearly have a point of view about what kind of women deserve to be shown as fully human. I came to this country on a nursing visa at twenty-four, alone, and eventually helped bring my parents and three siblings over across twelve years of paperwork and patience, so refugee and immigrant advocacy from someone with Weisz's platform means something concrete to me, not abstract -- I know exactly how much difference visible support can make to people navigating systems that don't always see them as full people either. She's an Academy Award winner by any measure of success Hollywood offers, but the humanitarian work is the part I'd want remembered longer, because trophies get dusty and advocacy, when it's sustained, keeps helping people long after the ceremony is over. Salamat sa kanya, thank you to her, for using it well.
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Christine de Pizan (c. 1364-1430) — Christine
Christine de Pizan earned her own living through writing in medieval Europe, one of the very first women anywhere to manage that, at a time when the idea of a woman supporting herself with her mind rather than a husband's income must have seemed almost unthinkable to most people around her. Her book argued for women's education and dignity centuries before most of the world was ready to hear it, which tells you something about how long some ideas have to wait for their moment, and how much courage it takes to say them out loud before that moment arrives. I sent money home to my family in the Philippines for over a decade before they could join me here, working shifts most people wouldn't want, and I think often about how many generations of women, mine included, have had to earn dignity through work that nobody was rushing to celebrate at the time. De Pizan didn't live to see the world catch up to her arguments, but she made them anyway, on paper, in ink, centuries before it was safe or expected. Maraming salamat, I think, reading her story -- a debt of thanks owed backward through time.
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Samantha Morton (b. 1977) — Samantha
Samantha Morton grew up in the foster care system and became an Emmy-winning actress, and then instead of quietly leaving that chapter behind once she had the career and the security, she turned around and became a vocal advocate for reforming that same system for the children still inside it -- which takes a particular kind of courage, revisiting your hardest years on purpose, out loud, because it might help someone else. I immigrated here alone at twenty-four with almost nobody, and I understand something small of what it means to build a life without the safety net most people take for granted, though my situation and hers are very different in their details. What they share is this: neither of us got handed the version of family and stability that makes life simpler, and both of us apparently decided the honest thing to do with that was use it, not hide it. Anak, my daughter would say, meaning child but also meaning something closer to this matters to me now. Morton's advocacy work matters to a lot of children who will never know her name, and I think that's the real accomplishment, more than the Emmy.
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Brenda Fricker (b. 1945) — Brenda
Brenda Fricker won her Academy Award for 'My Left Foot,' a film about a man with cerebral palsy fighting to be understood and seen as fully himself, and becoming the first Irish woman to win an Oscar doing it is the kind of detail that tells you the performance must have been something true, not just technically impressive. I have spent almost thirty years as a nurse, many of those years in hospice, sitting with families whose loved ones could no longer speak for themselves in the ordinary way, and I know how much skill and patience it takes just to really see a person underneath whatever their body is doing that day -- an actor doing that convincingly on screen is doing, in a small way, the same careful attention I try to bring to a bedside. Fricker is remembered as deeply human in her performances, and having sat with a great many humans in their hardest, quietest moments, I can tell you that word, human, is the highest compliment I know how to give anybody's work, on a screen or in a hospital room.
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Shirley Temple (1928-2014) — Shirley
Salamat, I say, thank you, for people who use one kind of fame to earn a second, completely different kind of trust, because that is exactly what Shirley Temple did -- a beloved child film star of the 1930s who grew up and became a real U.S. diplomat, serving as ambassador to Ghana and then Czechoslovakia, championing global cooperation in rooms that had nothing to do with movie sets. That is not a small pivot. Most child stars don't get a second act at all, let alone a second act built on patient, serious diplomatic work in places going through real political upheaval. I think about my own life sometimes as a series of second acts nobody expected -- a nurse in Cebu who became an ICU nurse here, then a hospice nurse, learning a whole new way of caring for people at every stage. Temple's story tells me something I already believed from my own hospice patients: that who you were at twenty tells you very little about who you'll be needed to become by fifty, and the willingness to become it is the whole story.
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Amy Poehler (b. 1971) — Amy
Amy Poehler made her name being funny, which is its own real skill, but what made me actually write about her tonight is Smart Girls, the organization she founded to help young women build confidence and curiosity and kindness -- three things I watched my own daughter need in different amounts at different ages, and three things nobody can just hand a girl, no matter how much you want to. I raised my daughter mostly alone in a new country while sending money home to family in Cebu for over a decade, and I remember exactly how much confidence costs when you're building it from scratch, in an unfamiliar language, without your own mother nearby to remind you who you are. Poehler used her comedy career's platform to build something structural instead of just charming -- an actual organization, not just a nice quote in an interview -- which tells me she understood that kindness and curiosity need real support to grow in a girl, not just good wishes. My daughter is in medical school now, and I still think, every single day, about who helped build her confidence when I couldn't be everywhere at once.
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Kathleen Kennedy (b. 1953) — Kathleen
In Tagalog we'd say someone like Kathleen Kennedy has malawak na puso -- a wide heart, though in her case I mean it more as a wide reach, because a producer touches every single person who ever sees 'E.T.' or 'Jurassic Park' or an Indiana Jones film without most of the audience ever learning her name. I've worked nights and weekends for almost thirty years as a nurse, mostly unseen work too -- nobody remembers the nurse's name from their hospital stay, only whether they felt cared for -- so I have a real respect for the people who make something huge possible from just behind the frame. Now she leads Lucasfilm itself, which after a career like that seems less like a reward and more like simply being trusted with more people to look after. My daughter is in medical school now, and I tell her the same thing about producers like Kennedy that I tell her about good doctors: the credit rarely matches the work, but the work still matters, and someone still has to hold the whole thing together while everyone else gets to shine.
