Sunday, September 07, 2008 Cariño: A Tuesday with Howard Fry, Ed Maranan and Fr. Jay By Linda Grace Cariño Paradigm Shift
LAST Tuesday afternoon, the Howard Fry collection was turned over to the University of the Philippines in an afternoon ceremony graced by UP Baguio personalities, likewise the Baguio Historical Society, and family and friends of Howard Fry, Ph.D., the historian whose collection was subject of the event.
Writer Ed Maranan related the tale of how the collection found its way over hill, dale, and water from Wales, where Fry lives, to Baguio. It was quite a journey, and as Ed rightfully pointed out, was possible only because of the largesse of the Pooten family, who owns a delivery service, was kind enough to see to the collection's travel arrangements, so to speak.
The UP Baguio and the BHS must, of course also be credited with unwavering efforts to further and strengthen Cordillera research, to include a partnership project with the City of Baguio to document barangay histories of the city, of which part two of the project - a second historiography writing workshop - was just concluded last Friday.
Tuesday was the day that I found out that Dr. Fry is married to Pacdal Parish's very own Fr. Jay Alipio's, who is also my most respected neighbor on this page, sister. Fr. Jay and I talked some, especially as I was really interested to learn about how, exactly, he was the brother-in-law of. Fr. Jay was kind enough to regale me with how his sister was a flight stewardess when she was introduced to Dr. Fry, who is also a pilot who has led quite an exciting life. And how it took Dr. Fry 10 years to woo his wife...
Among other matters. We also discussed that Dr. Fry's writings of the Cordilleras are quite distinct because of his ability to call a spade a spade. For me, very much unlike many of our current writers who extol Baguio's so-called American "founding fathers" with heroic and noble patinas. The credibility of a lot of those fellows actually suffers when their activities are historiographically studied.
