Neurosurgeon found his ‘Holy Grail’ dream early in his life
As a 6-year-old boy growing up in the Philippines, Dr. Henry Cube became enthralled by the possibility of brain surgery after overhearing his father discussing an article about Harvey Cushing, long known as the father of neurosurgery.
“As young as I was, for some reason it hit me hard; I took it as a Holy Grail,” Dr. Cube told The Daily American newspaper in Somerset, Pa., in April 1994. “I wondered, how can a man operate on the brain? It made me dream and reach for the stars.”
Trained at both Harvard and Yale universities, Dr. Cube (pronounced Koo-bay) saved countless lives as a neurosurgeon for more than 30 years in his native Philippines and in his adopted hometown of Somerset, the county seat of Somerset County, where he was the only neurosurgeon on staff at the local hospital.
“He was an old-school neurosurgeon who traveled where he was needed; you could not get that now,” said his friend and colleague Dr. Joseph Maroon, a wellknown neurosurgeon who serves as a team doctor for the Steelers and as a clinical professor and vice chairman of neurosurgery at UPMC.
“He referred many patients to me, and I found him to be an incredible diagnostician and technically excellent at performing neurosurgery. But, his most outstanding quality was his empathy and his concern for patients. He was always reaching out to others to see if there were any innovative treatments or diagnoses.”
Dr. Cube, 98, died May 15 after a long battle with coronary heart disease at the Buena Park, Calif., home of his son Ian Cube, where he moved several years ago to be closer to his family.
Growing up in Santa Ignacia, in the province of Tarlac, Dr. Cube found himself head of the family at the tender age of 10, after his father died of cancer, said his wife, Dr. Aurora Villanueva Cube, a retired family physician.
“His parents owned a lot of rice fields, so when he was a teenager, his mother sent him to the fields to harvest,” Dr. Villanueva Cube said. “He liked to be with the laborers; he saw how difficult their lives were.”
Dr. Cube never forgot that back-breaking work and during a return trip to Santa Ignacia 60 years later, he trudged into the fields to help workers plant a new crop of rice.
For him, it was a lesson in humility.
“Planting rice can be the meanest of all menial jobs. Your bare feet are buried deep in the mud, topped by several inches of muddy water,” Dr. Cube told The Daily American in November 1996. “This all-day ritual is done in a bending position, under the heat of a scourging tropical sun, or, more often, being soaked to the marrow by the monsoon torrential rains, let alone the occasional booms of thunder and lightning, threatening one’s very existence.”
After earning his medical degree in 1950 from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Dr. Cube was awarded a fellowship at the Madrid Institute of Neurosurgery in Spain.
In 1953, he was offered a residency in neurosurgery by the Harvard Medical School at the Boston City Hospital and continued his training at Yale’s neuropathology department.
“He was recommended by mentor after mentor. He was really a hard worker,” his wife said.
By 1956, Dr. Cube returned with his first-rate education to the Philippines, where he was something of a celebrity as one of only a handful of neurosurgeons in a country of 12 million people.
“He was the youngest neurosurgeon in the whole country,” his wife said. “There were only seven neurosurgeons for the entire country. And he was the only bachelor.”
The couple met shortly before Dr. Villanueva Cube graduated from medical school.
“We met in 1957, two weeks before my graduation, at a conference,” she said. “I thought he was handsome, and he was impressive; neurosurgery was considered the most difficult specialty.”
They married in 1959 and began building their careers, with Dr. Cube teaching at the University of Santo Tomas and traveling throughout the country to consult on difficult cases.
But things changed in the Philippines with the election of Ferdinand Marcos as president in 1965.
“It was bad. There was almost anarchy,” Dr. Villanueva Cube recalled. “There was not much of a future there for our three children.”
By 1971, the couple decided to emigrate to the U.S., where Dr. Cube had been offered a position as a staff neurosurgeon for a medical group in Bridgeport, Conn. Three of the surgeons in the practice sponsored their immigration. The family became U.S. citizens in 1977.
In 1973, they made their way to Somerset, where the couple found a hospital system where both could work. Dr. Villanueva Cube was the first female on the medical staff of the Somerset Community Hospital, while her husband was the first neurosurgeon in residence.
“Nobody wants to practice in a small town, but Henry was different,” his wife said. “He wanted a hometown practice and a small community.”
Due to heavy demand, Dr. Cube had to wake every morning at 3 a.m. to begin his hospital rounds, and he often traveled to area hospitals through snowstorms in the mountainous area.
“He was an incredibly giving person to get up like he did and travel,” Dr. Maroon said. “He and I developed a very close relationship, and he was a very caring human being.”
Her husband’s most challenging case was a teacher who was going blind due to a tumor near her optic nerve,
Dr. Villanueva Cube said.
“It took him 17 hours in the operating room,” she said. “He worked through three shifts of nurses. I assisted him until I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. He was there when she woke up and when he checked her vision with a flashlight, she could see. She was forever grateful; I think that was his proudest moment.”
In his spare time, Dr. Cube enjoyed gardening and even won first place in a garden contest.
After her husband retired in 1987, the couple traveled throughout the world and found time for each other, Dr. Villanueva Cube said.
“He took me to Paris twice, including our 50th anniversary. He took me to Rio De Janeiro for Carnival and to the Holy Land, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” she said. “He used to say, ‘Where do you want to go, amore?’ It was always ‘amore’ to the end. I’ll miss that.”
Along with his wife and son, Dr. Cube is survived by his daughters Rowena Cube, of San Diego, and Jocelyn Cube, of Cleveland; his brother, Dr. Ernesto M. Cube, of Radford, Va.; and two grandchildren.
His funeral was May 26 in California.