Lenten hiatus evokes names, places
THE quietude of Holy Week makes the mind wander, searching for something to think, muse, and wonder about.
It’s amazing how the mind can go places. A blank stare can produce images and remembrances of the many crossroads in one’s life, people who’ve crossed one’s path, here and in distant places. Remembered scenes are mostly happy because the mind has a knack for deleting or hiding unhappy episodes in life.
As young people graduate this time of year from high school to college they, as we did, they find that the former was much more fun and the latter, college, more daunting. In high school one knew everyone else in class. College is different because everybody, at least initially, is a stranger.
In my time I was lucky to stumble upon the office of the University of the East’s school newspaper, Dawn, one of only four weekly school papers at the time. My batch on the Dawn was probably the best among many good ones. Among them, Manny Martinez loved the John F. Kennedy/Ted Sorensen style of contrapuntal phrasing. Even as a student he was already writing speeches for the likes of the Ayalas and Ninoy Aquino with PR guru Buddy Gomez. Manny and I called each other “Brod” because to us the Dawn was a fraternity.
Other products of the Dawn included Levi Marcelo before us, and the poet and essayist Lamberto Antonio who, until today, is the best bilingual (Pilipino and English) writer in my estimation. My best and lasting friend during Dawn days was Deogracias “Ding” Marcelo, younger brother of Levi, and the Manila Bulletin’s longtime sports editor and now sports columnist.
Off to America I went just before the turn of the 1970s, still an undergraduate. Fortune brought me to the doors of the World Bank in Washington, DC, where I met several would-be mentors, including a sage named Sundaram Sankaran from India. A young and dynamic Englishman, Frank Vogl, would somehow find me an asset in his Department of Information and pushed my career there. One of the Filipinos there whom I respected was Pastor Sison, a Harvard Law graduate and a member of the Sison clan of Pangasinan.
Writing a column turned out to be a lifelong career. Early on as a reporter, Dawn editor-in-chief Lamberto Antonio appointed me a columnist, an assignment reserved for editors.
At the World Bank, too, writing became my ticket to an initially slow career and I rose from the ranks to become a writer, editor, and finally, one of the bank’s global spokespeople. As spokesmen, Pastor Sison handled East Asia and I, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. We were the only Filipinos to hold the spokesperson position based in Washington.
While I was working full-time at the World Bank, Philippine News, the largest Fil-Am newspaper based in San Francisco and co-edited by Alex Esclamado and Nick Benoza, invited me to write a column in the 1970s. In New York, a start-up paper, Filipino Express, gave space to my column. The Express was co-founded and edited by Levi Marcelo, to be succeeded by the current rave of Philippine cinema, Lav Diaz. (I had a cameo role in a Diaz film, shot at the George Washington University, but I don’t know if that survived the editing room.)
In Washington, DC, the formidable Bert Alfaro published my column in Manila Mail newspaper and in Toronto, my column appears in the largest Fil-Canadian newspaper, Balita, published by Tess Cusipag, widow of the paper’s original publisher and EIC Ruben.
Anti-martial law activism brought together a trio of Walden Bello (then at Harvard or Princeton?), Ernie Ordonez (Yale), and myself phoning in fake bomb threats to the Philippine embassy. New Yorker Loida Nicolas asked me to be Washington correspondent of her newsletter, Ningas Cogon. She hadn’t appended Lewis to her name at that point in her life.
I interviewed the icon Ninoy Aquino in a crumbling hotel in Detroit, Michigan, through the intercession of the always gracious Raul Manglapus, whose sons became close to me: Raulito who always helped me with matters pertaining to the Department of Foreign Affairs; Bobby, who recently passed away, was my doubles tennis partner; and the youngest, Francis, who inherited his father’s political blood.
In that milieu I particularly liked the avuncular Bonnie Gillego, an army colonel who helped expose Marcos’ fake war medals and who would later represent Sorsogon in the national assembly. Among many others, the hot-blooded Bobby Brillante, a nemesis later of Jojo Binay in Makati City politics, was also part of the freedom movement.
Defecting Consul Ruperto Baliao of the Philippine consulate in Chicago exposed Ferdinand Marcos’ blacklist that included my name. The Maryland state congress passed a resolution sponsored by Fil-Am congressman Dave Valderama citing me as a freedom fighter on the eve of my return home to the Philippines.
Back to the Philippines in the late 1990s, I initially sent in commentary to the Philippine Daily Inquirer during the opinion editorship of the amiable Jorge Aruta. Later I was invited in succession to write a column by several papers, including the Manila Times, the innovative BusinessMirror, and the Manila Bulletin, the country’s most enduring newspaper.
A word about how a columnist becomes a columnist. There may be an exception here and there, but columnists don’t ever apply for the job, they are invited. In my column-writing career, I have always been invited.