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Princess Stéphanie of Monaco (b. 1965) — Stephanie
A member of Monaco's royal family, Princess Stéphanie has for years championed HIV/AIDS awareness in the principality, founding an organization that supports both prevention education and direct assistance for people living with the disease. I nursed patients through the worst years of that epidemic, when fear moved faster than facts and families often didn't know how to sit with someone they loved, and I remember precisely how much it mattered whenever someone with visibility chose to speak plainly about the disease instead of letting silence do its damage. A title does not obligate anyone to take on a cause this specific and this stigmatized; it would have been easier, certainly, to choose something more comfortable. That she built an actual organization around prevention and care, rather than a single symbolic gesture, tells me the commitment runs deeper than a photo opportunity. In my experience, the families most grateful for this kind of advocacy are rarely the ones anyone else is watching.
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Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014) — Stephanie
Stephanie Kwolek, a chemist at DuPont, invented Kevlar, a material five times stronger than steel by weight that is now used in bulletproof vests and has saved the lives of thousands of police officers and soldiers who never met her. I trust medical and scientific technology completely, having watched it save lives too many times over twenty-eight years of nursing to doubt it, and Kwolek's invention belongs in that same category of quiet, technical work that never announces itself but keeps showing up, unnoticed, at the exact moment someone needs it. She was working on something else entirely when she found the compound that became Kevlar, which is its own reminder that the most consequential discoveries rarely arrive on schedule or announce themselves as important at the time. Every officer who has walked away from something that should have killed them, because of a vest woven from her chemistry, is a debt paid forward to a woman most of them have never heard of.
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Michelle Yeoh (b. 1962) — Michelle
Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and has also served as a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, advocating for sustainable development and disaster resilience around the world. I cry at every Pixar movie without shame, and I will say plainly that watching Yeoh's Oscar moment land, after a career that spanned decades of being underestimated by an industry slow to make room for her, moved me the same way. My own path to this country took years of proving myself twice over — once to pass the licensing exam, and once, quietly, every shift after that — so I recognize the particular shape of a career that takes far longer than it should to be properly recognized. Her disaster-resilience work since then feels like the natural extension of someone who has already spent a lifetime being tested by circumstances she didn't choose, and who chose, afterward, to help other communities prepare for the same.
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Betty Friedan (1921-2006) — Betty
Betty Friedan's book 'The Feminine Mystique' helped spark the modern women's rights movement, and she went on to co-found the National Organization for Women to push for real, structural equal opportunity rather than sentiment alone. I immigrated here alone at twenty-four with a nursing degree already in hand, and I have thought a great deal, over the decades since, about how many doors were only barely open for women of my generation, in any country. Friedan's work was aimed at a different generation and a different set of doors than the ones I walked through, but the underlying project — naming a limitation clearly enough that it becomes impossible to pretend it isn't there — is one I recognize from my own long career pushing for better conditions and respect in nursing. It takes a particular kind of courage to write the sentence that makes an entire unspoken arrangement suddenly visible. That is, in its own way, its own form of caregiving.
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Susan Sarandon (b. 1946) — Susan
Susan Sarandon, an Academy Award-winning actress, has spent decades supporting humanitarian causes as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, working on issues including HIV/AIDS awareness and disability rights. I nursed patients through the height of the AIDS crisis, back when there was still so much fear and so little accurate information reaching the families sitting at the bedside, and I remember exactly how much it mattered when anyone with a public voice chose to speak clearly instead of staying comfortably silent. Sarandon has kept at that particular cause for a very long time, well past the point when it was fashionable or urgent in the public eye, which tells me something real about the commitment underneath it. Long after the crisis stopped being front-page news, the disease and the stigma around it did not simply disappear, and neither did she. That kind of staying power, in advocacy, is worth more than any single dramatic gesture.
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Jennifer Garner (b. 1972) — Jennifer
Jennifer Garner has served for years as an ambassador for Save the Children, advocating for early childhood education, and co-founded a company focused on sustainable baby food and family nutrition. I spent twenty-eight years first in the ICU and later in hospice, and if there is one thing that work teaches you, it is how much of a person's whole life gets decided in the very first years of it — nutrition, attention, a steady hand. Garner's advocacy sits right at that foundation, the part of a child's life that determines so much of what comes after it, long before anyone can see the results. My own daughter is now in medical school, and I think often about what she needed from me in those very early years to get there. Work like Garner's, aimed at giving other families' children that same steady start, strikes me as some of the most quietly consequential advocacy a public person can choose to spend their platform on.
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Patricia Bath (1942-2019) — Patricia
Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist, invented a laser device for cataract surgery and became the first African American woman doctor to receive a medical patent, work that has improved eye care for patients around the world ever since. I trust medical technology completely — I have seen it save lives too many times over twenty-eight years of nursing to be a skeptic about it — and Bath's invention is exactly the kind of quiet, technical achievement that never gets a headline but genuinely restores sight to people who would otherwise have lost it. My own family sacrificed a great deal so that I could become a nurse in this country; I recognize, in Bath's path to becoming the first to hold that patent, the same pattern of working twice as hard for recognition that should have come easily. What she built outlives any single patient. Every person whose cataracts are treated with tools descended from her work owes something to a debt they'll never know they carry.
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Henry Winkler (b. 1945) — Henry
Beloved for playing 'The Fonz,' Henry Winkler went on to write a popular series of children's books about a boy with dyslexia, drawing directly on his own struggles with the learning difference to encourage young readers facing the same thing. In hospice care, I have sat with a great many families at the hardest moments of their lives, and I have learned that the people who help the most are almost always the ones who turn their own private struggle into something useful for someone else, quietly, without making a production of it. Winkler could have simply enjoyed being 'The Fonz' for the rest of his career and no one would have faulted him. Instead he went back to the hardest part of his own childhood and built a bridge out of it for kids who are living that struggle right now. Ako, that is not nothing — I have seen how much it means to a child to learn that a struggle like theirs did not stop someone from becoming loved.
