Tuesday, March 04, 2008 Malilong: Salute By Frank Malilong The Other Side
ON my desk is a framed one-hundred-peso-bill on which are inscribed the following words: “To my dear conqueror, I salute you.” It was signed, Alfredo Gothong.
Don Alfredo gave it to me the day after I broke his tournament single-game duckpin bowling record at the old Patria de Cebu bowling lanes. That was almost 20 years ago.
He must have been in his early sixties at that time but he didn’t show it. His grip was firm and the muscles that he wore shamed me, a certified couch potato.
He was also well disciplined and he expected nothing less from his people. Once, he caught me pulling a gun from my drawer when striking workers threatened to storm our office and sternly commanded that I put it back.
During the two or three times that I was alone with him, he’d tell me stories about how his father rebuilt the shipping company, that bore his name, from the ravages of the Second World War. He said he did menial jobs at the pier but he never forgot to have fun.
About six years ago when I visited him at his office, he told me that he was suffering from a serious illness, the nature of which he refused to say. He appeared somber and mentioned that he knew that his days were numbered. I jokingly told him that he looked as sturdy as a mule.
Then last Jan. 10, he passed away.
Yesterday, I joined a small group of family members, friends and employees to pay their last respects to Don Alfredo. It drizzled earlier but the skies were clear when part of his ashes were poured onto the sea.
The blast from the horn of the ship that was named after him sounded forlorn while the siren from the two tugboat escorts wailed as balloons floated in the skies and a single moth flapped her wings playfully nearby. After I threw the flower that I was holding into the sea, I felt light. I had just returned Don Alfredo’s salute.
* * *
“He’s not automatically in. He’s not automatically out.”
The quote is from Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo on the possibility of Vice President Noli De Castro’s membership in a transitional council that would take over the government if President Arroyo is removed by extra-constitutional means.
It seems that in Bayan’s post-Arroyo scenario if Mrs. Arroyo is removed for reasons other than her resignation, the country will be governed by a junta, composed of “representatives from broad grassroots-based sectors that actively took part in the people power.” Wow!
