WHEN one hears the name of Monroe Taclawan and inevitably thinks of a big man exuding peace and quiet, he is perfectly in his right senses. That’s the Monroe Taclawan I came to know since the first times we started crossing each other’s path in Baguio.
If I say “crossing each other’s path”, that also is correct, because it is in Baguio where we met casually and more often officially. He was a principal at Easter School and I was closely involved with advisory guidance of especially BIBAK students together with the Rimascouple at SLU and later with Dean Pio Tadaoan at Baguio Tech (now UB). The United BIBAK was at its heyday then and so officials of different schools would often be invited by visionary student leaders and officers, the likes of Augustus U. Saboy, Ernesto Lumiked, Ben Andaya, Evelyn Saquing, Jaime Panganiban, and others more, in their active for a. There, I heard the names of Mr. Donaal from Eastern Philippines College, Mr. John Donguiis from Baguio Colleges, Atty. Cating from La Trinidad, but the name of Monroe Taclawan of Easter School was consistently sought to attend even in non-school gatherings, much more so when the concern was peace among students whether in the Baguio-Benguet area or outside, like then San Fernando, La Union and Dagupan City, and elders from the provinces come to Baguio. My transfer from the University of Pangasinan to MSAC, now BSU, in 1976 gave me as BIBAK/ BMAAK adviser a closer view of him regarding this situation. He was really a figure sought after.
Physically, Monroe’s body form was one that could easily be noticed among many. Among the Banaos, it could pass for a hulk and so an asset in gatherings. But never was he seen throwing his weight around. His few words uttered in his characteristic Monroic twang, as perfectly mimicked by Fr. Dao-ey in his entertaining eulogy, were weighty enough. Messages that he delivered in boominguggayam chant were relatively brief. He was prone to agree easily with good proposals made by others unlike those to whom good proposals are good only if they are identified as the sole proponents or authors, disliking to be identified with rightful others as co-creators. In meetings, Monroe appeared to accept his second-the-motion identity in good stead but that does not mean that he did not have good ideas of his own. For him, the more important thing is the manner to attain the objective, namely, peace and peacefulness. That the carabao does not argue but its silence plows the vast life-giving rice fields was a bi-annual event in his birthplace Saltan, Balbalasang, Balbalan, Kalinga. Born there in 1934, by the headwaters of the fish-laden Saltan River, he must have learned from that educative scenario, richly!
The achievement of Monroe Taclawan, for his undeniably leading part in forging the bodong Peace Agreement that is much hoped to stay long as a legacy, is the recognition of CAR educational center Baguio City as a tribesmen’s peace zone. According to the pagta provisions contained therein, conflicts in the root places of highland students, particularly Kalinga, are not allowed to outflow from the places of origin into the City. Violators thereof will incur the inescapable wrath of bodong sanctions. After the successful forging, concerned parents of students and the children themselves were put at welcome ease, feeling safe from the practice, better termed malpractice, of tribal indiscriminate revenge (balos). Thank you, Monroe; thank you, Gumabol and Francis Buliyat, and all of their courageous peace-making partners and supporters. No one of you is dead, Monroe just departed for graduation to another state of self-conscious existence. He is all alive in the living memory of beneficiaries. Congratulations! Gyákan pakuy ji pappang at parákan ja kayú: Waahu! And to his ever devoted Gloria and their worthy progenies, yours, too, the far-reaching, ear-piercing, throb-inducing women’s ayayá: yæ-yæ-yæ-yæ-yæ- . . . . . (semi-chanted loud, staccato, fast in high-pitched female voice, done with cupped palm over the mouth in fast horizontal pumping motion to enhance the staccato-fortissimo effect).
Other outstanding qualities of the late Monroe Taclawan were entertainingly brought out by Rev. Francis Vincent Dao-ey, a retired priest of the Anglican Episcopal Church alias English Catholic Church. In his homily during the funeral rites in the church at Easter College (formerly School) , Rev. Dao-ey started with his first encounter as a cassocked Christian missionary, with two other neophytes assigned in Balbalasang, Kalinga, with young Monroe in the latter’s very home barrio of Saltan, Balbalasang. As was my experience with him, Monroe’s instinctive first action was to invite the arriving people into their family house to offer something to drink and eat. Parenthetically, let it be explained that in the indigenous highland “ili” (village), welcome is customarily expressed in action—by inviting arrivals to enter the house and offering of something to drink, usually water, the reason perhaps why there is no direct translation in the vernacular of the English term “welcome”.
Inside the Taclawan house, young Monroe beckoned the three visitors to take their seats then instinctively said, “Agkapikayo ah, . . . ngem . . .awan met kapi.” (Please drink coffee . . . but . . . there is no coffee.). Fr. Dao-ey related this funny incident imitating exactly the boy’s familiar nasal sound and resonance to the joyed reaction in the congregation.
The second time Fr. Dao-ey met Mr. Taclawan was “right here at the Easter Elementary School. He was in charge of the Boys Dormitory.” It was his stint in this work that nurtured in him the desire to embark in the religious education of the young, especially of boys. He knew very well the financial hardship incurred in earning one’s degreed education. The eulogist revealed that from his last counting, not less than ten priests owed their successful entry into the clerical ministry to the attention or help of Mr. Taclawan, especially when he became a teacher and then Principal of the School until he retired.
As to community concerns, as jocosely-seriously recounted by Fr. Dao-ey, Monroe showed predictive adeptness in meeting social problems. He could act ahead to eliminate future problems or to prepare for coming developments. He showed that in his pleasant ways of maintaining good relationship between ownership of real property by the School and the unavoidable realistic needs of an increasing population in surrounding neighborhoods in what is now Pinget. By his smooth explaining and convincing, roads could be built and necessary structures put up peacefully without expensive and time-consuming litigations. For his accomplishments, he was made by co-residents their barangay head for twenty years during which, with his good rapport with the city government, the high school in Pinget was put up and finally later nationalized.
This sketchy testimony on a friend and colleague would have committed an omission to the level of a fault if we do not point emphatically that this friend and colleague, Cordillera Elder Monroe Gannisi Taclawan, was an exemplar of a good family man and a truly religious one at that. In other words, he was a man of man and a man of God. But that is another topic that can be expanded in another article.