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Aaron Judge (b. 1992) — Aaron
Aaron Judge holds the American League home run record, which on its own would make for a fine, simple sports story, but what actually moved me was learning about the All Rise Foundation he founded, which supports underserved youth through mentorship, education, and community programs. There's a pattern I've come to recognize after decades in healthcare, watching which families have real support systems and which ones are improvising one out of whatever's available -- mentorship specifically, someone steady showing up consistently for a kid who might not otherwise have that, changes outcomes in ways that are hard to measure but impossible to miss once you've seen it happen. Judge apparently understood that hitting home runs, however remarkable, wasn't going to be the whole of what he wanted his name attached to. My own daughter had people who believed in her before she believed in herself, and I've never stopped being grateful for whoever those people were along the way. It's good, always, to see someone with real visibility using it to be exactly that kind of person for somebody else's kid.
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Gregory Hines (1946-2003) — Gregory
Gregory Hines helped bring tap dance back into the spotlight as a genuine American art form, and what stands out to me, having spent my whole career around people who quietly keep a tradition alive, is that he didn't just perform it well, he mentored younger dancers throughout his career so the craft would keep going after him. That's a caregiving instinct even outside of anything medical -- making sure the next generation actually gets taught properly instead of having to figure everything out alone. I think about this in hospice work sometimes, oddly enough: how much of what matters in any life is really about who taught you, and who you made sure to teach in return. Hines apparently understood that an art form only survives if somebody deliberately hands it down, patiently, person to person, rather than assuming it'll just take care of itself. My mother taught me things nobody wrote in any textbook, and I've spent my career trying to pass along the same kind of unwritten knowledge. Hines did that for tap dance. I'm grateful people like that exist.
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Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) — Samuel
Samuel Johnson sat down and, essentially by himself, compiled 'A Dictionary of the English Language,' a project so enormous it remained the standard reference for the entire language for more than a hundred years afterward. I think about the sheer patience that must have taken -- not a single dramatic breakthrough, just years and years of careful, repetitive work, one word and one definition at a time, long before anyone else could verify whether the whole undertaking was even going to succeed. That kind of quiet endurance reminds me of hospice nursing, oddly enough; nobody applauds you in the middle of it, there's no single moment where the work is obviously paying off, you just keep doing the necessary thing carefully, day after day, and trust that it matters. Johnson wasn't sure, most days probably, whether his dictionary would actually become the standard everyone eventually treated it as. He just kept going anyway. I have a great deal of respect for work that requires that particular, unglamorous kind of faith in something you can't yet prove was worth the years it took.
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Gary Sinise (b. 1955) — Gary
Gary Sinise built his foundation around something I understand in my bones after twenty-eight years of nursing -- the family doesn't stop needing care just because the emergency is over. He's known widely for 'Forrest Gump,' but the work that stays with me is the specially adapted smart homes his foundation has built for severely wounded veterans, and the relief efforts for first responders, because both of those are really about the long after, not the dramatic moment everyone else has already stopped watching. In hospice work, I see this constantly -- the crisis gets everyone's attention, but the years of adjustment afterward, the ramps and the routines and the quiet exhaustion of caregiving families, that's where the real, unglamorous need lives. Sinise apparently understood that instinctively enough to build entire homes around it. My husband Tom is an EMT, and he's told me stories about first responders who never quite get thanked properly once the cameras leave. It's good, deeply good, when someone with a platform remembers to stay after the applause ends.
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George Harrison (1943-2001) — George
George Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, one of the first major benefit concerts ever staged, raising funds and awareness for refugees during a genuine humanitarian crisis, and I think about that kind of urgent, organized compassion a lot in my own line of work. As a member of The Beatles, he already had all the fame he could have used just to enjoy his own success, but instead he looked outward, at people in crisis on the other side of the world, and used his platform to actually mobilize real help for them. My own family didn't come to this country through crisis exactly, but I understand something about what it means to need people who are comfortable to notice and actually act when others are suffering somewhere far away. Harrison's concert became a model for the benefit concerts that came after it, but what I find most admirable is simply that he decided, early, that his fame was worth spending on somebody else's emergency.
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Brian Cox (b. 1968) — Brian
Brian Cox has brought the wonder of space and science to millions of people through his television series, and I think what makes him effective isn't just the science itself but the genuine warmth in how he explains it — the same quality I look for in any good caregiver, actually, that ability to make something enormous and a little frightening feel understandable and even comforting instead. I watch a lot of documentaries with my mother these days since her stroke, and physics isn't exactly her interest, but Cox has a way of talking about the universe that even she'll sit through, which is saying something. His work has genuinely inspired renewed public interest in physics and astronomy, especially among younger viewers who might never have picked up a textbook on the subject otherwise. In my long career in healthcare, I've learned that how you explain something matters almost as much as what you're explaining. Cox clearly understands that instinct too, just applied to the whole cosmos instead of one patient at a time.
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Donald Bradman (1908-2001) — Donald
Donald Bradman's batting average in cricket is apparently so far beyond anyone else's, before or since, that it's become one of those statistics people use as shorthand for total, once-in-a-lifetime dominance in any sport. I don't know much about cricket personally, being more of a basketball household these days thanks to my grandnieces, but what caught my attention reading about him was that he's remembered in Australia not just for the skill, which is obviously extraordinary, but for his sportsmanship — how he carried himself as a national hero. In my years in healthcare, I've noticed that the people who handle enormous success with genuine grace, rather than letting it change who they are toward others, are actually rarer than the success itself. Bradman apparently managed both, the once-in-a-century talent and the decency to go with it, for an entire career. That combination, more than the statistic itself, is what makes a legacy worth admiring generations later.
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LeBron James (b. 1984) — James
LeBron James grew up without much stability in Akron, and instead of forgetting where he came from once the money and the championships arrived, he built a school for kids living the way he once lived — free tuition, free meals, real support, not just a photo opportunity. I've spent nearly three decades in hospitals and hospice rooms, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that what a family sacrifices for a child rarely shows up in the highlight reel. Someone sacrificed for LeBron once. Now the I PROMISE School is his way of doing that for somebody else's kids, at scale, tens of millions of dollars deep. My daughter is in medical school now, and I tell her: talent opens the door, but it's what you do once you're inside the house that people remember. LeBron James is remembered, in Akron, for staying in the house and building more rooms for others. That is a legacy worth having.
