Ricardo Sotomora von Ahn
A pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Ricardo Sotomora established intensive care nurseries for sick newborns. An avid art collector, Sotomora also is a major supporter of many of Arkansas’ nonprofit organizations.
‘Little Rock has just been wonderful to us. that is truly the reason we really believe in making the community better.’
In medical parlance, Dr. Ricardo Sotomora is an intensivist, a physician who specializes in the care of critically ill patients.
Family and friends say the Guatemala native brings the same urgency to everything he does, whether it’s saving newborn babies, collecting art, tracing his family’s genealogy or giving time and money to good causes.
“He can’t sit still,” his wife, Eileen, says. “In every aspect of his life, he is intense. He is used to making life-anddeath decisions right now.”
That energy and focus has led to some impressive achievements. Sotomora and a partner established the first intensive care nurseries for newborn babies in the state outside of Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Over the past 30 years, those neonatal ICUS have treated some 25,000 ailing newborns.
In social circles, the Sotomoras are best known for helping transform the American Heart Association’s annual Heart Ball into one of the state’s premier social events and fundraisers. The Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and University of Arkansas at Little Rock are other institutions that have benefited from their support.
Despite all that, Sotomora doesn’t give the impression of someone in a hurry. On the contrary. His gracious manners, immaculate dress and Spanish-inflected English seem to epitomize the Latin American upper class in which he grew up.
Sotomora, 64, makes no secret of his pride in that background, listing conquistadors, generals, politicians and large landowners among his ancestors. The caste system that his native Guatemala inherited from colonial Spain “made a huge impact on me,” Sotomora says — as did the country’s poverty and occasionally chaotic political environment.
Saturday, the Sotomoras will be honored at the seventh annual Finale
Gala, held at UALR for their contributions to the arts.
“It would be so easy for someone like him to say, ‘Wow, I give so much every day in my job, that’s enough. I don’t need to do anything else,’” says Michael Shelley, a friend and president of U.S. Bank who will introduce Sotomora at Finale. “But he hasn’t taken that approach at all.”
THE ARISTOCRATS
Sotomora was born in Guatemala City, the mountainous Central American nation’s nearly mile-high capital, in 1947. The oldest of seven surviving siblings, he says that hearing stories about the death of his older sister, who was born prematurely, may have led him to his specialty of caring for babies.
But Sotomora says he can’t be fully understood without going further back into his family’s history, which saw Spanish, German and British ancestors emigrate to Guatemala and assume prominent roles in that country. The most important of his ancestors, he says, was his paternal great-grandfather, who went from poor shepherd to cattle farmer and sugar plantation owner with the honorary “Don” attached to his name in the highlands of Guatemala in the 1800s.
“I guess he was just smart and ambitious,” Sotomora says. “His decisions made all the difference for several generations of my family. How one man can decide he’s going to make a difference, that’s always fascinated me.”
His mother’s side of the family boasted large landowners as well as members of the European aristocracy, which is where Sotomora got the “von Ahn” part of his last name, still used in legal documents.
Sotomora’s father and four of his uncles became physicians, most of them finishing their medical training in the United States before returning to Guatemala to practice. Sotomora was largely raised by his mother, who he says was loving but “ran the family like a Prussian regiment.”
He grew up with servants and attended private all-male Catholic schools. Nevertheless, he says, “I was made aware there was poverty if you just opened the door.” He says members of the upper class in his native country weren’t abusive.
But the country’s politics were a reminder that not all were happy with the status quo.
In 1944, reform-minded nationalists overthrew Guatemala’s military dictatorship. In 1954, a Cia-sponsored invasion helped put conservatives back in power. In 1960, a 36year-long civil war broke out, with left-wing and right-wing groups wreaking havoc in the capital and countryside.
One day, as Ricardo waited for the bus to take him to school, the police station a few blocks away was attacked. He calls it proof that he was “already such an obsessive-compulsive person” that he stayed put. “I refused to move off the corner and miss a day of school. I was pretty absorbed in my work, even back then.”
COMING TO AMERICA
Sotomora graduated from medical school at San Carlos University and served as an intern and resident in San Juan de Dios Hospital, the country’s largest governmentrun hospital, deciding to specialize in pediatrics.
About 200 patients were taken to the hospital’s pediatric clinic every morning, many of them infants carried by their mothers. Nurses and residents would walk between the long benches every halfhour to make sure all were breathing and had normal color, he recalls.
Sotomora’s first stop in Arkansas was short. He spent two years at the University of Arkansas Medical Center (now University of Arkansas
‘I refused to move off the corner and miss a day of school. I was pretty absorbed in my work, even back then.’
for Medical Sciences), completing his residency in general pediatrics.
Then he moved to the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis to learn pediatric cardiology. Sotomora trained as a pediatric cardiologist and neonatologist and also earned a degree in physiology.
From Minnesota, Sotomora returned to Guatemala for two years. By then, his father was serving as director of San Juan de Dios Hospital, a presidential appointment. Sotomora found that Guatemala possessed few resources for the kind of advanced pediatrics he was trained to practice; what money there was went for immunizations and treating curable illnesses.
Guatemala’s political situation sealed his decision to return to the states. Two relatives in government service burned to death when leftist guerrillas stormed the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala in 1980. Two more relatives, owners of a coffee plantation, were murdered by the same forces around the same time.
The politics of Sotomora’s family were complex. Despite their historical connection to the Liberal Revolution of 1871 — Sotomora’s maternal greatgrandfather was a brigadier general on the winning side — by the 20th century his closest family had become conservatives. At the same time, a second cousin was a guerrilla leader and commander of the group responsible for the embassy attack.
