Macapagal's rise from poverty to become President was legend. It is a classic story from which the sons and daughters of poor Kapampangans especially, draw courage, wisdom, and inspiration.
His triumph over poverty, his odyssey to the pinnacle of power was written in sweat and tears, something that his popular grandson, Representative Mikey Arroyo had never experienced or would ever.
Many decades ago, the former president, then a congressman in the same district that Mikey represents today, was our high school commencement speaker.
After the ritual expression of thanks for the invite and glowing congratulatory message to the graduating class, Macapagal demonstrated his soaring eloquence, alternately in English and Pampango.
The young graduates, seeing him live and hearing him speak for the first time, were hypnotized and listened in rapt attention as the congressman from Lubao traced his struggle as a poor boy from the small barrio of San Nicolas. In lilting prose and mesmerizing verse he took us on a journey from a world of squalor to the city beyond the hills.
The guest speaker, I can recall, was illustrating actual proof of how his talent for public speaking and compelling oratory spelled the difference between defeat and victory in his struggles, including his first fight for a congressional seat.
If he could move some classmates to tears in his sentimental recollection of his travails as a pasture boy, a cochero, and frog angler growing up as boy in a poor family who often lunch at 4 p.m. due to lack of rice to cook, there was no reason why he could not move voters from the First District of Pampanga to elect him congressman.
Before World War II, Macapagal was a popular vernacular poet who appeared in zarzuelas and who wrote lyric poetry. The leading poet of that age was Amado Yuzon who was known to lull his audience in hypnotic trance, make them laugh or burst into tears.
Yuzon became the controversial Pampanga postwar congressman who, along with Luis Taruc and other revolutionary leaders, was unseated from Congress on the order of President Roxas. Yuzon had opposed the Parity Rights for Americans.
Quirino handpicked Macapagal to run against Yuzon in the next elections, convinced that the young lawyer, a spectacular orator, could equal if not surpass Yuzon's dazzling stage performance.
It was well-known that Yuzon was the better poet and the more powerful orator than Macapagal. The two, in their respective campaigns, thus entertained voters and citizens who packed into the town plazas where the two handsome poets appeared. They campaigned by delivering messages in verse, the romantic lingua form of the age.
Macapagal handily won, aided by the classic strategy of the well-known house to house campaign which the poet Yuzon, a known lover boy and skirt chaser could not wage.
In his re-election bid, Macapagal was pitted against lawyer Eligio Lagman, protégé of then Sen. Gil J. Puyat and former Interior Secretary Sotero Baluyut.
Wealth and entrenched politicians did not prevent him from a landslide victory. He was in fact the only Liberal party man who survived defeat in his province.
One admirable trait of President Macapagal was his religious character. He was known to make an annual family pilgrimage to Virgin of Antipolo (Rizal) and the Lady of Pe?afrancia in Naga City.
President Marcos's lucky number was "7", Macapagal's favorite was "9" said to be thrice plural and a mystical number representing perfection.
An ironic coincidence, Macapagal's birthday is September 28 (celebrated with fitting rites in Bacolor, Pampanga on Sunday), the same date when Marcos died.
He often acknowledged Don Honorio Ventura, then Secretary of Interior, as his patron and benefactor as a law student at UST to where the philanthropist transferred him at his expense from the low-tuition Philippine Law School.
Political campaigning in the Philippines now demands intensive public appearances of candidates, a strategy originally practiced by Macapagal in his town-to-town sorties during his Presidential campaign.
His favorite food was sinigang and salmon (in can) any day of the week. Parenthetically, if compared to his grandson Mikey's dining fare of steak, fried duck and sitsaron bulaklak, the old Macapagal must have starved in his concept of simple living. He liked to play billiards, often wore long-sleeved polo shirts and baseball cap as a fashion statement.
Because money came last in his thoughts, it was Mrs. Macapagal who collected his salary as congressman and who also paid his Congress personnel. Macapagal was reported to have forgotten his full-year salary as professor at UST as he forgot to get his monthly pay. Mrs. Macapagal was called up and she collected the accumulated money for him.
In all his writings and books, on official documents, and in his oath of Office as President, he used the name and signed as "Diosdado Macapagal." President Marcos ordered a change of name to Diosdado P. Macapagal while the former president was alive because the dictator's name was Ferdinand E. Marcos.
I am sure my friends, the brothers Pangan (Perry and Benjie) would have really welcomed Marcos's whim had they learned of the caper.
