SUNSTAR Cebu lifestyle writer Jenara “Cookie” Sanson Regis-Newman succumbed to pneumonia secondary to fourth stage cancer on Monday, June 6, 2022. She was 84.
Her daughter, Pia Bouffard, told SunStar that Newman was admitted to the University of Cebu Medical Center in Mandaue City on May 26, after she complained of tiredness and difficulty breathing.
For more than a month, Newman, who was asthmatic, had not initially sought hospital treatment, believing that she was only suffering asthma attacks.
At the hospital, they learned that water was already building up in her lungs because it turned out that she had cancer at an advanced stage, Bouffard said.
“A month ago, she was still up and active. She was still driving,” Newman’s third child said of Newman, who would have turned 85 on July 17.
Bouffard said Newman was a Fulbright scholar. She also lived in New York for a time.
Newman wrote the column, “Stardust,” while she was the entertainment editor of the Evening News in Manila. She wrote “Womannotes,” for the Cebu Daily Times from 1977 to 1980.
She edited Vistas, Spectrum, Southern Star, The Freeman Metro Journal, The Freeman food supplement called “Kitchen Sunday,” and The Freeman Sunday magazine.
Newman edited SunStar Daily’s Sunday magazine called “Weekend” in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. She wrote features for SunStar Cebu’s Live! section and occasionally co-wrote society columns.
She wrote the food essay for the Ayala coffeetable book, “Cebu.” The Philippines Foundation Inc. released her book, “Perlas.” In 2008, she edited the 75th anniversary commemorative book of St. Theresa’s College, “A Diamond Jubilation.”
Newman had eight children but three predeceased her.
She is survived by a brother, a sister, five children, 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Her wake is at the St. Pedro Calungsod Chapel at The Archdiocesan Shrine of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (the former Sacred Heart Church) compound on D. Jakosalem St., Cebu City.
She will be laid to rest at Cempark on Saturday, June 11.