Friday, October 03, 2008 Malilong: Mayor Soc and parenting By Frank Malilong The Other Side
I FELT sorry for Talisay City Mayor Socrates Fernandez when I read that he and his adopted son Joavan were the favorite characters in the skits presented by media people in last Saturday’s dinner program that closed this year’s celebration of Press Freedom Week. How could somebody once so respected have sunk so low in the public eye as to be derided and made fun of?
Mayor Soc will probably brush it off as one of the crosses that he has to carry as a public servant and as a father. That may be true but he can’t deny that he helped fashion out that cross and had himself nailed to it, not to save mankind and no, not even to save his constituents in Talisay. Let me put it as gently as I can: Mayor Soc is responsible because we are all what our children have become.
This is a rule of succession: it is this generation’s duty to prepare the next one. That is why we are judged according to how our children make of their lives. And that is why it is heartwarming to hear parents and children speak proudly of the other.
Andres Mahinay was one of the earliest “King of Engineers” at the Cebu Institute of Technology. He rose to become a district engineer at the Department of Public Works and Highways in the ‘60s. Even at that time, he could have chosen to be rich by being corrupt.
At one time, he was promised a huge sum to approve a ghost project intended to raise election money for a powerful politician. He asked to be transferred to Manila instead. “Tatay always tells us,” his daughter Marissa said the other day, “that he may not be living in a mansion like the others but he sleeps well.”
When he turned 70 last week, Judge Fortunato “Dearie” de Gracia thought it would just be another simple celebration even if it marked his last day in the judiciary. Little did he know that his children who were in the United States all came home, holing up in a hotel for two days before surprising him with a mañanita, along with his court staff.
“I have not done badly as father, have I?” he mused. I was amazed. Here he was, in whose hands once lay the fate of so many people, wondering just two days after his retirement not on what people thought of him as a judge but on how much his children thought he has helped shape their lives.
Two weeks ago, Concepcion “Dondon” Yu was laid to rest. During the brief ceremonies that preceded her cremation, Dondon (and Peter’s) children took turns recalling what she meant to them. Oh, if only she heard what they said.
But I guess Dondon didn’t have to be told. After all, it was she who went to the rooms of the children every night without fail to pray over them no matter how late it was when she and Peter arrived home. Her smile, which her daughter May aptly described as “amazing,” could light up an entire room. It was she who carried her pain in silence because she didn’t want her loved ones to suffer.
It is not unusual of people to talk kindly about the dead. But not only did her children speak with sincerity and conviction about their mom, the things that they said only validated what those whose lives Dondon touched already knew.
I’m sure Tatay, Dearie and Dondon (in her lifetime) also had crosses to bear but none of them would ever merit a spoof from media people having fun.
