Steve, Jimmy, and the old UPFC

I t’s been more than a month since the Faculty Center of the University of the Philippines in Diliman was gutted in a predawn fire, turning to flaky ash decades’ worth of collected books, papers, artworks, certificates, souvenir mugs, and such knick-knacks as populate a professor’s life. There were over 250 of us from the faculties of two colleges — Arts & Letters and Social Sciences & Philosophy — who lost our offices and everything they contained in that fire. Not surprisingly, in the morning and indeed the week after the blaze, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, as the loss sank in and teachers had to relocate themselves, like disaster victims, in makeshift quarters.

I’d like to think that I’m done grieving, after writing the obligatory eulogy to the FC (see “In the Afterglow,” Penman, April 11) and slowly finding replacements for whatever could be replaced. It’s remarkable how tragic events like this can rally the best in people; after I wrote my column, a friend in the US tracked down another first- edition, dust- jacketed copy of Without Seeing the Dawn; another friend donated a MacBook to replace my office Mac. The ladies of the Likhaan Creative Writing Foundation — who had providentially done some fantastic fundraising last March through their “Wordello” project — came to the rescue with some emergency cash, and Atty. Gizela Gonzalez upgraded the facilities of the Gonzalo Gonzalez Reading Room, which her family endowed, for us to use as a temporary office. We’re coping, with a little help from our friends (thank you all!) and the UP administration, and next week we’ll push on as scheduled with this year’s UP National Writers’ Workshop in Los Baños.

So we’re all moving on, but I can’t let the matter go without drawing on a couple of rather poignant reminiscences from two friends — accomplished artists both, now retired, who as young men started their careers in that place.

Basilio Esteban “Steve” Villaruz is better known as one of the country’s foremost exponents of dance, but he began as a Literature major. “I taught Literature in Iloilo before moving to Diliman. I was one of the first to have had a room in FC — it was so new,” wrote Steve. “I was just an instructor, and my room was beside those of Ching Dadufalza’s and Jonathan Malicsi’s. One of those is now Jimmy Abad’s.

“I came to UP to an MA in Comparative Literature, which I never finished. I served as a teaching assistant at P150 a month, and worked with distinguished chairs like Dadufalza, Damiana Eugenio, and Dionisia Rola while studying with exemplary teachers like Leopoldo Yabes, Alex Hufana, Elmer Ordoñez, Dolores Feria, and Rony Diaz.

“Then another chair fired a series of us — starting with Joma Sison, me, and two women, who were all doing their MAs. What to do? That’s when I turned to dance, even before the CCP was built. I was one of the first there. That truly designed my life, as I had always wanted.

“But it was my background in English and History that made me what I am now, a dancer with a broader compass. When I teach Dance, I use poems, like those of Valery, and draw as well on Ching’s teachings of Teilhard de Chardin. I went to London to study movement notation, and when I returned I worked on a dance diploma curriculum with Ramon Santos and Cora Dioquino. But I retain fond memories of FC, and when I pass it these days I remember how my creative life really started there.”

Among the people Steve mentions is poet Jimmy Abad, and Jimmy himself wrote me to tell of his “lost heartland.” Though retired, Jimmy kept an office at the FC (among the perks of his exalted status as University Professor, UP’s highest academic rank), and could often be seen pecking away at his laptop on another anthology.

For his part, Jimmy recalls that “In 1952, when Vidal Tan assumed the UP presidency, he requested my father, who had been teaching with him in Far Eastern University, to organize the Department of Spanish in view of the ‘Spanish Law’ just passed by Congress. We moved from our apartment in Lepanto, Manila, to Area I on the Diliman campus; at T- 1004, we were a few yards from NVM Gonzalez’s cottage.

“During my undergraduate days, I would sometimes show my short story to NVM; I recall his comment, gently delivered, on a story I had worked and reworked: ‘Jimmy, I think your story is constipated.’ Sometimes, too, I would walk on a late afternoon to Area 17, for Franz Arcellana’s comment on my poems; he never said a word but would nod as he read in a way I took to mean I should try harder.

“Right after graduation in UP in 1964, I started teaching as assistant instructor in the Department of English, as it was then called since 1908; its faculty had individual desks in a common room behind the mural at the lobby of the College of Liberal Arts (now Palma Hall). A year later, I was given a Rockefeller grant for graduate studies at the University of Chicago. When I returned in 1970, I was made assistant professor and given an office

So we’re all moving on, but I can’t let the matter go without drawing on a couple of rather poignant reminiscences from two friends about the UP Faculty Center.

in the newly-built Faculty Center beside the office of my beloved professor Concepcion D. Dadufalza who, together with Franz, later introduced my first collection of poems, Fugitive Emphasis, in 1973. “UP President Carlos P. Romulo had persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to expand its support for faculty development and provide the arts and sciences faculty an office building. In our respective offices, we had precious time for reading, writing, checking papers, but anyone could just drop in. How often I myself enjoyed hearty conversation with former mentors on topics of interest and sundry trivia — say, a controversy on academic freedom, or a movie,

Dr. Zhivago, or an altercation between colleagues. Indeed, discussions in various departments at FC sometimes turned incendiary, but the collegiality and respect for one another’s views and ideological commitments would in the end prevail.

“Although a number of the University’s faculty were co-opted by the Marcos ‘conjugal dictatorship,’ the FC became the haven of faculty and student activists organized into various protest groups. With Pepe Miranda, I joined Sagupa (Samahan ng mga Guro sa Pilipinas) and marched in protest rallies since the ‘Diliman commune’ faced down Marcos’ soldiery behind their barricades on campus. (A furious professor even barged through, threatening to shoot; later, wroth students ravaged his FC office.)

“Many students and colleagues went underground or were imprisoned, tortured, slain, but UP, never intimidated, stood proud of its academic freedom during those oppressive years. I recall a day when a military officer, a UP High classmate, dropped by my office; when I teased him about his civilian disguise, he gamely took out his .45 and handed it to me since, as I remarked, I had never yet held one.”

Thanks, Steve and Jimmy. Buildings can burn, but happy memories burn even stronger.

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