THE Osmeña family led on Tuesday, September 9, 2025, the flower offering at the Osmeña Birthplace Marker in Cebu City, as Cebu marked the 147th birth anniversary of the late President Sergio Osmeña Sr., the country’s fourth chief executive.
The annual observance, declared a special non-working holiday in Cebu City, the Province of Cebu, and its component cities under Republic Act 6953, is known as Osmeña Day in honor of the “Grand Old Man of Cebu,” who was born in 1878.
Every year, schools, and local governments in Cebu honor his legacy with wreath-laying ceremonies and commemorative activities.
Government offices are closed for the holiday, while employees required to work are entitled to premium pay.
Osmeña assumed the presidency in 1944 following the death of President Manuel L. Quezon, guiding the Philippines through the final year of World War II and its liberation from Japanese occupation.
A lawyer, journalist, and public servant, he rose to prominence as co-founder of the Nacionalista Party and became the first Speaker of the Philippine Assembly at just 29 years old.
Highlighting this year’s rites, Cebu City Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña, grandson of the late President and chairman of the Cebu City Cultural and Historical Affairs Commission, delivered a speech.
He recalled how his grandfather earned the respect of peers, industrialists, hacienderos, revolutionaries, poets, and lawyers who unanimously chose him as Speaker despite being the youngest legislator at the time.
Osmeña later played a key role in the Philippine independence movement, supporting the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act in 1933, while Quezon pushed for the Tydings–McDuffie Law that eventually set the framework for independence.
When Quezon died in 1944, Osmeña assumed the presidency without fanfare. After leading the country through the war, he chose not to campaign vigorously in 1946 and lost to Manuel Roxas.
Still, he honored the process by attending the turnover of power.
The vice mayor also paid tribute to his great-grandmother, Juana Osmeña, whom he described as another kind of hero.
Juana Osmeña, he noted, was a single mother in a conservative society who managed to raise a son who not only topped the bar exams but later became president of the Philippines.
Sergio Osmeña Sr. remains the only Cebuano to have become president of the Philippines.
His portrait, as a youthful Speaker, endures on the P50 bill.
During the wreath-laying ceremony, the Cebu City Government was represented, led by Mayor Nestor Archival. (CAV)