"WE MOURN the passing away of Atty. Simplicio ‘Sammy’ Palanca. We mourn because we lost an extraordinary man. A rarity. He was ‘one of a kind.’ He was a man with a vision that nobody else had," Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia said.
Leonardia, in a statement, said: "As early as in the 1960s, when our city was relatively laid back and we were just content with what we had, Atty. Palanca had envisioned the reclamation area. Maybe so many did not comprehend what he was dreaming of and how the reclamation would impact us as a city."
"But, lo and behold! Look what the reclamation has done for us. Atty. Palanca changed the landscape of Bacolod literally and figuratively," he said.
Palanca, 98, founder of the Bacolod Real Estate Development Corp. (Bredco), died in a hospital in Bacolod City on Saturday, July 10.
He developed the 250 hectares reclamation and five hectares port projects in Bacolod City that provided job opportunities and tourism windows to the City of Bacolod.
Fondly called by his friends and critics as "the old man by the sea," Palanca began to work and reclaim the foreshore areas of Bacolod in 1961 despite his critics calling it a highly ambitious project.
Leonardia said it is now hard to imagine Bacolod without the reclamation area. And, one thing for sure, this project has helped catapult Bacolod to where it is today.
"If there is any single person who had a colossal impact on our progress and development, without fear of contradiction, we must give the credit to him. Atty. Palanca, or Uncle Sam as we would all fondly call him, was "a man who saw tomorrow," he said.
"We now enjoy the ‘tomorrow’ that Uncle Sam envisioned many decades ago. Without him, Bacolod will not have been what it is today. Robert Kennedy and George Bernard Shaw's quote comes to mind: ‘Men see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?’ Uncle Sam lived his life with this philosophy. That is what he was all about," he said.
"For all that you had done, this City will always remember you. Here is a City that will always be grateful to you, Uncle Sam. May you rest in peace. We will always be proud of you. We will miss you, and we will always love you. Madamo gid nga salamat, Uncle Sam," Leonardia added.