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John Legend (b. 1978) — John
John Legend is a Grammy, Oscar, Emmy, and Tony winner, which is already a rare enough combination, but what makes me want to write about him is the Show Me Campaign — fighting poverty and inequality in education, work that doesn't come with a trophy on a shelf. I've spent my career in healthcare watching how much of a person's future gets decided by things they never chose — which hospital they were born near, which school, which zip code. Legend's advocacy for criminal justice reform comes from that same understanding, that talent alone doesn't get anybody anywhere without a fair enough starting line. My own family worked for over a decade, piece by piece, to bring everyone to this country legally, and I know how much a small opening — a scholarship, a program, someone believing a kid is worth the investment — can change an entire family's future. Legend uses his platform to be that opening for people he'll never even meet. That's the real work.
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James Earl Jones (1931-2024) — James
James Earl Jones stuttered so badly as a boy that he went years barely speaking above a whisper — and he became, of all things, one of the most recognized voices in the world. I think about that a lot in my line of work, because I've sat with so many patients and families who thought some wound would define them forever, and it didn't have to. Jones pushed through his stutter with the help of a mentor who believed in him before he believed in himself — sabi namin, may laging nagmamalasakit, there is always someone who cares, if you let them in. He went on to give voice to Darth Vader, to Mufasa, to decades of Broadway and film, using the very instrument he once couldn't trust. My husband Tom loves doing the Vader voice badly to make our grandnieces laugh. Every time, I think of that stuttering boy who became THE voice. Grateful, always, for people who prove a hard start isn't the whole story.
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David Attenborough (b. 1926) — David
David Attenborough has been narrating the natural world for over seven decades now, and I have to admit that watching 'Planet Earth' or 'Blue Planet' with my mother, on her tablet, has become one of our quiet rituals since her stroke — his voice is so steady and kind that it feels almost like being cared for, the way I try to care for my hospice patients. He never stopped being curious, decade after decade, and he never stopped using that enormous platform to speak plainly about conservation and climate change, even in his nineties, even when it would have been easier to just retire and let younger voices carry it. I think about what it means to keep showing up for a cause long after most people would say you've earned your rest. My own mother is in her eighties and still worries about the world she's leaving her grandchildren. Attenborough does the same thing, publicly, on behalf of the whole planet. That's a caretaking instinct too, just a much bigger patient.
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Judy Woodruff (b. 1946) — Judy
Steady is not a word people give enough credit to, but after years anchoring 'PBS NewsHour,' Judy Woodruff earned it the hard way — respected specifically for reporting that was in-depth and, above all, steady, night after night, through whatever the news happened to be that day. I think about steadiness a lot in my own work, because in hospice care, the families I sit with are usually frightened, and what they need most in that moment isn't someone dramatic, it's someone calm and clear who will tell them the truth gently and stay present with it. I imagine there's something similar in delivering the news for that many years — you can't be theatrical about it forever, you have to actually be trustworthy, over and over, long enough that people believe you when it matters most. My daughter is in medical school now, learning her own version of staying calm under pressure for other people's sake, and stories like Woodruff's make me think that quality — patient, sturdy presence — might be one of the most underrated gifts a person can offer the people depending on them.
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Andrea Bocelli (b. 1958) — Andrea
There's something about a voice like Andrea Bocelli's that reaches people no matter what language they speak or where they're from — my mother, who barely speaks English, will stop everything in the room the moment one of his recordings comes on. Ninety million records sold worldwide is an almost impossible number to picture, but I think what it really means is ninety million small moments in ninety million ordinary living rooms, the same kind of moment I've watched happen in my own home. I spend most of my working hours with people at the very end of their lives, and I can tell you that certain music — his kind especially — has a way of reaching someone even when almost nothing else does anymore. Bringing classical and operatic music to that many ordinary people, not just concert halls full of experts, feels like its own quiet form of care. Maganda, we'd say — beautiful — and I don't think that word needs much translating no matter who's listening. Some gifts really are for everyone.
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Teresa Weatherspoon (b. 1965) — Teresa
When I read about Teresa Weatherspoon, I think first of the WNBA's earliest years — how hard it must have been to build something with almost no one watching yet, and to be good enough at it to end up in the Hall of Fame. But it's the second part of her story, becoming a coach and mentor, that speaks to me most, maybe because in my own work I have spent nearly three decades caring for people at every stage of life, and I know how different it is to be excellent at something yourself versus teaching someone else to become excellent too. Passing on what you know, patiently, to the next generation of players — that is its own kind of skill, and honestly its own kind of love. In hospice work you learn that the people who came before you, who built the path a little wider, are the reason the ones coming after have it easier. Weatherspoon did that twice, first as a player carrying the whole league forward, and then as a coach handing it off. I am grateful for people who do both.
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Julia Child (1912-2004) — Julia
Julia Child introduced French cooking to American home kitchens through her cookbooks and her television show "The French Chef," and in doing so she genuinely transformed how ordinary Americans thought about food, not just how they cooked it. I came to this country at twenty-four with a suitcase and a nursing visa, and one of the very first things I remember doing, once I finally had a kitchen of my own here, was trying to recreate the dishes my mother made back in Cebu, badly at first, homesick the whole time I was cooking. There's something about a stranger's cuisine, made carefully and shared generously, that builds a bridge between two very different worlds faster than almost anything else can manage. Julia Child apparently built that exact kind of bridge for an entire country at once, making an unfamiliar cuisine feel warm and approachable instead of intimidating. I think of her sometimes now, teaching my own grandchildren the Filipino dishes I grew up on, hoping the bridge runs both directions eventually.
