Saturday, February 02, 2008 Tulabut: Pampanga's Bests By Noel Tulabut Palm Notes
MABALACAT is celebrating its town fiesta today. Mayor Marino Morales and Fiesta Committee chairman Deng Pangilinan and June Magbalot made sure that this one would go down as another unique and festive commemoration.
This is the best celebration ever launched in this town.
But what is actually being celebrated by the town is its final steps towards cityhood. The town had met all the pre-requisites into becoming a city. Also of paramount importance is the support being thrown by stakeholders.
Cong. Carmelo F. Lazatin has already filed appropriate measure in Congress for Mabalacat to be finally made a component city. The Provincial Board has already given its endorsement as its way of supporting the move.
The seasoned congressman, with the good looking Mayor Morales, knows the importance of having the first city in his district and the third one in the province of Pampanga. A great majority of townsfolk are also echoing the benefits of cityhood in terms of revenues for the town that would redound to greater public service by the Municipal Government.
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Also on this day is the Ibon-Ebon Festival in the vibrant Candaba town. Mayor Jerry Pelayo had really made the town come back to life since he assumed office the mayorship some years ago.
With no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the guest of honor, the two-day event promises to be a great spectacle. Mayor Pelayo knows his PR, and his kind of PR is really amazing. Last Saturday, no less than Vice President Noli de Castro was promoting the event in his weekly radio program! He even cited the wonders that the migratory birds that had made the town more popular.
The bird festival is also the first of its kind in Asia. Mayor Pelayo is not only an outstanding local chief executive, an outspoken but sensible leader but also an event organizer par excel lance. And he does his job hands-on, minding not the heat of the sun nor waking up early to make sure that all goes well for the festival.
This is the best festival ever launched in Pampanga's countryside.
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Model family. Ideal mother.
Not the Rizals whose matriarch Teodora Alonso and her kind of faith and teachings had nurtured and produced the country's national hero Jose.
But the virtues they -- especially the mother -- adhere to such as religiosity, integrity, honesty, servitude, humility are enough attributes to the Hizon of Pampanga's Best fame to be likened to the model family of old.
Mrs. Lolita Hizon, the woman behind the famous tocino that had ushered in an empire in local processed meat product industry, is more than a person blessed with the talent to prepare and cook the famous Capampangan delectable.
She and husband Jun do not even boast of the skill nor do they say that their multimillion peso business was put up accidentally. The couple and their 12 children are not perfect but their perseverance, enterprising spirit, hardwork, ingenuity had given the Capampangan culinary expertise its much-deserved respect in both the food business and cultural recognition.
But they would rather not talk about those enviable qualities.
"God-given" "Divine Providence" "Lord's Blessings" and all these sort of branding was all the Hizons can utter in recalling what the secret behind Pampanga's Best success is. Call it piety. I will call it faith. Call it coincidental, I will call it obedience. Call it hard work, I will call it stewardship.
Good stewardship of what God entrusted them with. And this probably the very word how the borrowed P3,000 start-up capital in the late 1960s had yielded billions (not only for themselves but their distributors, resellers, employees, etc.)
From a home-based business (it was called tocino ng Apung Lolet) where I could imagine how Apung Lolet and Apung Jun having toiled cutting meat and mixing the right ingredients, Pampanga's Best had grown because the Hizon couple made wise use of the money and talent they were given with. The Bible tells of how God multiplies well-harnessed talent.
And not only that, Apung Lolet is as always quick to give back the glory to her loving and Almighty God. I believe the Good Book also tells of how God blesses a thankful heart.
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What is amazing with Apung Lolet and family is that they never cease to extend kind acts to those in need. No matter the cost. No matter the outcome.
There was this story of a baby who they had to send to UST hospital after being given up by local doctors. Even with minimum chance of survival, Apu Lolet did not waste time nor thought twice in spending money for the baby's possible recovery. She is said to have spent some quarter of a million pesos but the baby -- not even known nor related to them -- did not see daylight, unfortunately.
There were other "babies" that were helped b the Hizons. Almost always, these "babies" needs are financial in nature.
I would not go far now but to cite the priest-turned-governor Eddie Panlilio who was her baby. Media accounts in the past few months should suffice to conclude a falling out.
Apung Lolet did not think twice in spending for Among Ed during the campaign. At the very onset, she was told of the P13 million needed for poll watchers alone. We do not say here that she shouldered that all, but the enormous amount raised before her face did not deter her at all from joining the Panlilio team. She has more than what it takes to spend for that though.
No doubt about that. She did spend three Ts (time, talent and treasure) in the campaign, with the latter nowhere to be found in the report of election-related expenses of the governor. This is to her great dismay. To the consternation too of former Cong. Willy Villarama who was delisted from the financers in the report.
Is her "baby" in the Panlilio administration "dying" now? The Hizon matriarch who pinned so much hope in the priest for Pampanga to move out of the doldrums can only say that he hopes for the governor to "do a graceful exit before everything tumbles down."
She even likened the Panlilio administration to a house that was built on a wrong foundation. No amount of patching up can make it beautiful now, she said.
