Fernós Isern, Antonio, 1895-1974

FERNÓS-ISERN, Antonio, a Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico; born in San Lorenzo, P.R., May 10, 1895; attended elementary and high schools in Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania State Normal School, Bloomsburg, Pa; graduated from the University of Maryland, College of Physicians and Surgeons and School of Medicine, College Park, Md., 1915; physician; health officer of the city of San Juan, P.R., 1919; assistant commissioner of health Puerto Rico, 1920-1921, 1923-1931; commissioner of health of Puerto Rico, 1931-1933, 1942-1946; faculty, Public Health School of Tropical Medicine of Puerto Rico, 1931-1935; unsuccessful candidate as a Popular Democrat for Resident Commissioner in 1940; director of civilian defense, metropolitan area of Puerto Rico, 1942; appointed a Resident Commissioner by the Governor of Puerto Rico as a Popular Democrat to the Seventy-Ninth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Resident Commissioner Jesús T. Piñero for the term ending January 3, 1949; elected to the Eighty-First Congress for a four-year term and reelected to the three succeeding four-year terms (September 11, 1946-January 3, 1965); was not a candidate for reelection to the Eighty-Ninth Congress in 1964; member of the Puerto Rican senate, 1965-1969; died on January 19, 1974, in San Juan, P.R.; interment in National Cemetery, Old San Juan, P.R.

<p>Dr. Antonio Fernós Isern (May 10, 1895 – January 19, 1974) was the first Puerto Rican cardiologist and the longest serving Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico in the United States Congress.</p>

<p>Fernós Isern was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, and attended primary and intermediate schools in Caguas. His family moved to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, during his mid-year in high school. He finished his high school education in the Pennsylvania State Normal School. After completing his pre-medical training, he applied and was accepted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of Maryland and earned his doctor's degree in May 1915.</p>

<p>Fernós Isern returned to the island and settled in the city of Caguas where he practiced medicine for two years. Between the years 1918 and 1933 he held various administrative positions in the health services of Puerto Rico. In 1918, he was the Director for the City of San Juan. From 1919 to 1921, Dr. Fernós Isern was the Under-Secretary of Health. From 1921 to 1923, he was the Director of Health in the city. From 1923 to 1929, Fernós Isern was once again Under-Secretary of Health. He was the Secretary of Health from 1930 to 1933.</p>

<p>An “unpretentious and likable physician,” Antonio Fernós-Isern served in the public health sector for several decades, but the high point of his career in public service was his tenure as Puerto Rico’s longest-serving Resident Commissioner in the U.S. House of Representatives. “Resembling an Old World diplomat” in his pince-nez, “Tony,” as he was known to his colleagues, saw Puerto Rico through some of the most transformative decades of its relationship with the United States. A principal architect of the Estado Libre Asociado (Free Associated State, or ELA)—a relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico—Fernós-Isern, along with his close friend and political ally Luis Muñoz Marín, shaped Puerto Rico’s autonomous status for the second half of the 20th century. Regularly defending his American connections and those of his homeland against public and sometimes violent calls for the island’s independence, Fernós-Isern told his colleagues, “Our life, my life, and those of [the people] who now struggle in Puerto Rico, is the American life.”</p>

<p>Antonio Fernós-Isern was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, located in the eastern-central mountains, on May 10, 1895. When he was three years old, U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War. “I watched American soldiers come into my little town of San Lorenzo and raise the American Flag,” Fernós-Isern recalled. “I now know there were only five soldiers. At the time, I thought it was a whole battalion. I made friends with the soldiers. In fact, the first English words I learned, I learned from them.” Fernós-Isern attended elementary school and high school in Puerto Rico before enrolling in a medical preparatory program at the Pennsylvania Normal School in Bloomsburg. He earned his M.D. from the University of Maryland College of Physicians and Surgeons and School of Medicine in College Park in 1915. Fernós-Isern completed his residency in cardiology in 1933 at Columbia University.</p>

<p>Fernós-Isern worked as a physician in Caguas, Puerto Rico, northwest of his hometown, before taking on a series of positions in public health. He served as the health officer for San Juan in 1919 and as Puerto Rico’s assistant commissioner of health from 1920 to 1921 and from 1923 to 1931. He became commissioner of health in 1931 but resigned in 1933 when the Coalición (the Coalition) took power, working on the faculty of the School of Public Health School of Tropical Medicine until 1935. As a member of the new Partido Popular Democrático (Popular Democratic Party, or PPD), Fernós-Isern returned to his position as commissioner of health in 1942, serving during a U-boat blockade in World War II that left Puerto Ricans without food imports and close to starvation.</p>