There are times when lives intersect multiple times and you just brush it off like it’s nothing extraordinary. That was the case with Roger Serna and me. Serna, a SunStar Cebu entertainment writer, passed away recently. The last time that we were in an event together was years ago when The Quill, the student publication of Southwestern University, gave us awards. Serna was a “Quiller” after my stint in the publication, meaning that our paths never even got to cross with each other. But I would say that he became a Quill staff member because of what we, the old staffers, did or failed to do.
Ahh memories. I remember that awarding ceremony mainly because of what I said when I received the award. I recalled how most of the staffers who were with me at that time quit in the pursuit of principle. That was the moment when the school administration replaced us with new campus writers that included Serna. Roger was, of course, listening while I made the recollection.
I was already a senior editor and a budding student activist when we made that fateful decision. I remember our adviser talking about Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, a character in Jose Rizal’s novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. But he was more focused on Ibarra’s transformation from an idealist pushing for reforms in Noli to becoming Simoun, the mysterious jeweler in Fili who instigated a failed revolt against Spanish rule in the Philippines.
Reforms, our adviser said, were what were needed for the publication. There were some issues we raised then, mostly financially, from the publication fee to the lack of benefits, like scholarship, for staff members. We thought then, rightly or wrongly, that we should not justify the unfairness by continuing to publish the magazine. So we stopped the publishing work, prompting the head of the student affairs office at the time, who was my commandant in Citizens Army Training in high school, to form a new staff to publish a magazine for that year. He was afraid that the student body would rise up in protest if no magazine came out.
Serna was among the new writers who replaced us. Of course, we no longer bothered fighting for our old posts. We went on with our normal student lives until I decided to quit altogether to fight for reforms outside of the campus walls. The rest of the staff members went on to become professionals – doctors, dentists, etc. -- with some of them excelling in their chosen fields. So did our replacements succeed in their fields of endeavor, with Serna becoming a SunStar Cebu entertainment writer.
I didn’t know when Roger stopped writing entertainment columns but I did know that he later went back to his hometown in Oslob and even tried his hand, albeit unsuccessfully, in politics. My former colleague Candice Acuña said Roger had an enlarged heart, among other illnesses. But I will always remember him as a soft-spoken colleague with an easy smile.
Godspeed, ‘ger.