In Loving Remembrance of Our Parents
During World War 2, our family was really put to a test. At that time, my father Papa Inting was like walking on a tightrope. His younger brother, Paulino, was the second in command (next to Jose P. Laurel) in the Japanese Imperial Army in the country. Not only that, Papa’s brother-in-law was also the Head of the Japanese police. The guerrillas doubted as to where Papa’s true loyalty lay. He would, at times, come home late at night, to avoid suspicious eyes; and he took on a ‘low’ demeanor so as not to invite attention.
During those trying times, Mama Pining stood as the source of strength for our family. And she was the workhorse too, so to speak, as she the one to ensure that we have food to eat. Mama took care of all our needs, as we tried to survive and surmount the rigors of war. Papa had to lie low and take the backseat for safety.
Even more during the Post War Era, Mama took charge of the family. She’d travel south to Naga to buy fruits and vegetables for our food, and the rest she’d sell in her small store. My brother Eddie and I would wait for Mama at the old Railway Station with our “kariton” (wooden cart) to carry home whatever produce she brought.
Interestingly, the hardship we faced brought the family much closer together. It also strengthened our faith in God. We children were drawn by Mama Pining’s deep devotion to the Lord Almighty, to Mother Mary and Seňor Santo Niňo and Papa Inting’s to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And the burden of war was made light for our family.
I shall not miss to mention that all through those times, we siblings – Inday Sering, Eddie, and I – were comfortably sheltered in our parents’ love and protection. And so now that both Mama and Papa are already gone to the great beyond, we make it a point to offer our prayers for them, as a gesture of our loving remembrance of them for all their sacrifices for us.
As the keeper of our parents’ legacy – Papa Inting’s University of the Visayas and Mama Pining’s works and devotion to the Lord – I hope they are happy looking down and seeing what we are doing in their memory. We have constructed a six-story building dedicated to Papa Inting for the College of Medicine in the Gullas Medical Center in Banilad. In preparation for the Centennial Celebration in 2019, we have also put up the Centennial Gate and improved the facade of the UV main campus at Colon.
As some schools had resorted to let go of some of their employees and staff in the light of the DepEd’s implementation of the K12 program, which academic institutions had to contend with not having first year enrollees for two years, I had to bite the bullet myself and instead put up the eight-story building in the main campus dedicated to Mama Pining. This building has the two-floor Don Vicente Learning Resource Center, which is the main library, and the Dona Andrea state-of-the-art multimedia center. The entire eighth floor has the Inday Teresing Auditorium, named after my sister who I have not seen as she died shortly after birth. On the building’s inauguration, many guests commented that our laboratories and library, and our moot court for the Gullas College of Law could be counted among the best in the country today (those comments, I must admit, warm my heart immensely).
All these improvements are done in our dear parents’ memory. These are all in acknowledgement and appreciation of all that they had done for us which we can never repay – except in honoring them by keeping their legacy, in continuing what they started. In so doing, I hope that my siblings and I have become truly deserving of everything we enjoy from our parents.
It is my fervent wish that our children and their children and the succeeding generations of our family will also do something to continually improve and develop what has been handed down to us by Papa Inting and Mama Pining. Our generation, my siblings and I, have nurtured and taken care of the University through the years. May they, too, realize how lucky and fortunate they are to inherit what it is now, having grown much through almost a hundred years now.
It send shivers down my spine to remember what former colleagues, those great minds in the country’s education circle, had once mentioned to me about what usually happens to family- owned businesses, and I quote, “The first generation builds, the second generation improves, and the third generation squanders!” May the next generation in our family take it upon themselves to rise up to the challenge and prove that statement wrong.