Long Ago and Far Away
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By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Their first baby cries rose with the cries of the freedom fighters. They made their first steps when the country was itself a toddler reaching for the rays of the sun. They celebrated their youth with a new conqueror that taught them new ways. They brought children into the world when the nation was in the throes of war. They watched their children grow into adulthood during that long period of peace and prosperity. And in the evening of their life, they saw even much more, but through thick glasses, brightly, so to speak. For by then, by now, they have been prepared to go only forward and beyond.
Amazing. Clearer than two weeks ago's events are their memories of what happened at the beginning of the century. Their sight may be blurred, their hearing impaired and their steps wobbly, but their mind continues to take flight. To that distant time, that gentler, rosier world where we have not been.
Each fragile frame holds the sum total of 100 years of existence on this planet. That furrowed face -- how many times has it been kissed, how many teardrops have washed it clean? Those hands -- how many newborns have they held, how many aches have they soothed? Those feet -- how many thousands of miles have they covered?. What lies in the folds of that hidden grey matter? What memories and secrets does it still hold? And that ancient heart -- it has not ceased to beat.
Behold the marvelous 100-year-old body-soul and everything therein.
Aspiring to be a Tiger
"NACI el 18 de marzo de 1898 en un barrio de Naic, Cavite, cuando el almirante Dewey de las fuerzas navales de los Estados Unidos de America entro en Manila despues de vencer a los fuerzas espanolas tras una breve batalla en la Bahia de Manila." Thus wrote professor of Anatomy, Dr. Jose Dualan, 100, not too long ago after finishing a course in Spanish.
In other words, he first saw the light of day in a barrio by the bay where that infamous naval battle between Spanish and US forces was waged. This Jose was nicknamed Osing.
Osing's
birthplace, barrio Bangkaan, was named after the fishing
boats (banca) that were commonly used in the place.
``I was born near the sea where people fished and
farmed," Dualan adds. ``My father was a member
of the revolutionary army under Capt. Ciriaco Nazareno."
He remembers people in uniform coming to their house
often. "I saw them drilling, but I never saw
then in actual combat.''
When Dr. Dualan was five, his father died. Five years later, his mother also died. He and brothers Maximo and Leon, were left in the care of an aunt.
That was the time, Dr. Dualan says, when William Howard Taft (who later because US president) was governor general. One of the first things Taft did at that time was to build public schools where English was taught. One of Osing's first teachers in Naic was a man named Clyde de Witt.
He recalls that one of the first English words he learned was the word ``between" simply because it sounded like ``estrellas del cielo" (stars in heaven) or the Tagalog bituin. Osing was one of the school's champion spellers.
He also remembers a Miss O'Malley, one of the first ``Thomasites" who taught in the public school. `We knew more about American geography than Philippine geography," the doctor laughs. ``They said then that the Spaniards took away from us so many things, while the Americans brought them back. My mother said the Americans were better amo (masters)." Dualan also remembers Americans patroling the streets, catching truant boys and hauling them off to school.
After primary school, Osing and his brothers attended high school in the capital town of Cavite where all teachers were Americans. After two years Osing moved to Manila High School in Intramuros where he graduated in 1919. (Ambassador Narciso Ramos, outgoing President Fidel Ramos' father, was his classmate.) Then he enrolled for a course in zoology at the University of the Philippines where he also finished medicine.
Osing did his medical internship at the Philippine General Hospital under Dr. Arturo Garcia, chief of the Anatomy Department. After graduation in 1928, he was all set to go to Mindanao to work as a doctor in a lumber company when Garcia offered him a post at UP-PGH. Dualan accepted and stayed on at the UP until 1963. During the war when Manila was in ruins he continued to teach.
It was at the UP that he met his future wife Florencia Padilla who was then studying to be a doctor. He first laid eyes on Flory in Histology class. He was attracted ``por su cutis blanco y finisimo, su pelo ondulado, su mirada traviesa, su sonrisa juguetona y su cinturita." He pursued her patiently until she graduated in 1933. (She was third in her class and placed seventh in the medical board exams.) On Christmas Day in 1933, Jose and Flory were married at the San Miguel Pro Cathedral. They went to Baguio for their ``luna de miel (honeymoon)." Today, the doctor-professor still looks back to that day and considers it ``the happiest day in my life."
The marriage was blessed with six children -- Jesus, Nicanora, Florencia, Victor, Remedios and Doris. The Dualan family first lived in San Juan and then in Park Avenue in Pasay City where many American families lived. It is in this Pasay home that Dr. Dualan continues to live happily with his memories and his great-grandchildren.
But the doctor has also ``the saddest moment" in his life to always remember. In 1984 he figured in a car accident which caused the death of three members of his family. The doctor survived, but his wife Flory, a son and a son-in-law were not as lucky. The tragedy did not break him. He accepted it with resignation.
