Leandro and Joan Trongco: A romance studded with National Artists

ARTIST and writer Lloyd Tronco, son of another artist Leandro Ramos Tronco a.k.a. Larry Tronco and Joan Marie Ramos Tronco, shared how his parents met and lived happily as a married couple.

He said: “I never really knew how my parents met until I was 17 years old. I was in the UP College of Architecture when I had a classmate who said she also grew up in Bacolod, though I could not remember seeing her in the early years, given that Bacolod was a small town and that people would usually bump into each other in church or at birthday parties.”

“One time, I asked my mom if she had known this family name of my classmate and she quickly said without batting an eyelash, saying she was the daughter of Tita Manon, the one who introduced her to dad.”

His mom loved to write things but he hardly came across this note she made about meeting his dad in 1965.

She wrote, “Our first meeting was at the office of Robert Borja, where Manon Campos and I were working in his furniture business as interior designers.”

She continued, “That evening, Manon and I went with Larry to see Billy Abueva's latest works in sculpture at his home in Diliman, Quezon City. Also, there were Jerry and Virgie Navarro, Robert Borja and of course, the host and hostess, Mr. & Mrs. Abueva,”

Billy Abueva became a National Artist for sculpture, while Jerry Navarro became National Artist for painting.

“Art was the invisible yet highly palpable bond between my mom and dad. My mom was an interior designer who went to school at the New York School of Interior Design with TitaManon,” Lloyd said.

“That was after TitaManon had studied under my dad at the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts. My dad, well, he was this art professor by day and advertising agency creature by night,” he added.

He lived and breathed art. He was a scholar of the Spanish government in the early 1950s to Spain together with two other National Artists in the making, Cesar Legaspi and Arturo Luz, to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.

Interestingly, his mom's family name, Ramos, was also his dad's middle name. Though both had come from Negros, the Ramos from his mom’s side was from Bacolod and are hardly related to the Ramoses of the south (Kabankalan and Himamaylan).

“I look at their courtship as an interesting one. On one side was the small-town boy coming from Kabankalan, who was very practical in every sense, having seen World War II as a teenager and stood as an elder among his kin when they were orphaned at the onset of the war,” Lloyd quipped.

“On the other side was this petite lady who grew up in a more ideal environment when compared side by side to my dad's hardships. Both were from Negros. Both had spent time studying abroad. But destiny had led them to meet in the melting pot of Manila,” he also said.

They married in 1967 at the St. Peter and Paul Parish in Makati, lived nearby until 1975 and in that year, made a monumental move to relocate to Negros despite my dad's flourishing career in art and advertising in Manila.

Through the time they stayed in Negros, many other artist friends came by to see them in their abode.

Billy Abueva came by again, Cesar Legaspi stayed, Malang came by, and my dad's tukayo and compadre, Larry Alcala, eventually settled in Bacolod. All national artists.

Their earthly union lasted for 18 years until 1985 when my dad contracted amyloidosis, a rare disease which to date has no cure apart from treatment options focused on relieving symptoms and prolonging life.

His mom, Joan went on to live as a widow in Bacolod for 29 years, looking forward to the day she would be reunited with her love, Larry Tronco and in the early morning of February 9, 2014, she left this earth in time for her heavenly Valentine date with Larry, eager to tell him all the stories of their children Joyce, Lloyd, and their spouse's air grandchildren.