My Father's Gifts

Posted on April 17, 2013 

My father retired from the UN in 1972, returned to Manila. He accepted to be Vice President of IISMI, then privately owned by the Jacintos. He did not stay long. In September 1972, with the imposition of martial law, the government sequestered IISMI. I remember going with my Dad to the heavily guarded IISMI offices in Santolan to retrieve personal documents in his IISMI office. I don’t know he said to the guards but they did let him in and he came out with a small carton box. 

Martial law depressed my father. At about this time, the National Shipyards were divesting and my Dad with Commodore Andrade were arranging to bid with Japanese partners for the shipyards. The bidding resulted with Bejo Romualdez, Imelda’s brother, winning, with very little capital investment. It was, after all, martial rule. 

At about the time that my mother spent an extended time in the U.S., my Dad started to name me as a co-signatory to a number of bank accounts and his safety deposit box. This was proverbial. At the time of his death, I knew enough bank officials who allowed me to withdraw funds and open my Dad’s safety deposit box which contained enough cash for his funeral and interment expenses. 

Posted on April 14, 2013 

When my sister Rory first proposed to write our memories of our father, I wasn’t sure whether I would do justice to the enterprise. And also because my most vivid, my most immediate memories of my father were of the day he died. 

I don’t remember much of the morning but I do recall feeling quite uncomfortable that day. Perhaps because it was the first New Year celebration under martial rule and a number of U.P friends had gone hiding. There was really no point in marking the new year in a happy mood. 

My father knocked at my door to ask me to go with him to Wack Wack Golf and Country Club as he was intended to play golf with friends and that I and my adopted sister Pinky could swim. I didn’t feel like going but he insisted, saying that afterwards we should look for sparklers to mark New Year’s Eve and also because Pinky couldn’t be swimming by herself. I begrudgingly said yes, since I too loved to swim and snacking at the club was quite a fun thing to do. 

I was listless in my swimming, finished early and spent time in the dressing area talking on the phone with a friend. After some minutes the phone died and looking at my watch I figured it was time to go into the club, have merienda and wait for my dad. As I entered the club doors, the old familiar concierge, Mang Pepe, said urgently, “Your Dad is looking for you, something happened”. 

I rushed in and saw my dad prostrate near the greens and a doctor-player peering a light into his eyes. 

I half understood what was going on. Then, someone told me that my father had gone, I couldn’t believe it. I remember kneeling beside him, “Dad, if you have to go, please stay on for five more minutes, I need to know what to do!”. 

Then I worried for my mother. My mom, Sally, had a heart condition and had five years previously suffered a stroke in Bangkok. She had just returned from the U.S. and I know that my Dad worried about her health condition. In the scheme of things, I decided to call my cousin Jesus, called Tutit, since we became good friends in the previous year’s campaign to tell him the sad news. He told me to stay put and within minutes, he arrived at WackWack. I then called my mother’s doctor, Dr. Chua Chiaco, to ask him to see my mother and prepare her for bad news. 

Jesus took care of the funeral arrangements (I remembered that we had a La Paz plan) and I went home. I saw my Mom white as a sheet, Dr. Chua had already given her a sedative. My father’s golfing partner had called to tell her that he had a stroke but not that he had died and my mother had been frantically trying to get a cab to go to Wack-Wack. She kept on saying that she did not even look up from reading her magazine when my Dad said good-bye to go off. 

I realized that my life as I knew it was coming to an end. I called my sisters, I didn’t know where to reach my brother, I braced myself for the worst to come.