Atherton’s Bonnie Uytengsu gives $10M for children’s hospital surgery center

Bonnie Brooks Uytengsu says she should have become a doctor.

But during the 1950s, when she might have been enrolled in pre-med classes, studying anatomy and chemistry, she did what many young women of her era did — she got married, at the age of 21.

“I’ve always been very fascinated by medicine,” the longtime Atherton resident says. “If I was (part of) this generation, I’d try to get into med school.”

Instead, Ms. Uytengsu found another way to help advance medical knowledge. For decades, she has donated generously to causes that support medical research, including annual donations to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

When Ms. Uytengsu heard the children’s hospital needed even more help — for an ambitious project to double the size of the hospital — she was on board, giving $10 million to help pay for a new high-tech surgery center.

In December, when the new facility opens, the doors leading to the new surgery suites will say “Bonnie Uytengsu and Family” as part of their name.

Latest technology

The facility will add six surgical suites, bringing the hospital’s total to 13, more than any other children’s hospital in Northern California. The state-of-the art center will include an operating suite known as a “neuro hybrid-OR,” which includes, in addition to the operating room, equipment for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and angiography (blood flow) imaging, allowing for less invasive surgery.

Surgeons will be able to look at updated images during surgery, allowing them to make sure, for example, that they have removed all of a tumor. The hospital’s planners hope the new technology will mean young patients will need fewer operations and spend less time under anesthesia.

The name on the door

But who is Bonnie Uytengsu?

Bonnie Brooks spent her childhood in Washington, D.C. Her father, worked for the State Department during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

She remembers growing up in Washington, D.C., during the 1930s and 1940s as idyllic, with field trips to the Smithsonian and the White House. She went to Union Station with her mother and grandmother to see President Truman off at the end of his term, and no one in her neighborhood locked their doors.

Before she had graduated from her Catholic high school, Bonnie was recruited by a government agency (the name of which she says she still can’t reveal). After graduating, she was trained for an assignment abroad, and sent, with her widowed mother as a chaperone, to the American embassy in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

At an embassy party, she met Wilfred Uytengsu, a young Filipino engineer and a Stanford University engineering graduate who was opening a flour mill in the Philippines.

After just a few dates — all of them including her mother — Mr. Uytengsu proposed, after first seeking her mother’s permission. “He didn’t want people to get the wrong impression,” she says of the chaperoned dates.

Mr. Uytengsu, who died about seven years ago, founded several successful companies, including the Alaska Milk Corporation and General Milling Corporation.

“He’s one of the few geniuses I think I’ve ever met,” Ms. Uytengsu says.

The couple had three children and lived in the Philippines, in Cebu City and Manila, but spent summers in a home they owned in Menlo Park’s Sharon Heights neighborhood. “I felt at home in both places,” she says, adding that “the friends you make when you are living out of the country are lasting friends.”

Back to Atherton

In the 1980s, however, when the uprisings that led to the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos began, Bonnie Uytengsu moved to Atherton with the couple’s three children while Wilfred Uytengsu continued working in the Philippines.

Wilfred Jr., Candice and Michael attended Sacred Heart and Menlo schools and all are successful business people. Wilfred Jr. oversees the family interests in the Philippines, while Michael and Candice are involved in investments in the U.S. and the family’s foundation.

The family owned the Sunshine Biscuit Company, maker of Cheez-its, Hydrox cookies and Krispy Crackers saltines, until it was sold to the Keebler Company in 1996.

Ms. Uytengsu says much of her giving was inspired by her husband. “He was a great one for wanting to give things back,” she says. He gave substantial gifts to most of the schools he attended, in the Philippines and the U.S., where he graduated from Indiana Tech as well as Stanford.

“I just want to continue on in his pattern of helping people,” she says. “He could never say no.”

Other causes

In addition to donating to the children’s hospital, Ms. Uytengsu has endowed a program, led by Dr. Maria Grazia Roncarlo, to study finding cures for genetic immune diseases that strike children. Ms. Uytengsu says she was inspired after hearing Dr. Roncarlo speak.

“I listened to her speech and I said, that woman is going to make a difference in the world. She’s going to change something,” Ms. Uytengsu says. “So, I donated her laboratory.”

She also donated money to create a bioengineering and chemical engineering center at Stanford, named after her husband.

Her children have also been generous in supporting many causes, including the Uytengsu Aquatics Center at the University of Southern California, which was renovated with the support of Wilfred Jr., and an endowed scholarship at the USC Marshall School of Business that came from Michael.

Something else that Bonnie Uytengsu supports? “I’m a 49er Faithful and I love the Warriors,” she says. “That’s my one vice — to yell at ball games!”

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