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Monday, February 27, 2006
Cebuano doc loses nurse-wife in Leyte
By Jeanette P. Malinao
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
TWO decades before tragedy struck in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, a Cebuano was already at the helm of delivering health services to its people.
Dr. Freddie Jamiro Letigio, 47-year-old son of Oslob, Cebu Councilor Pacifica Letigio, had refused persuasions from his family and the comforts Cebu can offer, and chose to serve in the farmers’ land.
With a passion for serving the poor, he led the municipal health office in reaping awards both local and otherwise.
But Letigio lost his wife, St. Bernard municipal nurse Athena Letigio, to the landslide that buried the whole barangay of Guinsaugon.
Sorrow has gripped his heart, but he could only wait from the sidelines as his sons Von Fred, 23, and John Alister, 17, and brothers-in-law joined the diggings in search of his missing wife.
The last time he saw her was when they parted the morning before the landslide—he was on his way for a meeting in Maasin, while she was heading for the auditorium in Guinsaugon to conduct a seminar on women’s health.
The couple exchanged cheerful goodbyes.
Letigio’s mother-in-law, Dr. Epifania Cabug-os, informed him of the disaster.
As the municipality’s doctor, he would have had on his shoulders the responsibility of attending to the survivors pulled out of the mud while at the same time looking for his wife.
Help, though, immediately arrived in the form of health personnel from other localities, including Cebu, and the Philippine army.
Being both a local government authority and a victim, Letigio said he could only pray hard.
“I am coping with my strong faith in God and the full support of both sides of my family,” he said.
It is not only his family and friends that pray for him, but others whose lives he has touched.
Virnissa Gilla, who hails from St. Bernard but has since been working in Cebu City, told Sun.Star Cebu that she sympathizes with Letigio and will pray for him.
A survivor, the man attending to the sound system of the auditorium where she held the seminar, told the doctor that his wife was last seen yelling for everyone to run.
“I appreciate the rescue efforts and acknowledge their limitations. This seems to be against all odds, what with stones the size of three-story houses there.”
As medical personnel from various government and private agencies have been taking care of Guinsaugon, both officials and the townfolk have let him be, understanding the grief that engulfed the heart of this Cebuano.
Grief in St. Bernard, however, will not lure him back to Cebu.
“This is where we raised our children, and we call this home,” he said.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 27, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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