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Monday, December 01, 2003
Nonoy Garcia, Elias Lopez and other airport tales
By Antonio M. Ajero
TODAY’S grand inauguration of the P4.9-billion Davao International Airport reminds many Dabawenyos about the glorious past and humble beginnings of the airport and their own.
Most of the old-time residents, Davao-born especially, associate their recollection with the first time they flew out of the Francisco Bangoy Airport, which was the old name of the DIA located on a portion of a vast tract of land in Sasa owned by the Bangoy patriarch.
Dean Hildegardo F. Iñigo of the Ateneo de Davao law school said that his first plane ride to Manila was "around 1960 or 1961," adding the terminal then was "very small." He took the Philippine Airlines "Starduster" night flight whose one-way fare he could no longer recall.
The first ride of Joaquin "Ken" Angeles, civil engineer-turned-restaurateur of the Yellow Fin Resto and After Dark fame, was for free--on a military plane in 1949. But his late father, prominent lawyer Gerardo Angeles, used to pay P60 one-way for a PAL ride to Manila. Ken vividly remembers the grass growing on the runway as it was not yet paved.
A decade later, the first flight to Manila by newsman Gil Abarico, then a campus editor, was also on a Philippine Airforce plane, for free. "It was a very simple thing then, no hassle, we just waited for takeoff announcement at waiting area provided by PAL, then excitedly boarded PAF plane.
"There was a very small control tower and several small low buildings on both sides of the airport entrance. Our PAF aircraft could not take off until the incoming PAL plane has landed," Abarico says of the flight he had to make because of a national convention of the College Editors Guild.
Former Presidential Assistant Sebastian Angliongto said his first flight was in the fifties when he was still a high school student. The aircraft, the exact make of which now escapes his memory, was a 24-seater that took a long time to reach the Big City.
Serafin Ledesma Jr., retired executive of PT&T, former president of the Rotary Club of Davao and publisher of the Mindanao Journal, had this impression of the Bangoy airport when he was there for the first in 1964 rustic military airfield, only this time PAL's first edition landed there.
Behind were what could be called Quonset huts, which served as terminal building. Ledesma's first flight out of the Bangoy airport was a poignant story in itself. He snubbed his own college graduation and took the Manila flight on the very day he was to march. "The graduation fee was P80 and I didn't have money for the toga and other graduation expenses, so I bought myself a one-way ticket to Manila which cost only P80 then and sought employment there," he said.
Councilor Victorio S. Advincula Sr. said his flight out of the davao airport was in 1950. "I am not sure morag P45 cguro."
"Most of us Dabawenyos studying in Manila actually took the slow boat in going there or in coming home during Christmas and summer vacations," Angliongto recalls. This was true with both rich and poor students because it was fashionable then to take the boat although they were primarily for cargo and would take passengers only when it is not fully loaded with cargo, said Anggie who finished agriculture in UP-Los Baños.
Taking the boat rather that the plane was also being done by Davao-based students studying in Manila like the late Castillo brothers (lawyers Pedro and Antonio), former congressman Manuel "Nonoy" Garcia and his brothers and sisters, the Pichons, the Rodriguezes and the Hizons.
One of those who was doing this was the late congressman Elias B. Lopez, whose humble parents couldn't afford, tavel by plane. There is this incredible but possibly true story, which this writer failed to verify with the great Davao leader when he was still alive -- his first ever plane ride was from Manila to Davao City, when he was asked to rush home by the late Carlos Gempesaw as he was being considered to run for city councilor.
Gempesaw heard about the brilliance and popularity of Elias in the University of the Philippines, where he was elected chairman of the UP student council, among other exceptional achievement as a law student.
Elias first hesitated because at that time he was waiting for the result of the bar examinations together with fellow Dabawenyos Nonoy Garcia, Nonoy Castillo and Polyok Castillo, and was also preparing for a postgraduate scholarship in the University of Michigan. But since he was provided with a free plane ticket to Davao and back to Manila (if he decided not to run for councilor), he took the trip. The rest is history.
Among those interviewed by this writer, former congressman Nonoy Garcia had the fondest memories about the international airport. Nonoy, if Dabawenyos recall, played a big role in the transformation of the airport into what it is today.
There was no term in his long stint in Congress -- from the Batasan days in 1978 up to 2001 when President Erap Estrada was impeached --that he did not set aside funds from his CDF to lengthen the runway and other projects that would improve the airport.
He had the runway lengthened from 1,200 meters, to 1,500 m, to 1,800 m, 2,O00 m, 2,500 m and finally 3,000 m. Gscia aslso worked for the consturction of the P15 million interim international terminal. He used his connections and influence chiefly with House Speaker Jose de Venecia to convince the Fidel V. Ramos administration to consider the P2.7 billion DIA at the time.
In 2001, Garcia crafted a bill seeking the creation of the Davao International Airport Authority to manage the DIA. The bill, according to Second District Rep. Vincent Garcia, Nonoy's son and successor in the House, has been reported out by the Committee on Government Enterprises and forwarded to the committee of appropriations.
Nonoy Garcia said the first time he took a plane to Manila from the Davao airport was in 1948 on a 40-seater PAL aircraft.
It was a long ride. The plane would take off from Davao with about 20 passengers, stopped over in Bukidnon to pick up five more, then proceed to Cagayan de Oro where five others would board the plane, then on to Tagbilaran and then Iloilo City, before finally proceeding to Manila.
"We would start from Davao at 9 a.m. and arrive in Manila at 4 p.m.," Nonoy recalled.
(December 1, 2003 issue)
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