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Monday, June 26, 2006
Dacawi: Twice orphaned
By Ramon Dacawi
Benchwarmer
I'D BEEN orphaned twice - initially when my biological mother left before I was six, and then just the other week, a few months before I'll be 56. My brother Joe and neighbor-brother Willy Cacdac feel the second loss with the family of our second mother - Geralda Macli-ing-Hamada.
Widow of the late lawyer-writer Sinai Hamada, Ma'am Gerry passed on at 85 last June 7 in Toronto, Canada. She was buried beside her husband last Wednesday at the Baguio Cemetery.
Mother Gerry cooked my food weekends when her son Steve and I started bedding the "Baguio-Cordillera Post," after we resigned from The Baguio Midland Courier in 1985. She always counted me in as part of the brood and I always felt at home in Camp 7.
She had known me, my brother Joe and Willy much earlier, when we were glorified clerks at the City Hall. She served as city housing officer for a while, and that was when she called for us.
"I know you three boys grew up here in Baguio but don't have a lot to call your own," she told us. "Here are three lots you can apply for so you'll have a place to raise your kids."
So we did as our mother advised, applying for the three choice lots located within spitting distance from the Presidential Mansion. We filled up the forms and filed the same with the appropriate committee of the City Council then.
We waited for months. Somewhere along the line, our applications got lost. In their place were newer ones in the names of other people closer to the powers-that-be.
We lost the lots to the scheme of things. Our honest-to-goodness applications served as the map, the guide for speculators to eventually acquire the same.
Still, we were blessed with the thought that Ma'am Gerry always saw us as her own children. We were and will always be part of her family.
(June 26, 2006 issue)
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