An ambitious little lady
IF Dean Gloria Martinez Santos had had the uncommon durability of former senator Juan Ponce Enrile, she would have turned 98 on May 18. Unfortunately, she died on March 25, 2011 at the age of 88. But, like Manong Johnny, Manang Glo never really retired. Her mind was lucid and was active to the end with her great passion project, the Philippine Historical Association (PHA).
Born in 1922, Dean Santos was originally a teacher of home economics, who was forced to marry early because of the war. Ricardo Trota José, the war historian, once told me that she was part of the intelligence during the resistance. She didn’t want people to know and even denied it to my face when I interviewed her for my war documentary ” MapaladangInyongmgaApo. (YourGranchildrenareFortunate.”
She shockingly quipped, “Ayoko!” Cutting herself. Then, when I asked my last question, she told me, as if to admonish me (allow me to quote her in Filipino), “SadigmaanangkailangangKung gus to mon gm aging tun ayn a bay a ni, huw ag kan gm ad al dal,i sara do mo ang bi big moat mag tr ab a ho kan ang tahimik. Mara mi kang mag ag aw a hindi l am ang para sai yong sari li ats a mg aka samba hay moatka mag-an ak,
ku n di pat is a bay an mo( In war, what is needed is silence. If you want to be a real hero, don’t be too talkative, keep your mouth shut and work quietly. That way you can do more not just for yourself, your companions and relatives, but also for your country).”
That was the last time I saw her. Twenty-four days later, she was dead.
But if there’s one thing she wouldn’t stop talking about, it was about how she walked with personalities in our nation’s history. According to historian Dr. Oscar
Evangelista, “I used to kid her whenever she started naming bigwigs she met. She was a great storyteller and regaled us with stories of her encounters with the sikats (famous) and the not-so- sikats.” In her last two years, I had the privilege of working with her in the board of governors as assistant to the president and later, vice president of the PHA and listened to her many stories: of meeting former president Manuel Quezon, of being consulted by her neighbor Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. about his son, and of meeting Emilio Aguinaldo. She experienced the American colonial period, the Commonwealth, martial law and People Power.
People in government knew her and ever since the founding of the PHA in 1955, each Philippine president from Ramon Magsaysay to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (save for Corazon Aquino who refused the honor), were our honorary presidents. The refusal of the honorary post by another Aquino president made us abolish the position altogether in our new Constitution.
Manang Glo holds the distinction of serving the PHA since its founding. In his memoirs published after he died, one of the founders of the association, Gabriel Fabella, wrote of her, “…a very ambitious woman who wants to dominate the association. It seems that she is eyeing on keeping the presidency in the hand of Catholics…” And dominate the association she did. She became the first woman president of the PHA from 1971 to 1972 and executive director since 1980, a position that was created especially for her.
The Fabella quote reflected the two things that best describe her: Her iron will and her deep Christian faith. I saw it firsthand. She was always very sweet to me, but she had her cunning ways of talking us into going in the direction she wanted. Being a Protestant, she always reminded me to go back to the Virgin Mary because anyway I was still fascinated with the culture of Marian devotions. She was the longtime dean of St. Mary’s College and counts Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo as one of her personal heroines. But despite being an “old guard” and our link to the golden days, she was more open to the ideas of the young.
But her true legacy was how, days before she died, she was still giving lectures to teachers. She wanted to bring history and this is her term, “closer to the people” (not bring down) and saw the PHA as the vehicle to do it. This is the reason why she sailed the association through various storms with her deftness and skill at politicking. She was not an academic historian herself, but she had the respect of the greatest of them. She told my friend, the secretary of the Association, Jonathan Balsamo, about the importance of public history: “Mamahalin[ng masa]angbayankungkilalanilaito, kungnalalamannilangkarapat-dapat itongmahalinatmayroonsilang maipagmamalaki…Angmagturong kasaysayannakalulugdanngbawat Pilipino,‘yungtunaynakasaysayan ngkadakilaanngInangBayan (The people will love their country if they
know it, if they know that it is worth loving and they have something to be proud of… To teach history to make each Filipino proud, the real history of the greatness of the Motherland).
She describes historians: “Walang makakapantaysakanyangkatapatang ngPilipinas,kungmahalniyaito itututroniyaitongtama,gagastahin niya‘yungkauntingperaniyapara bumilingmgaaklatnamaymatututunan (No one can equal a historian’s love for the story of the Philippines. If he/she loves the history of the country, he/she will teach it in the right way, spend what little money he or she has to buy the books that would teach her or him our history.)
When she died, Jonathan wrote as a tribute: “’ Yan…angamingmapagmahal Dean Santos, mahalkita.Mahalnamahal kanaming (That was our loving Mother of History. Dean Santos, I love you, we all love you.)
Not bad for an ambitious little lady.