Educated by the University of Miami and empowered by the military, José A. Stoute has lived many lives—all in service of his fellow humans.
Born in North Carolina to a father in the Air Force and a mother in nursing, Stoute had strong role models for the care and responsibility people can show to one another.
When his family moved to Panama, his father’s homeland, he looked at the American soldiers in the area with respect and admiration.
“At that time, when I grew up, there was a huge U.S. military base on the canal,” he said. “My friends and I would stand on the other side of the fence and admire the incredible, powerful American military.”
His uncle, who fought in World War II, told war stories that only swelled Stoute’s admiration for those in the service.
In 1981, Stoute learned of a medical scholarship offered through the U.S. Army that would allow him to become a physician. He jumped at the opportunity.
He spent his academic years at the University of Miami’s medical school and his summers on military bases, training and assisting at veteran’s hospitals.
“Those years felt like a time of enlightenment,” he said. “It was magical, seeing all of the residents in what they do and how they arrive at diagnoses, helping to make people feel better.”
It was also a time of uncertainty as HIV began to spread throughout the United States.
“I was there in the in the early ’80s, at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, before we even knew what was causing it,” Stoute recalled. “We had all these patients that came in with strange infections. We had to gown to see them because we didn't know, at the time, what exactly was going on.”
“Some of the very, very seminal studies were done at the University of Miami,” he said. “Some of the first clinical trials were done at the University because we had so many patients succumbing to the disease.”
The experience proved formative to Stoute, who would later specialize and become board-certified in infectious disease.
Dr. Stoute graduated medical school in 1985 and continued to care for others in hospital and laboratory settings.
Everything changed in 1991 when he was called to serve in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War.
“Suddenly, you’re told you have to stop everything you're doing and go where they tell you to go,” he said. “And I didn’t mind, not the first time around, because I was still fairly young.”
Over the next 10 months, he spent his days caring for the wounded and his nights sleeping in armored vehicles on the battlefield, feeling the ground shake beneath him with nearby explosions.
When Stoute returned to the States after completing his first deployment, he felt he had been given a new lease on life. He had a new appreciation for the simple joy of waking up in his home, choosing how his days would look, and the freedom to go wherever he wanted.
“In a war situation, you’re just there, and it’s all around you every day,” he said. “When you return home, you look at everything differently—you feel as if you’ve been given another opportunity to live.”
His subsequent career stop had him working with the military as a scientist to build medical facilities in Kenya and understand how malaria affects children in that country.
“We began clinical trials for vaccines and anti-malarial drugs, and I’m very proud of the work I was able to do and the impact that was able to leave in that part of the country.”
In 2006, Stoute was deployed once again, this time in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“This time, I had a family—a wife and children. It was more difficult to stop everything and go somewhere where I could get killed,” he said. “It felt risky; we were very concerned, and there were many nights where I wondered whether I was going to make it.”
“I’m glad that I was in the army and that I was able to retire. I consider myself lucky that I was able to get through and come out at the other end,” he said. “There were many who did not come back.”
He returned home with a renewed purpose to achieve everything he wanted.
“I asked myself, what else do I want to do in this life? And I realized that I wanted to tell the stories of real people who have struggled to survive, stories with characters who have overcome obstacles in their lives, stories that I grew up with,” he said. “I wanted to learn how to tell these stories through film.”
He enrolled at the University of Miami School of Communication for his Master of Fine Arts, specializing in motion pictures.
“I would say that it is difficult going back to the classroom, especially when your classmates are people young enough to be your children,” he said. “It felt like a different culture, but I persevered and managed to overcome those obstacles, and, one way or another, I got it done.”
Over the next three years, he wrote, directed, and produced his first feature film: “St. Vierja Academy,” a semi-autobiographical account of a man forced to confront the ghosts of his past and come to terms with his time at an elite boys’ school during the 1970s in Panama.
He said writing the script was a catharsis, bearing testament to his experiences. When he completed the film, he felt relief.
The first time he premiered his work in theaters, the audience’s response surprised him.
“People coming out of the theater told me that they cried, that certain things reminded them of themselves in school or their relationships with their parents,” he said. “People laughed in places that I wasn’t expecting them to laugh, and that was also kind of interesting.”
“St. Vierja Academy” will be shown at the Tower Theater in Little Havana on January 25, 2025.
For his next project, Stoute plans to tell the story of Black workers and their struggles during the construction of the Panama Canal.
To students who take inspiration from his journey, Stoute advised this: “Don’t give up. Don’t give up on your dreams, and don’t give up on what you really want to do. With perseverance, you’ll always find a way.”
To those looking for ways to support the troops, Stoute said: “If you meet a veteran who is applying for a job, remember that those same strengths they showed on the battlefield—leadership, integrity, resilience, teamwork—will carry through to their lives as civilians and in the workforce.”
