STANDING before more than a hundred alumni in a hotel he owned, 92-year-old Filipino tycoon Dr. John L. Gokongwei Jr. elicited a couple rounds of applause from his audience during the first Grand Reunion for Alumni Champions of the University of San Carlos (USC).
Gokongwei, on Thursday night, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the university, where he fondly recalled memories of hard work and student life in primary and high school.
“I flew this morning on the airline I named after the city I love, Cebu Pacific. I went to school here at the University of San Carlos for my primary and high school. I was valedictorian in grade school and I was number one in high school and because of that, I received free tuition in school. I thank the school for that,” he said.
He drew laughter when he reminisced about standing on a corner for an hour after a disciplinarian priest caught him running in front of the latter’s office.
The third richest billionaire in Forbes’ Philippines list highlighted the importance of family in his life.
“When I was 13 years old, my father died, leaving me to take care of my mother, my brother and my sister. I took care of them because the family has always been my priority,” he said.
Gokongwei married Elizabeth Yu, whom he praised for always being a good wife to him and a mother to his six children.
The magnate said that it was in Cebu where he earned his first income after he dropped out of school because of poverty.
“It was here in Cebu that I had earned my first few pesos. I always used to wake up before dawn to ride my bicycle to the public market many kilometers away. I set up a little table in the market to sell spools of thread, salts and candles,” he said.
“I earned about P20 a day by working longer and harder than everyone else but it didn’t matter because I really loved my work. I love being an entrepreneur,” he added.
Gokongwei is the founder of JG Summit Holdings Inc. (JGSHI), which has subsidiaries in food manufacturing, property, banking, telecommunications, power, aviation and petrochemicals.
“Through the years, I’ve stayed an entrepreneur, working hard and always learning from the school of life. Today, I’m 92-years-old. I still know what has been going around in my company and I study and learn and always read books and now stories in this new digital age,” he said.
His advice to his family and colleagues?
“Love your work, your career, love your family. Love your country, never stop caring and always look back and be grateful to where you came from,” he said.
During the reunion held at the Summit Galleria Hotel, USC president Fr. Dionisio Miranda reiterated the importance of a network--the government, the industry and the academe.
“There is a tectonic shift in the academic community and the educational landscape has moved and may no longer be the same. The call of the hour is for the academe to reach out to the community to identify their needs so that the manpower will be directed towards those needs,” Miranda said in his speech.
He said USC has managed to bring industry’s concerns into the academe and revise their curricula to be more relevant to the needs of industries.
“We do not produce graduates to end up in school. We produce graduates so they can be useful to society,” he said.