Manny Alfonso, the Wandering OFW

IN THE late 60s, at the height of the Vietnam War, Angeles City and Mabalacat were cashing in on the war. Angeles City was the rest and recreation center for the American GIs. Hotels, restaurants and girlie bars operated almost 24 hours. Post exchanges (PX) items from the base commissaries were sold on black-markets.

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There was never a hint that South Vietnam will be overrun by the troops of North Vietnam, led by their leader Ho Chi Minh. Manny Alfonso saw the horrors of war in that former French colony. Night and day skirmishes between opposing forces rendered hundred of casualties. He would have wanted to leave and get back to the Philippines, but he was earning more than three times what he used to get as a waiter at a night club in Balibago, Angeles City.

He was lucky enough to have gotten out of Vietnam a month before the fall of Saigon.

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Manny was born in barrio Balanoy in La Paz, Tarlac, a laid back interior barangay at the boundary of Concepcion town. His father Delfin, a muscular and hunk of a man, tended to a 4-hectare rice farm and raised his eight children from the incomes of the farm. Manny was the fifth child. Aside from helping the father in farm work, Manny earned extra income from selling pandesal. At the break of dawn, he would ride his bicycle, with bread loaded in two tin containers, and peddled them in far-flung areas as far as the southern areas of Victoria town. He woke neighborhoods by honking the bike's horn. He even took vegetables and poultry products in exchange for his pandesal.

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His father took notice of his son's potential, so he encouraged him to pursue college studies after his high school graduation at the Great Eastern Institute in La Paz. Manny dreamt of establishing a small business empire in his hometown, so he enrolled in an accountancy course at the then Angeles Institute of Technology, now Angeles University. He was a self-supporting student all throughout until his graduation in 1969. He was a waiter at the Pauline's Cavern, one of the known night spots owned by the Paulinos in Angeles. It was here when one night he had an argument with a burly American soldier, and a one-two punch from the latter landed him in the hospital.

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He heard from a friend that there was a mass hiring of Filipinos bound for Vietnam to work on different American bases in that war-torn country. He packed his clothes and went to Vietnam, stayed temporarily in a small house in Saigon rented by a cousin. He immediately got work as a waiter in the officers’ club, and there he met Cherry May Lan, a French-Vietnamese singer. They became live-in partners.

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Manny got his good looks from his father, and because of his suave demeanor, pretty girls got attracted to him. He had an atlas type of a body in his youth, and he began training as a power dancer, and that learned skill took him in most cities in Asia as a performer. He also learned playing musical instruments, and many times substituted as a drummer. He performed in Singapore for two years, five years in different cities in Indonesia, intermittent travels to Kota Kinabalu, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong.

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It was 1978 in Hong Kong when Manny got travel fatigue, and there he thought of putting up a recruitment agency and import talents from the Philippines. It was kinda difficult at the start, but over time he chalked success and hit the jackpot, so to speak. To date, young talents from the Philippines, thousands in number, were helped by Manny in landing jobs in Hong Kong.

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In 1989, Manny decided to settle in Angeles City and partnered with William 'Meng' Kwong and established the Rib Eye Steak house along the MacArthur Highway in Balibago. The resto became an instant destination for patrons who love fine dining. The poor boy from Balanoy invested his many years of earnings as an OFW in a trading company selling surplus equipments from Japan, furniture and sea food exportations. He settled and married Maria June Fairbanks, a ravishing American mestiza beauty in February 1991. He had two failed partnerships with other two women, and both girls gave him a son each.

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Manny holds the distinction of the being first president of the Rotary Club of Angeles, serving it twice, in 2001 and 2009. He also served as assistant governor of Rotary International District 3790. In his stint as leader of the club, considered as the mother organization and most prestigious in the district, he exhibited his leadership by way of the many projects intended for the underprivileged. He reaped many awards. But to him the most rewarding was to show to anybody that if someone perseveres, he can achieve prominence and affluence.