{"id":279815,"date":"2026-05-21T19:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279815\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T19:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:05:09","slug":"a-memorial-day-salute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/279815\/","title":{"rendered":"A Memorial Day salute"},"content":{"rendered":"

During his first deployment as a U.S. Army battalion surgeon in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm<\/a> in the fall of 1990, Jos\u00e9 A. Stoute spent his first months in a state of chronic, constant emotional and physical tension.<\/p>\n

The scenario was tenuous. In this early part of the campaign\u2014the ground war had yet to begin\u2014and Saddam Hussein\u2019s threat of using chemical weapons was a major concern for medical personnel like Stoute, who would need to treat any who were exposed. Every night, commanders briefed the U.S. troops and showed maps of the enemy\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just a skeleton army, and it was a huge imbalance. We were facing hundreds of tanks from Saddam\u2019s army and making contingency plans to defend basically to the last man,\u201d Stoute remembered.<\/p>\n

But it was in his second tour, in 2003 during the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom<\/a>, that the full impact of war\u2019s horrors was felt. He was in a leadership position, serving as a colonel and deputy commander for the 47th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, in northern Iraq.<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9\u201cWe were losing 30 to 60 soldiers a month. We were operating this hospital and seeing lots of trauma, and the scenario was even more dangerous because the enemy was not just in front of you; they were all around us,\u201d Stoute said.<\/p>\n

This time, his medical efforts included helping the wounded, friend and foe alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a surgeon, but it was a surgical hospital. Our mission was to support soldiers, but we took in everyone who was wounded\u2014the enemy included\u2014and tried to save lives and support as much as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon leaving Iraq, he remembered meeting and shaking the hand of a young physician who was incoming to Iraq in a leadership position. A few days later, back in the States, he learned that the physician\u2019s helicopter had been shot down and that 11 medical personnel had died.<\/p>\n

As the United States celebrates and remembers fallen soldiers on Memorial Day on Monday, Stoute recalled how experiencing the loss of lives never really leaves you.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw too many young soldiers in our emergency room that affected me more than I thought it would,\u201d Stoute said. \u201cAnd the deaths of this physician and the others. I carry it all in a way I cannot forget. To say the least, it affects you. It\u2019s like looking at a brother or sister that you have lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoute was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the middle of three children. His father served in the U.S. Air Force, and his mother was a nurse. They met in England, and Stoute\u2019s birth in North Carolina occurred while his father was completing paperwork there to retire from the military. Within a month, the family moved to Panama, his father\u2019s homeland.<\/p>\n

As a child growing up in Panama, Stoute remembered being very accident-prone and, on multiple occasions, ending up in the emergency room where his mother worked. Those experiences gave him great appreciation for the healing power of medicine.<\/p>\n

He developed an early appreciation, too, for those in the military. He lived near the Panama Canal Zone and often saw U.S. officers in their uniforms. Though his father didn\u2019t share much about his military memories\u2014years later, Stoute tried to research more but found that a warehouse fire in St. Louis had destroyed all his father\u2019s records\u2014he still held an admiration for his father\u2019s service.<\/p>\n

By 16, Stoute had already graduated high school. He came to South Florida to live with his aunt who was married to a retired Army colonel, a veteran of World War II.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had fought in the Pacific campaign and showed me pictures. I was really impacted and had great admiration for what he\u2019d done. That admiration was in the back of mind when I got into medical school, and I thought, \u2018Well, this is my opportunity to get into this great organization\u2014and they\u2019ll even pay for my tuition\u2014so that\u2019s how I joined,\u201d Stoute recalled.<\/p>\n

He studied first at Miami Dade College, then went to the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he completed a bachelor\u2019s degree in biology.<\/p>\n

He returned to Miami and began his medical degree studies at the University of Miami, financially supported by his military scholarship. He described those four years studying and living in Miami as \u201cmagical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like a sponge learning all these new things and meeting great people, great professors. The vibrancy and enthusiasm at Jackson Hospital with all the eager UM students was incredible,\u201d Stoute said. \u201cDespite the hard work, the challenges, and the academic rigor, it was an amazing experience. I still have many friends, fellow students from my time there.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a member of the army reserves, Stoute was required every summer to do a rotation on an Army base. For his fourth-year rotation, he was assigned to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he was introduced to the study of infectious diseases\u2014an area that would become his medical specialization.<\/p>\n

After he graduated from the Miller School of Medicine in 1985, he completed residency in Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, then entered the military full-time. He was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas for three years when Desert Storm broke out.<\/p>\n

After serving that first time in Iraq, he remembered the feeling of coming home.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou appreciate every molecule that you breathe in freedom, walking down the street, petting your dog\u2014it\u2019s an amazing feeling coming back,\u201d Stoute said.<\/p>\n

After his first deployment in Iraq, Stoute returned to Walter Reed for a three-year fellowship. His training involved working on malaria vaccines and leading trials, including two years of clinical and one year of research, preparing for the next phase of his career.<\/p>\n

From 1997 to 2003, he was stationed in the coastal town of Kisumu, Kenya, near Lake Victoria, the largest of all the African lakes. He spent those years field-testing the efficacy of the vaccines and drugs and studying malaria in children.<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9Stoute was awarded a bronze star during his military service. After retiring from the military in 2008, he continued to do malaria research and taught for 15 years at Penn State College of Medicine. In 2019 he returned to Miami to care for his elderly mother and to pursue a second degree at the University. In 2023 he earned an M.F.A. in motion pictures from the School of Communication.<\/p>\n

As part of his degree, Stoute wrote and directed a full-length feature film, \u201cSt. Vierja Academy,<\/a>\u201d a semi-autobiographical story about his high school years at an elite, rigorous private Catholic school for boys in Panama.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a scholarship to attend because my parents never could have afforded it. When I got there, I was faced with kids from a much higher socioeconomic level, so the movie deals with that and other issues of abuse,\u201d said Stoute, who currently serves as associate chief of staff for a VA medical center in Jackson, Mississippi. \u201cIt also has a message about acceptance of who you are, not pretending to be someone else, and of achieving your goals despite obstacles.\u201d<\/p>\n

A full-length interview of Stoute\u2019s personal history and military career<\/a>, conducted by Patrick Russell as part of the Making History Project, a Florida nonprofit organization that maintains oral histories of veterans, is available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his first deployment as a U.S. Army battalion surgeon in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-279815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}