Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Mercado: Three in a row By Ram Mercado
THREE friends -- two quite well known in media circles -- died within a 10-day period, all victims of diabetes, possibly with stress. The one lost a wife; the second lost his job; and the third, his audience.
Time was when only individuals who belonged to society's upper class got afflicted of the disease.
Today, ill-fed or well-nourished, persons suffer from the ailment. It is a great leveler, attacking people of all age level, regardless of status in life, or political affiliation. Add stress as a fatal aggravation.
First to go was former newsman Lito Pangilinan (63), in his youth a student leader at the Far Eastern University and former editor of the campus paper, "Advocate."
Lito finished his law degree at FEU but provincial journalism beckoned him to Pampanga, forgetting his ambition to pass the bar. His family owns the famous Funeraria Pangilinan, then the biggest funeral parlor in town.
Supported by an indulgent father, the late Angeles City councilor Magno Pangilinan, Lito had an easy life, spending his passion in writing and the bottle. He had put a number of publications which, at that time, and even today, usually died of natural causes.
Provincial journalism attracts beginning writers, excites them with its adventures and license, but like a vice that would be hard to drop, hooks them in a lifetime addiction.
The smart practitioners saw the pitfalls, the hopeless striving without solid fulfillment, and occupational hazard like ingratitude.
With his education and fine family standing, Pangilinan wooed and won one of Angeles City's fairest girls during the 1970s. One day the pretty girl -- the writer's wife -- suddenly vanished from home. Reports had it she took off with the US Air Force officer who flew the girl to the USA. This devastated our young journalist. Since then he fought a long battle against his demons, desperate in losing his loved one. On advice of his family, he remarried, found a loving partner with Reggie, who is my kumadre and who nursed Lito in his intermittent depression, now debilitated by diabetes until stroke finally put him to rest.
I remember Lito as a sharp tabloid writer when his demons were not at work. In his lucid years, Tatang Magno, his father, would assign him to manage the parlor. In Angeles City, a number of people, most of them transients, and homeless, suddenly drop dead and discovered as corpses in unlikeliest of places.
Lito was put in charge of the pauper's burial for the unclaimed dead. On their way to the cemetery, loaded on a beaten limousine hearse, the unknown dead were given the works by Lito who caused the playing of a Django movie musical score on the hearse's amplifier. Lito must have seen quite a number of western spaghettis - so-called, the cowboy films starring Django who killed adversaries accompanied by that particular music score.
The second victim of diabetes was former Sun.Star Pampanga editor Rollie Razon (70) a UST journalism graduate who practiced his craft mostly in Tarlac town. Rollie was a correspondent of the defunct Philippines Herald, then owned by SMC mogul, Don Andres Soriano.
He was a leader of Tarlac media where he edited several publications before he decided to move to Pampanga until Sun.Star hired him as editor in 2001. At that time he was already suffering from poor eyesight, high glucose levels, and arthritic fingers. He told me he had no money, not even savings for his family, to afford reconstructive surgery for his deformed hand and removal of his blinding cataract.
To gain goodwill from Angeles University Foundation Hospital which founder and president Dr. Emmanuel Y. Angeles was then president and CEO of the Clark Development Corporation, our diabetic editor wrote articles favorable to Dr. Angeles, then the subject of widespread gossip that he was about to be replaced as CDC chief.
In his eager desire to get free medical attention at AUF Hospital by currying Angeles's favor, Rollie wrote a scathing piece which was a direct affront to this paper's owner, then mentioned as likely candidate for the CDC post.
Not long after, I learned Rollie resigned from his editorship or was fired, then coasted along doing minor PR jobs here and there, but generally jobless on account of age. He attempted to organize a cooperative involving some local businessmen in the printing enterprise along the cooperative concept.
Rollie's prospective "investors" did not believe in newspapermen's business sense or in their ability to manage a cooperative. It was aborted, and so was his dream to have a free operation at AUF until he died as a despondent man who had lost a job.
Lying in state at Funeraria Angelina in Angeles City today is Bono Dizon (67) scion of the popular Dizon clan in the city. He studied at San Sebastian College to his educational quest.
He went back to Angeles, raised a family, spending his inherited fortune on friends and his free-wheeling lifestyle.
Fascinated by the Great Erap (former President Joseph Estrada), Bono aped the film idol, including his hairstyle, his mannerism, and even wore a wristband for effect.
Bono spent available cash on clothes which he displayed with flair daily among comely sales girls at Nepo Mall and surrounding establishments.
Bono like to talk and make rounds in coffee shops, delivering small speeches and consuming fifteen cups of sugared coffee to energize him. His regular audiences were the coffee drinkers at Freddie So's McDonald's near the church, his fellow "DOMS" he said.
He was found sprawled lifeless on a chair at Perfect Loaf while waiting for his usual audience who failed to show up and listen to his Erap-style perambulations.
