Scientist, linguist, musician, healer: Renaissance man and son of Moses Lake passes away

MOSES LAKE — Dr. Jose “Joe” Flores, who passed away in his Los Angeles home at the beginning of October, was a gifted athlete, engaging conversationalist and NASA physician with degrees from the nation’s top schools, who would examine astronauts as they left for or returned from the International Space Station.

Before he left to jet around the world, he grew up and graduated from high school in Moses Lake, where his father in the Air Force had brought the family in 1960. The sixth of 10 siblings and the son of second-generation immigrants, when Flores didn’t have his nose in a book, he was wrestling for the Moses Lake team, fishing for bluegill or crappie at Cascade Valley, playing guitar with his siblings and juggling part-time jobs.

Though younger than most of his siblings, he was a mentor to those still younger than him, said his brother James Flores in an interview. On James’ first day of kindergarten, it was Joe, then in third grade, who walked him to his classroom.

In a remembrance written by childhood friend Dan Morkert, Morkert recalled meeting Flores at Longview Elementary School on the first day of second grade. Both good students, the pair could be overly talkative in class, and in third grade were both sent back to their second-grade classrooms until they could learn to behave.

“When our teacher welcomed us back into our own classroom, we tried hard not to talk, but it didn’t last for long,” Morkert wrote.

Shortly before graduating high school, Flores took a job with the now-closed company Swartz Electric, where he met the owner’s son, Don Swartz, a lifelong friend, confidant, and at nearly 10 years Flores’ senior, a mentor.

“I started some conversations with him, and it didn’t take long to realize there was something special about him,” Don said in an interview.

At some point, Don found out that the quiet high school student was getting straight A’s, and asked him about his plans for college.

“He told me that his counselors had suggested several local schools, which are all good schools, but I just asked him the question, ‘Have you ever heard of Harvard or Stanford or MIT?’” Don said. “He said, ‘Oh, I think I’ve heard of Harvard!’”

It was Don who gathered application forms for the country’s prestigious schools and put them in front of Flores. He was accepted to every last one of them, Don noted proudly.

Thinking he wanted to become an engineer, he began classes at MIT, before deciding he wanted to become a doctor. He then applied and was accepted to Cornell Medical School, where he finished his medical degree.

Now a doctor, Flores applied for a number of jobs before being snatched up by NASA – though it wasn’t long before Flores returned to school to obtain a second graduate degree, this time in endocrinology. Eventually, he was offered a job with a medical firm vying to provide services to the International Space Station terrestrial headquarters in Moscow, Russia.

Don’s wife, Carolann, who later in her life would also count Flores among her friends, recalled Flores had stopped by the house to visit and discuss the job offer. When Carolann asked him if he knew any Russian, he simply replied that he would learn, she said.

It wasn’t braggadocio. Though his Spanish-speaking parents, keen to integrate him into American culture, had never taught him Spanish, he spoke seven languages by the time he died, Swartz said.

From Moscow, Flores would then be shuffled into a large belly loader military plane, the type that tanks could drive into, early in the morning with astronauts and cosmonauts from across the world. There, the crew waiting to board would traditionally warm themselves up with shared shots of vodka, Don said. That plane would transport Flores and the crew to the launch site, where Flores would determine if the astronauts were in good health before they rocketed off to the ISS and when they returned after their missions were complete.

Being an accomplished physician, he was also often called upon to perform other medical duties. One time, after a dignitary suffered a medical episode, Flores flew with him on the jet transporting him to a hospital, Carolann said. He also participated in the delivery of a baby that had gestated outside of its mother’s uterus, a rare medical situation, Don said.

After nearly two decades in Russia, making sure to visit Moses Lake every few years, Flores decided to retire, buying a home in Los Angeles at the start of 2019. He lived there for just over a year before passing away earlier this month. He was 64.

“He had a rich and meaningful life, but he has left us too early,” Morkert wrote. “I will miss him terribly. I offer my deepest sympathy to Joe’s family, and to all who loved him.”

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at edinman@columbiabasinherald.com.