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Mark Hamill (b. 1951) — Mark
Mark Hamill will forever be Luke Skywalker to generations of "Star Wars" fans, and he's also quietly built a hugely respected career as a voice actor, most notably as the Joker in countless animated productions over the years. My daughter watched those movies over and over as a little girl, back before she got into medical school, and I remember the particular joy on her face every single time, which is its own kind of gift a performer gives a family without ever meeting them. What strikes me about Hamill's story is the second act — not everybody who gets that famous, that young, for one iconic role manages to build a whole separate, respected career doing something completely different with their voice alone. That takes a kind of humility and reinvention a lot of famous people never bother with once the first success arrives. I think there's something almost like caregiving in that, giving people, especially kids, decades more joy quietly, from behind the scenes.
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Fred Rogers (1928-2003) — Frederick
Fred Rogers is one of the few names on this list who feels like he was doing caregiving work, even if nobody called it that at the time. Decades of gentle, thoughtful children's television is its own kind of long-term patient care — showing up steadily, speaking slowly and honestly to people who are scared or confused, never rushing past a hard feeling to get to a tidy resolution. That's exactly the posture I try to bring into a hospice room, actually: sit down, lower your voice, tell the truth kindly, don't perform confidence you don't feel. I think part of why generations of adults still choke up hearing his name is that most of us didn't get that kind of steady, unhurried attention very often growing up, and he offered it for free, on television, for years on end. My own children watched him, and now I notice my daughter, in medical school, still talks about learning that kindness and competence aren't opposites. Rogers proved that on-screen for decades before it became fashionable to say out loud.
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Bruno Mars (b. 1985) — Bruno
I do karaoke completely unashamed of myself, which means Bruno Mars gets more than his fair share of airtime in my house, especially anything from 24K Magic. What impresses me about a song like Uptown Funk is how much craft is hiding inside something that sounds effortless — you don't casually stumble into a chart-topping, genre-blending hit like that, any more than you casually stumble into a Grammy. My daughter used to roll her eyes at how many times I'd replay his songs during long drives when she was in high school, before she went off to medical school, and now I notice she quietly hums them too when she thinks no one's listening. There's something in that kind of music — bright, precise, built to make people move without thinking too hard about why — that reminds me not everything meaningful has to be heavy. After decades of hospice work, where so much of my day is genuinely serious, I've learned to be grateful for artists who are simply, skillfully, joyfully good at making people happy for three minutes at a time.
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Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) — Bruno
Giordano Bruno is the kind of historical figure that makes me think hard about faith and knowledge sitting side by side, which is exactly where I live most days as a Catholic nurse who has also trusted modern medicine completely for 28 years. He was imagining an infinite universe centuries before the rest of the world had the instruments or the courage to follow him there, which takes a very particular kind of conviction — believing something is true long before anyone can prove you right, and long before it's comfortable for anyone around you to hear it. I think about that kind of solitary certainty often in hospice work, where you sometimes have to trust what you know clinically even when a family isn't ready to hear it yet. Bruno's ideas outlived him and turned out to be closer to correct than what most of his contemporaries believed, and there's something quietly hopeful in that, even from a distance of centuries. Being right early is a lonely kind of courage, and I have a soft spot for anyone who carries it anyway.
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Rodrigo Santoro (b. 1975) — Rodrigo
My mother and I watch her Filipino teleseryes together most evenings on a little tablet, and every so often a name like Rodrigo Santoro reminds me how wide the world of screen acting really is beyond what we usually watch. He's built a career that stretches from the stylized spectacle of 300 to the layered, uneasy world of Westworld, which tells me he can hold both a shouted battle cry and a quiet, unsettling pause with equal conviction. That range is harder than it looks — I've watched enough hours of television with my mother to know that convincing an audience in a big loud role and a small careful one are almost opposite skills. Brazilian actors making that leap into major English-language productions always strike me as carrying two audiences' expectations at once, home and abroad, the way a lot of immigrant families do in different ways. I immigrated here alone at 24 and know something about having to prove yourself twice over in a new arena. Santoro's career, from that angle, looks like quiet persistence.
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Alastair Cook (b. 1984) — Alistair
I don't know a great deal about cricket, but I understand endurance, and Alastair Cook's whole career sounds built on it — becoming England's all-time leading run-scorer in Test cricket isn't a matter of one brilliant afternoon, it's thousands of hours of showing up and doing the unglamorous, patient work of staying at the crease when everyone else has been dismissed. That kind of quiet stamina reminds me of the older nurses who trained me back in Cebu, the ones who never seemed impressive in any single shift but who you realized, years later, had simply outlasted everyone by refusing to be rattled. I spent 28 years on my feet in ICU and hospice work, and the lesson I keep relearning is that consistency beats flash almost every time, even though flash gets the headlines. Captaining the national team on top of that record is its own kind of caregiving, really — carrying a team's morale the way you'd carry a ward's. I have real respect for people who make patience look like a skill instead of a limitation.
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Graham Hill (1929-1975) — Graham
Graham Hill is one of those names that makes me think about the families waiting at home more than the trophies themselves. Winning the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans — the so-called Triple Crown, still held by no one else — meant strapping into some of the most dangerous machines of that era, again and again, for years. I've spent my whole nursing life around people facing risk and mortality, and I always notice what a family absorbs quietly while someone else gets the glory: the spouse who doesn't sleep on race weekends, the kids who grow up watching their father chase something the rest of the world calls brave. Hill's achievement has genuinely never been repeated, which says something about how rare that particular kind of nerve is. I don't know his family's story in detail, but after 28 years of hospice work, I've learned that whatever a person accomplishes, someone at home was quietly carrying the worry for them the whole time.
