Jeremias A. Andrews

Dr. Jeremias Andrews, took himself from a tiny village in Colombia near the environs from which Gabriel Garcia Marquez gathered his stories. Through dedicated study Jeremias became a Neuro-Radiologist and practiced medicine in the United States for more than thirty years. He passed away Monday, February 13, in West Palm Beach Florida. He was 78.

His early life was modest. Jeremias was the eldest of nine, from the tiny town of El Reten. They had a dirt floor, he studied under a tree, and his father Juan, though uneducated himself, knew that scholarship was the only path out of their predicament. Consequently Jeremias would focus on the bible and school, as those were the choices. His mother Maria and Juan would get up at 4 am to graze the cows, so that Jeremias and the children could go to school.

He was a lover of life, not hedonistically, not dangerously, but carefully and enthusiastically. If he were going to do something he would do it well and with joy. He enjoyed dancing, golf, windsurfing, basketball and tennis. His serves were nasty, with crazy spins that would cause the ball to pop over your head in the apparent evasion of physical laws. He laughed as he danced his own form of salsa, with glee and a shimmy in his shoulders, something he perhaps picked up in his medical school days when on the weekends he would travel all night by bus to go dancing in Cali; only to return the next day for class. Despite or perhaps because of those many over night bus rides he would still manage to graduate at the top of the class. He turned his studiousness and shimmies into scholarships in the United States. Because back in the sixties, that is where you went. Particularly if you grew up swimming in river that aspiring Colombian writers make anecdotes about. Such was the time, and his dreams were as big as rivers, to be a doctor, to get his family out of poverty, to have shoes that weren’t dusty, to own a suit, maybe a car. Like that one that came through town on the dirt street, the only street. Someone said it was called Mercedez.

He is survived by his son David and his daughter Mary and siblings, Anita, Daniel, Dortis, John, Mary, Moises, Nohemy, and Ruth, and girlfriend Betty Fronizer.

In lieu of flowers please make a memorial donation to MDAnderson https://gifts.mdanderson.org/mdanderson/main.php/micro_sites/showpage?id=28 or the glaucoma foundation https://getinvolved.glaucoma.org/donate

Arrangements under the direction of Aycock-Riverside Funeral and Cremation Center, Jupiter, FL.