“Eddie” Lorenzo MD came to Kansas City from the Philippines in 1967 to fulfill his dream to become a psychiatrist. He completed the required training at the Western Missouri Mental Health Center , in Kansas City,Missouri and went straight into private practice.

In 1968, he married Dr. Remedios “Remy” Medina, also from the Philippines who practiced internal medicine. Not losing time in raising a family, they had Eddie Jr, Benjamin and Melanie. Regretfully Remy, developed cancer and died in 1984.

Eddie became involved into the affairs of the Filipino community in Kansas City. He was aware of the existence of various groups in the area including a Filipino Youth Association, a group of WW II veterans called the Bataan Memorial Post. However there was not one formal group united under a common name, so Eddie volunteered to organize a Filipino Association of Greater Kansas with a formal charter legally established with a constitution and by laws. He offered his own lawyer to do the paperwork and he paid for it. It thus followed that he became the first president under this new organization in 1968. A visionary with a lot of energy, he pushed for various activities like the Easter picnics, children’s programs, Christmas parties and memorial day programs to include different ages in the Filipino community.

In 1994 , Eddie remarried to his long time friend and colleague Jackie and moved his practice in the Lake of the Ozarks and Springfield, Missouri area. Due to the distance and demands of the new and busy practice, we rarely saw Eddie in the affairs of the Association in later years.

On November 26, 2020 Eddie succumbed from pneumonia secondary to the COVID-19 virus infection. The Filipino Association of Greater Kansas City owes Dr. Lorenzo a debt of gratitude for his organizational effort in guiding the early infancy of the association.