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Colin Farrell (b. 1976) — Colin
Colin Farrell always struck me as someone who found his real gift after the flash faded a little — I think of him going from loud early roles to the quiet, aching work in In Bruges and later The Banshees of Inisherin, and how much harder it is to hold a room by going smaller instead of bigger. My husband Tom is Irish-American on his father's side, so there's always a little extra warmth in our house when an Irish name comes up, even one from Dublin rather than his family's County Cork. What I respect about Farrell's career is the range — comedy one year, real grief the next — because in hospice work I've learned that people who can sit with both light and heavy moods, sometimes in the same afternoon, are the ones patients trust most. He's clearly become one of those actors people trust with anything. Watching someone mature into their best work later rather than early always makes me a little more patient with my own slow chapters too.
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Derek Hough (b. 1985) — Derek
Derek Hough has built an entire respected career, Emmy-winning even, around Dancing with the Stars, teaching people with zero professional dance background how to move well enough to perform in front of a live audience, which takes an entirely different kind of patience than choreographing for other trained dancers. I do a fair amount of karaoke myself, unashamedly, and I understand something small about the particular vulnerability of performing something you're not naturally polished at in front of people watching closely. Hough apparently has a gift for getting nervous amateurs to actually trust the process and improve fast enough to survive on live television, which is really a form of caregiving too, in its own way, meeting someone exactly where their skill level actually is instead of where you wish it were. I see families do something similar around a hospice bed sometimes, learning quickly how to show up for someone in a completely unfamiliar situation. Different stage entirely, but the same basic instinct: patient, present teaching, under real pressure.
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Derek Jeter (b. 1974) — Derek
Derek Jeter is remembered as much for being a genuinely respected leader in that Yankees clubhouse as for the five championships and the Hall of Fame numbers, and having spent decades working alongside doctors, aides, and families in some of the hardest rooms in a hospital, I have a particular appreciation for people whose reputation is built on steadiness rather than just flash. You learn quickly in my line of work who the team actually trusts when things get difficult, and it's rarely the loudest person in the room. From everything I've read, Jeter earned that same kind of trust from teammates over an entire career, not through one big moment but through consistent, reliable presence across two decades of professional pressure. That's a harder thing to build than a single highlight, and it says something real about a person's character when teammates specifically credit leadership over talent, since talent alone rarely earns that kind of description from the people who worked closest with you.
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Bradley Cooper (b. 1975) — Bradley
Bradley Cooper went from the very broad comedy of the Hangover trilogy to directing and starring in something as emotionally demanding as A Star Is Born, and that kind of range takes real discipline to pull off convincingly in both directions, not just the serious one. My daughter's in medical school now, working these brutal hours, and one thing I've noticed watching her is that real competence in one area doesn't automatically transfer to a completely different one — she had to build separate, hard-won skills for each new rotation, same as anybody has to actually earn range instead of assuming it comes free with talent. Cooper clearly put in that same kind of separate, deliberate work to be taken seriously as a director on top of already being a successful comedic actor, since Hollywood doesn't usually hand that credibility over easily. I appreciate anyone willing to start over and prove themselves again in a new register instead of just resting on what already worked the first time.
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Bradley Wiggins (b. 1980) — Bradley
Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist ever to win the Tour de France and collected eight Olympic medals along the way, which as somebody who's worked twelve-hour shifts on my feet for decades, I have real appreciation for — that kind of sustained physical endurance across years of training doesn't happen from talent alone, it happens from a body that's been asked to keep going long past the point of comfort, over and over, for a very long time. Cycling especially seems like a sport built entirely on that kind of quiet suffering nobody sees, hours and hours of training that never make it onto a highlight reel, all so that a handful of races actually pay off. I think about that with my own patients sometimes too, the ones who fought through long illnesses with a similar kind of unglamorous endurance nobody outside the family ever really witnesses. Wiggins got his medals and his records for that discipline. Most people who endure that much never get any medal at all, and I try to remember that too.
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Oliver Stone (b. 1946) — Oliver
Oliver Stone built a career on movies that don't look away from hard, complicated history, Platoon and JFK among the ones people still argue about decades later, and there's something in that instinct I recognize from my own work as a hospice nurse, honestly — the willingness to sit with something difficult instead of turning the camera, or your attention, somewhere easier. Not everybody has the stomach for that, artistically or otherwise. I've spent twenty-eight years in rooms most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid thinking about, and I have real respect for anyone whose whole career is built on making audiences sit with discomfort instead of looking away from it. Stone's films ask hard questions about history that don't always have tidy answers, and I think that's actually a form of honesty a lot of more comfortable filmmaking avoids entirely. My own patients' families sometimes need somebody to just say the hard true thing plainly instead of softening it. I imagine that's a version of what his films are doing too, in their own way.
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Renata Tebaldi (1922-2004) — Renata
Renata Tebaldi was celebrated for the sheer beauty of her voice across a long career at the world's leading opera houses, which is the kind of sustained excellence that takes real physical and emotional discipline to maintain year after year, decade after decade. Naku, opera reminds me a little of hospice work in an odd way — both require you to be fully present in the moment, giving everything you have to that one performance, that one patient, without holding anything back for later. I imagine a singer like Tebaldi had to protect her instrument and her health carefully for years just to keep delivering that level of beauty consistently, the same discipline I've needed on my own feet through twelve-hour shifts for decades. My own mother still watches her teleseryes every evening on the tablet, a different kind of performance entirely, but I understand now, caring for her after her stroke, how much any sustained gift like Tebaldi's costs the person carrying it. Grateful, always, for anyone who gives that much of themselves for so long.
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Yvonne Craig (1937-2015) — Yvonne
Yvonne Craig is remembered fondly for playing Batgirl in the classic 1960s "Batman" series, a role that clearly meant a lot to generations of fans who grew up watching her on screen. Naku, I don't get much time for old television between hospice shifts and now caring for my own mother at home too, but I understand the particular joy of a character who let young people, especially young girls back then, see someone capable and heroic looking like they could be one too. My daughter is in medical school now, and I think about what representation like that means for a young person deciding who they might grow up to become — sometimes it's just one character on a screen that plants a seed nobody even notices taking root. Craig's role in that show gave a whole generation something to look up to, which is its own quiet, lasting gift, even decades later. Family sacrifices for a child's dream in all kinds of ways; sometimes it's a mother working double shifts, sometimes it's just someone brave enough on television to show what's possible.
