Edward Zapanta, 63; Trustee for USC and Neurosurgeon

Dr. Edward Zapanta, Los Angeles neurosurgeon, first Latino member of the USC Board of Trustees and a founder and fund-raiser for the school’s highly successful Mexican American Alumni Assn., has died. He was 63.

Zapanta, who had been ill since suffering a stroke last summer, died Sunday in Pasadena of a malignant brain tumor.

Prominent in business and community circles as well as education, Zapanta took his seat on the USC board in 1984. The same year, he was elected to the board of Southern California Edison Co. In 1988, he joined the board of Times Mirror Co., former parent of The Times, now owned by Tribune Co., and in 1999 he was elected to the board of East West Bancorp Inc.

Since 1988, Zapanta had also served on the board of the James Irvine Foundation, which in November endowed the Edward Zapanta Scholarship, enabling Latino and other students in economic need to attend USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

The USC Mexican American Alumni Assn., which Zapanta and seven others founded in 1974, is now considered the largest organization of its kind in the nation, USC officials said. The group has awarded more than 5,000 scholarships totaling more than $8.8 million.

Raul Vargas, co-founder and executive director of the group, said in a statement that when scholarships were not enough, Zapanta would often send a personal check to keep some struggling Latino medical student from dropping out of school.

When a check wouldn’t do the job, Zapanta would personally give a student a pep talk as he invited him to tag along on hospital rounds.

“The support and vision of the Zapantas [Edward, his brother Richard, an orthopedist, and his cousin Al, a businessman] has been key to our success,” Vargas said.

Zapanta, named one of Hispanic Business magazine’s 100 most influential Hispanics in 1997, received the merit award of USC’s general Alumni Assn. in 1988 for his efforts in mentoring young people.

“If a student is competitive enough to go to USC, we do not want to deny him that chance to go because of financial need,” Zapanta told The Times in 1984 during one of his forays to East Los Angeles to counsel Latino students with records of poor grades and truancy.

Although they had no doctors or other professional role models in their youth, Zapanta and his younger brother had parents who encouraged their education. Their father, Gregory, worked as an auto mechanic to fund Edward’s undergraduate study at East Los Angeles Community College and UCLA.

And Zapanta’s mother, Adeline, who dropped out of high school during the Depression, became a special inspiration and adjunct educator for both her sons. She obtained her high school diploma and, when the family moved across the street from East Los Angeles College, she began taking classes there. Eventually she earned a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine University and a nursing diploma from Queen of Angels Hospital and worked as a nurse in her younger son’s office.

For her boys, Adeline Zapanta converted her small dining room into a study hall, painting one wall to serve as a blackboard.

“It was such an important part of life to have their own little niche where they could sit down and have everything for studying at their fingertips,” she told The Times in 1984. “When it came to reference books, even if we had to scrimp, they had it.”

Zapanta became such a diligent student that his family said during college years he spent the weekends doing nothing but studying--stopping one New Year’s Day, his birthday, only to have a piece of the cake his friends brought over.

When he entered what is now USC Keck School of Medicine, Zapanta was the only Latino in his class. But he said the only real prejudice he experienced was his own--a factor that made him work throughout his life to improve Latinos’ self-image.

“I felt different, you know, being dark ... ,” he told The Times. “I guess it was my own prejudice because the thought that ‘I am not good enough’ had always been a perception that I had.... I never experienced any prejudice.”

When his family could no longer afford Zapanta’s medical school bills, a local Latino doctor named Jorge Hoyos gave him a $5,000 scholarship. The benefactor suggested he “pay it forward” or help other Latino students in the future.

Zapanta graduated from USC Medicine in 1963 and 25 years later was named its alumnus of the year. After serving two years as a captain in the Air Force stationed at Clark Hospital in the Philippines, Zapanta completed his residency in neurological surgery at County-USC Medical Center.

In private practice, he founded and served as chairman of the board and medical director of Universal Medi-Co, Southern California Physicians Medical Group and then Zapanta Medical Group. Since 1992 he had been senior medical director at HealthCare Partners medical group.

He was a clinical professor of neurological surgery at the Keck School and served on its boards of overseers and USC Care Medical Group Inc.

Zapanta is survived by his wife, Norene Murray Zapanta; four children, Jennifer McGibbons and Michael, Stacey and Timothy Zapanta, and his brother, Richard.

A Mass will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. Philip’s Catholic Church, 151 S. Hill St., Pasadena.

The family has asked that, instead of flowers, memorial donations be made either to the Edward Zapanta Medical Scholarship Fund, Keck School of Medicine, USC-MAAA Student Union Building #203, Los Angeles, CA 90089-4890 or to St. Francis High School, 200 Foothill Blvd., La Canada-Flintridge, CA 91011.