When Dr. Dualan turned 99 in 1997, the UP College of Medicine established a Distinguished Professorial Chair to honor him (Class 1928) and his late wife Flory (Class 1933). The doctor was, by then, the oldest living alumnus of the college.
Since his retirement, the doctor has not been idle. He has been pursuing many interests, among them the Spanish and Japanese language. Some of his recent favorite activities are gardening and making walis tingting (a broom made from coconut midribs) in his shady yard. He also enjoys bringing to and fetching his great-grandchildren from school.
When he turned 99 last year, Dr. Dualan gave a speech and shared his secret for a long life. ``It's clean living," he said. ``That means no smoking, no drinking, no chicks. My whole life was my beloved wife, Flory, my children and the UP College of Medicine."
He added: ``Meet the challenges in your life with a cool head, never lose your temper, take things in stride. Do gardening to relieve tension. And above all, bring in God in everything you do. With Him as the constant in your life, everything will fall in place. As my wife used to say, orden y concierto (order and harmony) is the first law of heaven.
``You might think such a regular uncomplicated life is boring. Like you might say, Anatomy is boring. I assure you it is far from boring. I am one year short of a century today, and I am still not bored. I am as young as the Philippine independence, born in 1898 and also aspiring to be a tiger."
Postcards from the Past
Mrs. Luz Marquez vda. de Sandova turned 100 a month ago. Born on May 25, 1898 in Tayabas, Tayabas (now Quezon), the centenarian was feted by her big brood at the Kalayaan Hall of Club Filipino in Greenhills on May 24, the day before her birthday.
The next day, her actual birthday, she is at her coolest best, sitting and listening to conversation around the breakfast buffet table. She is wearing a red and white floral dress and looks every inch a lady in her element. She is surrounded by daughters and sons, grandchildren and in-laws. She is at the center of it all.
She begins to remember."It was the American time," says Mrs. Sandoval of her girlhood. "We had to study English. One of my teachers was my cousin, the famous Paz Marquez Benitez."
Her
father was a farm owner and her mother a teacher.
The young Lucing attended Tayabas High School, then
moved to Assumption College in Herran, Manila. Going
to Manila at that time meant taking the boat from
the kota (port).
In school, Lucing was drawn to the theater and the arts. She learned to paint and play the piano. She acted in school plays (comedia) as well as in zarzuelas in her hometown. "Our zarzuela director was a Spaniard," she recalls.
"I dreamed of being a concert pianist," Mrs. Sandoval says. She describes herself as adelantado (advanced) in piano.
The young Lucing must not have been a shy convent-bred teener of that era. She socialized. Letters and postcards dating to that era that she has kept show the kind of friends she had. A 1918 postcard mailed to her from Albay has a rather long note written on it in good penmanship. It tells of outdoor fun and scaling Mayon volcano. It even describes modern amenities such as running water and showers.
One Christmas postcard from a friend from theater days is postmarked Harbin, Manchuria (part of China which was occupied by Russia at that time). Its Christmas message is printed in Russian. Says the letter: ``Our Xmas here (I mean Russian X'mas) is 13 days later than our X'mas there at home. Today is New Year out here in Harbin it is only Dec. 19, 1916. (Signature), Theater Modern, Harbin Manchuria."
Lucing was in her teens when she met Dr. Casiano A. Sandoval who was practicing medicine in Tayabas at that time. She was still in her teens -- she was 18 -- when she married him. "It was a great wedding," Mrs. Sandoval recalls, and considers it the happiest moment in her life. ``Talagang sapul (It was the ultimate)," she adds. The union produced six sons and one daughter: Manuel, Meng, Joselito, Teresita, Flory, Enrique and Rene. Three of the sons have passed away.
Even when she was married she continued to pursue her art at home. She continued to dabble in painting, she crocheted whole curtains, she played the piano.
Shortly before the war, when her husband became governor of Quezon, Mrs. Sandoval helped out by ``assisting in socials." President Manuel Quezon was a regular guest and one time, Mrs. Sandoval recalls, he rode in the Sandoval's car and noticed its sorry state. The Sandovals got themselves a new one right away.
In her daughter Teresita Sandoval-Roque's home in White Plains, Quezon City,
Mrs. Sandoval's souvenirs from the past are kept. Some are hung for the younger generation to see. Her two five-foot high rendition on pina cloth of the four seasons (spring and autum) now hang with Amorsolo sketches. Her cat painting on silk has still to be rehabilitated and reframed.
It was great fun doing them, the 100-year-old lady seems to suggest. She sits there, slipping in and out of a catnap, even while breakfast conversation is going on around her. Someone taps her shoulder and asks a question, and she straightens up to remember and talk about what happened long ago and far away in that time and place where we have not been. -- Reprinted from Sunday Inquirer Magazine, June 7, 1998
Ma. Ceres P. Doyo is a Special Reports writer and columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She has received awards and citations for her feature articles and investigative stories. Many of Doyo's stories are in her book "Journalist in Her Country: Articles, Essays and Photographs."
