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Sunday, June 18, 2006
Malilong: Christopher Lock’s father
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
This piece if for Father’s Day.
Christopher “Topoy” Lock, the first Cebuano Supreme Court Administrator, has indeed gone a long way from his basketball days at the University of San Carlos but, as he himself would most probably be the first to admit, much of what he has become he owes to his intrepid father.
Topoy’s father was eight or nine years old when he fled Canton, China during the Chinese Revolution. At that time, his family name was still “Lok” and he arrived in Manila alone: no parent, brother or sister. Worse, he didn’t know the language. You could imagine, as a son would tell me later, how he managed to survive.
But not only did he survive; he prospered. He started doing odd jobs for some Chinese traders. In the evening he attended classes at the Far Eastern University where he eventually earned a degree in accountancy.
He moved to Cebu and worked as an accountant with a shipping company, owned by the Gotianuy family. There, he met and was smitten by the company cashier, whom he took as his bride and, together raised, a fine family.
He took up law at the University of the Southern Philippines while at the same time working for his naturalization as a Filipino. He passed the bar examinations in 1949 and handled collection cases for Zuellig, Connell Brothers, Aboitiz and Southern Motors. In the sixties, he served as barangay captain of Zapatera.
He died in January 1988 before his son became a judge. “He would have been very proud of him,” said Topoy’s brother, Winkle, in an e-mail to me. Winkle himself is no underachiever: He is currently an official in the Water and Sewage Department of the City of Detroit.
It was from Winkle that I learned about the appointment as Court Administrator of his brother. “I just talked to my sister,” he said. “Topoy just got promoted.”
How fitting that his colleagues in the legal profession would honor him two days before Father’s Day. Joseph Lock Sr. must be smiling from above.
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 18, 2006 issue)
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