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Clara Bow (1905-1965) — Clara
Clara Bow was the original "It Girl," one of the most popular actresses of the entire 1920s, a kind of fame that's hard to imagine now given how different the whole industry was back then, cameras and all. Ay, I think about how much pressure that must have been on someone so young, carrying a whole era's idea of glamour on her shoulders with none of the support systems we'd expect for a young star today — no therapist on call, no real understanding yet of what that kind of public attention does to a person. In my years as a hospice nurse I've cared for people from every walk of life, and fame, I've learned, doesn't protect anybody from the ordinary hard parts of being human — loneliness, exhaustion, wanting rest. Bow gave audiences something joyful during a genuinely difficult era in this country's history, and that's worth remembering with real gratitude, even without knowing everything else that was happening underneath the bright lights for her personally. Sometimes bringing people joy is its own quiet form of caregiving too.
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Rosalind Elias (1930-2020) — Rosalind
Rosalind Elias, an American mezzo-soprano, had a long, celebrated career at the Metropolitan Opera, and 'long' is the word I keep coming back to, because a career that sustained means decades of showing up, night after night, taking care of an instrument that lives entirely inside her own body and had to be protected and maintained the whole time. I spent twenty-eight years as a nurse, twelve-hour shifts on my feet, and I understand something about what it means to keep a body performing reliably at that level for that long, though obviously in a completely different way — hers was her voice, mine was my back and my patience, but both require a kind of sustained discipline that doesn't get talked about much once the applause or the shift ends and everyone goes home. A long opera career at a house as demanding as the Met means somebody took extraordinarily good care of an extraordinarily fragile instrument for decades, through illness and exhaustion and everything else a body goes through over that many years. I recognize that kind of quiet, physical devotion when I see it, whatever field it shows up in.
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Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (b. 1965) — Sophie
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, is known for her work supporting causes including sight loss prevention and women's rights around the world, and that particular combination — vision and women's welfare together — feels connected in a way that maybe isn't obvious at first. In my hospice work, I've sat with plenty of patients whose eyesight failed long before anything else did, and I've watched how much independence and dignity a person loses the moment they can no longer see clearly, especially women who were already caregivers themselves and suddenly needed care back. Advocacy for sight loss prevention isn't a glamorous cause the way some royal charity work can be; it's practical, unglamorous, deeply tied to quality of life in a way that only really becomes obvious once you've watched someone lose it. I don't know the details of how her advocacy actually operates day to day, but choosing that particular cause, rather than something flashier, tells me somebody paid attention to what actually helps ordinary people rather than what photographs well. That's the kind of quiet, useful work I recognize and respect from my own field.
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Abigail Breslin (b. 1996) — Abigail
Abigail Breslin rose to fame in 'Little Miss Sunshine' as a child, earning an Oscar nomination at an age when most kids are still learning to tie their own shoes, and she's continued a varied career in film and television since. When I read about young performers like her, I always think about the family standing quietly behind that success — someone had to drive her to every audition, manage a child's schedule around an adult industry, and make enormous decisions on her behalf long before she was old enough to fully understand what any of it meant. My own daughter is in medical school now, and even with her being an adult making her own choices, I know how much invisible support goes into any young person's big accomplishment, how many small sacrifices nobody outside the family ever hears about. Breslin managed to build an actual sustained career after that early nomination too, which isn't guaranteed for child performers at all — plenty of early success fades once childhood ends. Continuing well past that first big moment says something quietly steady about both her and whoever raised her through it.
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Beverly Cleary (1916-2021) — Beverly
Beverly Cleary wrote the Ramona books and the Henry Huggins books, and I have to admit I only really came to know her name properly once my daughter was small and we were reading through library copies together at night, back before medical school and residency took over her whole life. There's something about writing for children that I think doesn't get enough credit — she spent her career giving young readers characters who felt like real, messy, ordinary kids, which sounds simple but is actually a rare gift, being taken that seriously as a children's writer for that many generations of families. My mother and I still watch teleseryes together most evenings now that I'm caring for her full-time after her stroke, and I think about Cleary's books the same way — stories meant to be shared out loud between generations, not just read alone. She gave a lot of families exactly that kind of quiet, shared evening. Salamat, Beverly Cleary, from every parent who ever read one of your books until their voice gave out.
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Marina Silva (b. 1958) — Marina
Marina Silva grew up in poverty in Brazil and became one of the world's leading voices for protecting the Amazon rainforest, eventually earning the Right Livelihood Award for it, and this is the kind of story that genuinely moves me, someone starting with nothing and ending up defending something as enormous as an entire rainforest ecosystem. I immigrated here alone at 24 with very little myself, sent money home for a decade before my family could join me, so I have a real feeling for what it costs, personally, to build something meaningful when you started with almost no resources at all. Protecting the Amazon isn't a quiet job either — it's the kind of advocacy that puts a target on you, and she kept doing it anyway. I see a version of that same stubborn devotion in my hospice patients sometimes, people who fight for something bigger than their own comfort right up until the very end. Silva's still out there fighting for hers while she's living it, which is its own kind of grace.
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Louise Brooks (1906-1985) — Louise
Louise Brooks was one of the great faces of the silent film era, a dancer and an actress whose bobbed haircut alone became a whole style movement, decades before anyone had a word for 'iconic.' What strikes me, working in healthcare where I see a lot of women who never got recognized properly for their gifts in their own time, is how many silent-era actresses like her only got their full due much later, once people looked back and finally understood what they'd actually done. I think of my own mother that way sometimes, quiet talents nobody wrote down properly at the time. Brooks apparently kept her presence and her particular style so distinctive that it outlasted the entire silent film era itself, still influencing how people think about screen glamour today. I don't watch much silent film myself — give me a Filipino teleserye with my mother any day — but I respect a woman whose look became a lasting symbol long after the medium that made her famous had already moved on without her.
