Eighty Six and Fourty One

My Dad - seated at the left, Paquito Villa

A blog ago, I featured our high school reunion from 25 years ago - REVOLUTIONIZE '86, the St. Scholastica's College High School Batch 1986's turn to host the Alumni Homecoming.  Today I attended another reunion with my Dad and his high school classmates from 70 years ago!  They are the Araullo High School Batch 1941, 10 years older than the oldest batch that we had in the recent homecoming.  Well, it wasn't a grand event but just their regular quarterly lunch gathering.  My brother Jun and I and my other sisters take turns in accompanying my ailing Dad in these gatherings.  Anyway, while our batch has the EDSA Revolution to retrospect to in 1986, my Dad and  his friends have the outbreak of World War II in the Philippines in 1941.  Talk about EXTREME.

Really extreme because hearing the stories of my Dad and his friends of their experience of World War II, I am thankful that I just have the EDSA Revolution (so far) to look back to.  During those days, when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, I remember my sister Cordi and I joining the millions of Filipinos marching to Ninoy's burial, followed by the political unrest in our country urging the Marcos government to hold a snap election.  I have vivid memories of Cory Aquino campaigning in her Alma Mater, our school, St. Scho.  I was sitting on the stage with Cory just an arm's length away!  I will also never forget how our batch boycotted one CAT (Citizen's Army Training) session, expressing our opposition against Marcos at that time who was listed as our Commander-in-Chief.  Then when the elections happened with the results cheated declaring Marcos as president once again, the rest broke out, as they say, as history - the Filipinos took on EDSA and a bloodless revolution emerged.  It was a monumental era in our country's history gaining world-wide recognition.  Jane Fonda even congratulated us in the Oscar Awards.

Life, at least for me, moved as normal as it is still moving on today.  After graduating from high school, I went to college at the University of the Philippines.  I went through the ropes - graduated, worked, got married, had my kids and here I am blogging away.  Of course there are other stories in between those but the underlying thing is my life was never stalled by an interruption of school, food scarcity in the city, soldiers raiding our  house, digging on the ground to seek shelter while bombs were exploding everywhere, etc. etc.  These were the things my Dad and his friends experienced after graduating from high school in Araullo in March 1941.

My Dad and his friends were in their first year in college when the war broke out that December so they had to stop schooling.   Living in the city meant hunger as food was hard to get by.  Food sources from the provinces were being confiscated by the Japanese officials and if you did not know of any other source of food, all you can do was to just lay down anywhere your hunger hits you and wait to die.  These dying people were popping out from everywhere -  dead bodies were being collected in the city from time to time.  If you did know other sources of food, you had better know a good place to hide them because when the Japanese officials raid your house, they will be confiscated.  Then this next story from my Dad is one of my favorites - the underground hole they had to dig in their house.  It was meant to be their shelter when bombs were blowing away.  And the side story is that my Dad's buddy, Teodoro Benigno, who lived just next door that time, stowed away one day and used that underground hole to hide.  Then my grandmother, my Dad's Mom was to clean that hole one day, and voila! Busted!  The young Doring was finally sent home.

Me & My Dad

I wouldn't know how to cope if I had to live that way.  It's a wonder how my Dad and his friends lived through the Japanese occupation in the Philippines in World War II.  It's always amazing to listen to these stories.  My Dad, before he was stricken by his illness, never ran out of stories of his experience and I never got tired of listening to them.  I miss these stories and hearing them again today at my Dad's reunion with his friends is truly refreshing.  Not that the stories are pleasant to hear, it's just really amazing how they survived that era.

 Today's reunion is the first for this year and as I heard them talk about the next gathering, it will be on May 4, 2011.  For my Dad and his friends, each year that goes by at this time of their lives is a special gift from God.

Taking a peek at the REVOLUTIONIZE '86 logo, that's how our invitation exactly looks like.  Now take a look at the invitation sent to them for this reunion:

The good ole typewriter still in use in the year 2011!

Tito Albert Presa, the "spritely" one leads the reunions!

The others are:
Tito Alfredo Zambrano
Tita Conching Bolisay
Tita Esperanza Lansang (wife of Jose Lansang + )
Tita Fely Lagmay
Tita Puring Molina
Tita Gloria San Agustin (wife of Gregorio San Agustin +)