Honoring my beautiful and loving wife on our glorious 58th Wedding Anniversary
My dear Evelyn, I am forever grateful for your unwavering love and dedication over these past 58 years. Your steadfast trust and tireless care for our family has been a true blessing. Thank you for sharing this remarkable journey of loving togetherness with me.
(This marks a significant deviation from my typical column, which predominantly explores industry matters. I kindly request the understanding and indulgence of my readers as I seize this moment to honor my beloved wife, Evelyn, on the occasion of our 58th wedding anniversary.)
LIFE is a choice. From the time we are weaned from the loving care of our parents during infancy, when our destiny and fate depend entirely on their caring and nourishing hands, everything that happens to us in our lives during our growing up years are influenced by our choices in life.
That is why I consider myself blessed and lucky for having wooed Evelyn Dacanay Dumaguin with words of love and care, when I met her at the University of the East during our college days. Today, Evelyn and I are celebrating our 58th wedding anniversary.
And true enough, we did it all. As we said in our wedding vows when we had our complete wedding entourage over half a century ago, we continue to live together as a loving couple and caring parents and grandparents to our four children and nine grandchildren.
Among our principal wedding sponsors were then La Union Governor and Supreme Court Justice
Juvenal Guerrero, and my current boss at that time, Emilio Tañedo.
Thus, if there’s such a thing as marriage made in heaven, I would consider my marriage to Evelyn as one, even if we went through the common trials and challenges in marriage. Evelyn is the disciplinarian in the family who can easily forgive, but not forget. She allows fair discussion among the family members for as long as it is done respectfully.
As a start-up family then, things were not that easy for us all, even if I was already working with a company owned by the late Ambassador Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. But with Evelyn’s thrifty and simple “Ilocana” way of life, we were able to realize our dreams.
And today I can look at our children with pride in my heart, as they are all successful in their own rights professionally and parentally. Our eldest daughter is now the Administrator of a Us-based legal office with government contract as a public defender. As administrator of the legal office, she sometimes writes the pleadings of some of the office’s 28 lawyers.
Our second-born son is an international airline pilot who went to flying school as a PAL full scholar. He is now a full-fledged captain and check pilot of EVA Air. Our thirdborn son is now a Us-based doctor specializing in internal medicine. And our youngest daughter finished a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts and later finished an interior design course and passed the government licensing examination to become a full-fledged interior designer and decorator. She also helps Evelyn in running the family-owned real estate business. Thus, I am reminded of that promise, and of course Evelyn’s caring and loving hands that molded our children to what and where they are today.
But I am not only amazed at Evelyn as a loving wife, mother and grandmother to our children and grandchildren. I would even be more amazed that the woman I met at the University of the East when I was the speaker of the student government parliament, and she was a parliamentarian. She also had a sharp eye for business. She is now into the real estate business and a licensed realtor. As an interior designer, she herself designs our home with complete beauty and symmetry.
Thus, with Evelyn’s keen eye for business, coupled with her loving and caring attributes as a wife, mother and grandmother to our children and grandchildren, I cannot imagine how life would be without her.
My dear Evelyn, I am forever grateful for your unwavering love and dedication over these past 58 years. Your steadfast trust and tireless care for our family has been a true blessing. Thank you for sharing this remarkable journey of loving togetherness with me.
With all my love, Jess
Dr. Jesus Lim Arranza is the chairman of the Federation of Philippine Industries and Fight Illicit Trade; a broad-based, multisectoral movement intended to protect consumers, safeguard government revenues and shield legitimate industries from the ill effects of smuggling.