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Emilio Estevez (b. 1962) — Emilio
Emilio Estevez became known through The Breakfast Club and The Mighty Ducks, part of that whole 1980s group they called the Brat Pack, and what I notice, maybe because I'm a nurse and I notice families out of habit, is that he comes from an actual Hollywood family — his father is a well-known actor too. There's a whole quiet story in that, about what it means to grow up watching someone you love do the work first, and then finding your own way to do something similar but still your own. My daughter is in medical school now, following a path that isn't mine but rhymes with it, and I think about that kind of inheritance a lot — not the fame part, just the part where a young person watches somebody they admire and decides, quietly, I could do a version of that too. Estevez built a career people still recognize decades later, in two different roles behind and in front of the camera. Salamat sa mga magulang — thank you to the parents — who make that kind of reach possible.
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Curtis Mayfield (1942-1999) — Curtis
Curtis Mayfield's music has the kind of moral seriousness underneath it that I associate with the hymns I grew up with, which isn't an accident — "People Get Ready" pulls straight from that same gospel well, wrapped in soul and funk instead of a church choir. I'm not big into politics in my writing, but decades of healthcare work have made me fiercely protective of anyone using their gift to speak for people who don't usually get spoken for, and that's plainly what he was doing during the civil rights era with every socially conscious record he made. There's something in his voice that sounds like it's comforting someone even while it's also asking something hard of them, which, again, is a very familiar balance to me from hospice rooms — you can deliver difficult truths and still be tender doing it. My mother would have loved the harmonies even without understanding every lyric; music like that travels past language sometimes. I think the artists who keep getting rediscovered decades later, the way he has, usually earned it by meaning what they sang.
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Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) — Terry
Terry Pratchett's later chapter is the one that stays with me most, because I've spent 28 years sitting with families as illness changes who someone is, and his public honesty about Alzheimer's did something rare — it let people laugh and grieve about the same disease in the same breath. That's a very difficult balance, and it's the exact balance I try to strike every day in hospice work: you don't have to choose between humor and heaviness, and pretending otherwise usually makes both harder to bear. Before any of that, of course, he built an entire beloved fantasy world in the Discworld books out of wit sharp enough to survive being read for decades, which tells me the same mind that could imagine an absurd universe could also look unflinchingly at his own decline and describe it clearly for other people's benefit. I'm Catholic and think about illness and mortality in spiritual terms more than most of my colleagues do, but I recognize real grace when I see it, however it's dressed, and his was dressed in comedy most of the time.
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Ralph Fiennes (b. 1962) — Ralph
Ralph Fiennes is one of those actors whose range genuinely startles me every time I'm reminded of it — the same man who brought such devastating weight to Schindler's List went on to play a villain children could recognize from the Harry Potter films, and somehow both performances hold up as serious work. In hospice care I've learned that holding heaviness and lightness in the same hands, sometimes in the same week, is one of the hardest skills there is, and I don't think it's so different for an actor moving between that kind of historical gravity and a fantasy franchise built for families. I don't know much about his personal life, but I respect longevity across genres more than I respect any single big performance, because it means someone kept working hard long after the obvious choice would have been to stay in one lane. My husband Tom likes his stage work more than I do; I'm the one who'll admit I mostly know him from the roles that made me cry. Either way, that's a career built on real craft, sustained a long time.
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Pearl Kendrick (1890-1980) — Pearl
As a nurse of nearly thirty years, I have held so many children through fevers and coughs, and I think often about how much suffering was simply normal before people like Pearl Kendrick did the patient, unglamorous laboratory work to change that. She helped create the first vaccine that actually worked against whooping cough, and I think about the parents of my generation's grandparents who lost children to that cough, back when there was nothing anyone could do but sit with the family through the night. My own mother back in Cebu used to tell me about siblings who did not survive childhood, and it was never one dramatic thing, just illnesses we now barely think about because women like Dr. Kendrick did the careful work in a lab that nobody applauds the way they applaud a surgeon. In hospice now I see the ends of long lives, but I never forget that a long life is itself a kind of miracle scientists like her made ordinary. Sipag at tiyaga, we say — diligence and patience. That is her whole story, I think.
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Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) — Dorothea
In nursing school in Cebu, and later here in America, we were taught that patients deserve dignity regardless of their diagnosis, and reading about Dorothea Dix I recognize a very early version of that same fight. She spent her life advocating so people with mental illness would be treated humanely at a time when they were often simply locked away and forgotten, and her tireless work led to dozens of hospitals being built across two continents. In hospice care now, I sit with families at the hardest, most vulnerable moments of a person's life, and I think Dix understood something that took the rest of the world much longer to learn — that how we treat the most vulnerable among us says everything about who we actually are. My own faith teaches something similar, that dignity is not something a person earns by being well or capable, it is simply owed. Reformers like her rarely get remembered with warmth, mostly just footnotes, but I think the hospitals still standing today are warmth enough, in their way.
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Leon Spinks (1953-2021) — Leon
My husband Tom, who was an EMT for years, always said boxing produces some of the most improbable stories in sports, and Leon Spinks is certainly one — an Olympic gold medalist who became world heavyweight champion in only his eighth professional fight, beating Muhammad Ali of all people. I confess I do not follow boxing closely, my Saturdays were mostly consumed with weekend shifts to send money home to my family in the Philippines for many years, but I understand something about a sudden, rapid rise that the person underneath it has to somehow catch up to emotionally. My own family's whole trajectory changed dramatically once I was finally able to petition to bring my parents and siblings here after twelve years of paperwork and waiting — a slow rise, unlike his fast one, but I recognize the feeling of your circumstances outrunning what you're prepared for. Whatever came after for him, that eighth fight remains a genuinely remarkable thing to have accomplished, and I hope he knew, at least in that moment, how rare it was.