Manila Standard Entertainment columnist Yugel Losorata, himself a recording artist and songwriter, wrote an elegiac song last year not knowing the piece would take on a personal touch with the sudden demise of his frontliner-brother.
Yugel’s older brother Eulogio Losorata, Jr. passed last Aug. 8. The song in question, “Last Time I Saw You,” was demoed by his band The Pub Forties. A photo montage of the deceased with the song as backdrop had been posted in social media as a personal family tribute.
“He was a frontliner. He exposed me to music and (in 1996) bought an extra ticket so I could see Michael Jackson perform live in Manila,” Yugel expressed in his post the day after he lost his brother.
Quite a number of media colleagues and industry friends expressed sympathy for his loss.
Doc Luigi, as patients and friends called him, practiced his medical profession in the ER departments at Apalit Doctor’s Hospital and Fairview Medical Hospital for many years. Recently he worked double shifts between Our Lady of Rosary Hospital and Manabat General Hospital in Pampanga.
According to Yugel, his circle of co-workers and the patients he treated generally attested for his generosity. He waived professional fees to patients who couldn’t afford and performed circumcisions to hundreds of boys in poor areas for free by way of different medical events and charitable causes.
The Masbate-born Doc Luigi was the second of nine children of Eulogio Losorata, a seafaring radio officer from Leyte, and Amalia Baquisal, a native of Masbate. The family relocated to Manila when he was five. Growing up he developed a love for cars, cooking, and music. He partly taught Yugel how to play guitar.
After taking up BS Biology at Far Eastern University, he continued medical school at Our Lady of Fatima University where he met his future wife, nurse Sheryl Angeles.
They got married at the San Agustin Church in Intramuros in 1997 and were blessed with daughters Kasey, now a registered pharmacist, and Kira, a teenage recording singer-songwriter.
“We chose to begin the process of healing by instead recalling our loved one’s life with fond memories,” Yugel added.
A veteran entertainment print journalist, Yugel has been writing a weekly music column (“Touchbass”) for the past two and a half years. Last July his first e-book (How To Survive The New Normal) was upped on Amazon and Kobo. A number of his compositions had been released as album tracks and digital singles.