Born to Serve

When I met Al Bismonte for the first time, it was at his home on Marco Island on a Thursday, which meant he was dressed for bingo at San Marco Catholic Church. His blue Knights of Columbus polo shirt was neatly tucked into his khaki pants, and sneakers on his feet. He wasn’t going to the church to play bingo. He was going to serve as a volunteer helping run the weekly game.

A devout Catholic, Bismonte is a fixture at the church. He unlocks the church doors each morning at 6:30, runs home for a quick breakfast, and arrives back at the church for the rosary at 7:20 and daily mass at 8:00. He’s a eucharistic minister and an altar server. “I’m the oldest server there,” he says with a laugh.

All of that tracks with what I learned in the hour I spent talking with Bismonte about his life of service. A retired pediatrician, Bismonte has for years made repeated medical mission trips to Baao, the town in the Philippines where he was born and raised, to provide residents there with free medical care from the ancestral home that he grew up in.

When asked about the inspiration behind his life of service and healing, he cites his time as a young man in the Boy Scouts in the Philippines. “I was the first aider,” he says, tending to the cuts and scrapes of his fellow scouts. “That started me liking how to treat people,” he says. “It is such a good feeling helping somebody who is hurt.”

For much of his adult life, Bismonte found it difficult to return to Baao, where he still has family in the region. “After my parents died, I lost all desire to go back,” he says. “It just hurt me because they weren’t there anymore.”

After he retired in 2003, he eventually returned home to visit his sister. Some of the local residents of Baao, hearing he was a doctor, started bringing their children to him for care. Unfortunately, most of his patients couldn’t afford the prescriptions for medication and lab work that he wrote. “It was frustrating,” he says. “You’re trying to help, but there’s no accomplishment.”

So, he talked to his sister about returning the next year on a proper medical mission, including free medicine he was able to gather from samples given to him by his colleagues. “Whatever medicine I did not have, I’d write a prescription, and at the end of my mission, I paid the pharmacy for all the prescriptions I wrote,” he says.

Bismonte returned for 11 straight years until the pandemic shut the world down in March 2020. He was literally in the Philippines that February, just prior to the lockdown, still anticipating a return the following year. “I told everyone, ‘See you next year,’” he says. 

Instead, he took the next several years off as the world sputtered back to normalcy and while he nursed a heart condition and spinal stenosis.

This January, Bismonte returned to Baao for the first time since the pandemic and plans to continue returning each January. “I like January for two reasons,” the 87-year-old Bismonte says. “First, in January, it’s not as hot. It’s also not the rainy season.”

He buys some of his supplies from the Marco Island Dollar Store and supplements his own donations with additional financial help from his colleagues at the Knights of Columbus and Rotary. He flies coach for the multi-leg, 26-hour trip from RSW to Baao, always in the aisle seat. “I take a diuretic and have to go to the bathroom frequently,” he says. “I don’t want to wake up my seatmate through the night.”

Bismonte likes to recite the mottos and slogans of the organizations that have shaped his worldview. “With Rotary, it’s ‘service above self.’ With the Knights of Columbus, it’s ‘service to God and service to all.’ With the Boy Scouts, it’s ‘do a good turn daily,’” he says.

That last one really struck a chord with me. When Bismonte told me how important scouting was in his early life, I told him I’m an Eagle Scout and agreed with him that it was a fundamental part of my own upbringing, in some ways more central to my life than even family and friends during my teen years. He congratulated me and walked me to the wall in his living room that’s covered with the many honors and awards he’s received throughout his storied life.

There, on a shelf, is a photo of his grandson at his Eagle Scout Court of Honor. 

Boy Scout meetings start with all the scouts standing and repeating the scout law, which is: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

A perfect description of Al Bismonte.

Brad Shaw retired in 2015 after 25 years in corporate communications. He and his wife Mary are full-time Marco residents and spend their time volunteering, boating, cooking, reading and hanging out with friends and family. If you have an idea for Brad’s column, reach out to him at brad@coastalbreezenews.com or 404-274-4834.