When the chief of pediatric cardiology at Children’s Hospital telephoned to gauge his interest in a job, Sotomora was ready. At the time of the call, he says he was watching the army bombard a nearby house in which rebel fighters were trapped.
Asked what he misses about Guatemala, Sotomora says, “My family. That’s it.”
THE DOCTORS
In Arkansas, Sotomora divided his time between the intensive care nurseries at Children’s Hospital, teaching at UAMS and pediatric cardiology.
In 1982, Sotomora and Dr. Richard Nestrud left Children’s Hospital to develop full-service intensive care nurseries at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center and Doctors Hospital (Doctors Hospital eventually merged with St. Vincent). The idea was to keep sick newborns and their mothers together. The two nurseries now care for 40 to 60 critically ill newborns daily.
After Baptist started the Medflight helicopter service, Nestrud and Sotomora started using it for the state’s first neonatal transport service. The two doctors flew around the state to stabilize babies and take them to Little Rock, a job that is now done by specially trained teams of neonatal nurses and respiratory therapists.
Sotomora also has a private pediatric cardiology practice, which is separate but related because many of his patients are newborns.
Dr. Terry Zuerlein, who joined the neonatal partnership 20 years ago, pays tribute to Sotomora’s dedication, knowledge and stamina.
“His work ethic is just incredible,” Zuerlein says. “We’re on call an average of 90 hours a week [for the neonatal units]. On top of that, with a moment’s notice he’ll come help us with a cardiac patient. I don’t know anybody who works that hard and makes himself that available.”
About one-third of all newborns in the neonatal ICUS have cardiac problems, which makes Sotomora’s expertise in that area crucial. No more than two dozen physicians in the nation are certified as neonatologists and pediatric cardiologists.
Sotomora, Nestrud and their partners sold their operation in 1998 to a Florida company, now called Mednax, which has the largest group of neonatologists in the world. Within that group, Zuerlein said, the Little Rock ICUS’ rate of successful outcomes ranks in the top 25 percent.
Ricardo and Eileen, a registered nurse who manages his pediatric cardiology practice, met while working in a neonatal ICU at Doctors Hospital.
“We spent a lot of time trying to keep babies alive,” Sotomora said. “We had a good working relationship. And then we learned, after we started dating, that we could do just about anything together. We had the dynamics.”
She had two conditions for marriage: Ricardo would become a U.S. citizen, which he did in 1988, and that they’d never live outside the United States.
Sotomora has three children from his previous marriage — Marisol Kalina, a certified public accountant who works for HBO in California; Dr. Clarissa Turner, a dentist in Memphis; and Ricardo J., who works in Las Vegas. Ricardo and Eileen have a daughter, Charli (for Charlotte), a sophomore at UALR.
The Sotomoras started getting heavily involved in charitable work after his older children were grown.
Their first big effort was the American Heart Association’s Heart Ball. When Sotomora asked his oldest daughter, Marisol, why she hadn’t wanted to be a debutante in Little Rock, she said it was because “they did not support a charity.”
Soon after, he shared his idea of a “debutante ball with a purpose” with the Heart Association. The Sotomoras were named chairmen of the “Sweethearts,” as the participating girls were dubbed.
The Sotomoras served on the Heart Ball’s executive committee for six years, seeing the event grow to raise about $1 million annually. Ricardo received the association’s top award in 2006, and the association also created the Sotomora Community Service Award for the girl who completes the most volunteer hours.
Sotomora said the program has inspired several young women to pursue careers in health care, including his youngest daughter, Charli, who is majoring in biology. Sotomora remembers when she came in from her first volunteer shift in the emergency room at St. Vincent.
“Normally she comes in and says, ‘Where’s mom?’ That day she came in and sat down and talked to me for two hours.”
THE COLLECTOR
Sotomora began collecting art as a way to redecorate his house. It soon became a passion.
His first serious piece was a landscape from the 1600s by the French painter Claude Lorrain. After acquiring a portrait of King Charles II, the Sotomoras started focusing on oil portraits of European royalty and nobility.
Today the great room of their home on River Ridge could easily pass for a museum wing, with valuable portraits surrounding antique furniture, clocks, historical artifacts and more. The historical nature of the paintings appeals to the genealogist in Sotomora.
He accepted a position on the Arkansas Arts Center board three years ago after being asked to host a fundraiser. Todd Herman, the center’s director for less than a year, says Sotomora brings “enthusiasm for our mission with the insights of a serious art collector” to the role.
The UALR connection started with Eileen, who’s a graduate. Christian O’neal, director of UALR’S alumni association, said the Sotomoras helped put together a “Taste of Latin America” event for the association several years ago and have been a sponsor of the annual event ever since.
“When you get Ricardo, you get Eileen, and when you get Eileen, you get Ricardo,” O’neal said. “They are a pair, and their reach is pretty expansive.”
Sotomora traces his interest in classical music to his maternal grandmother, a concert pianist, though he jokes that all efforts to find musical talent in the family since that time have failed. He’d been attending Arkansas Symphony Orchestra concerts since returning to Little Rock when he and Eileen were invited to become patrons of Opus, the symphony’s annual ball and fundraiser. They chaired the event in 2008.
NO END IN SIGHT
Sotomora’s father practiced medicine until he was 75. Ricardo doubts whether he’ll work that long, but he has no plans at present to retire.
He describes his life as a series of important turning points, with his decisions to return to Arkansas and later marry Eileen the best he has made.
“Little Rock has just been wonderful to us. That is truly the reason we really believe in making the community better.”