TIO VO'ROY'S Fi.ehL
PRIMA GUIPO HOWER
Introduction : Dr. Roberto T. Borromeo Illustrations: Tito-Diomedes Grana Guipo
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Copyright 2005 by Prima Guipo Hower All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
First Edition Library of Congress Control Number: 2004093224 ISBN 0-9755238-7-2 Editors
Dottie Anderson Chris Lee Gammon
Published by Primah Publishing Company P. O. Box 290117, Tampa, Florida 33687-0117 OrJers '(fbooksbvprima.~ol11
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Printed in the United States of America Marrakech Express Inc 720 Wesley A venue Tarpon Springs, FL 34689 USA w\\\v.marrak.com Cover Design Photo Restoration :
Angela Danielle Underwood http://www.booksindesign .com Chris Lee Gammon and David Bowering http: //www.davidbowering.com
Contents A Note from the Author Introduction
Sunless West of Boston Of Children and Family Tree Sir Guipo, Ma'am Guipo in America Peace & Abundance On My Way to My Father's Boyhood Geckos in the Moonlight Trining of Cabatuan The Hills of Ingas The Scars of War Gardempols! Mt. Matutum and Sarangani Bay A Journey to My Beginning If the Trees Could Tell a Story God's Land Doroy's Legacy Dance of the Fronds A Thank You Note Bibliography Glossary About the Author
xi xvii
1
12 39
77 85 104 140 165 174 212
227 253 276 319
355 380 398
403 405 406
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
You might call this an atrociously long response to my children's brief questions. If I had known all the answers then, this book might never have happened. A classic case of ignorance is bliss. It was autumn, 1981. Almost seven-year-old Linda came home one day. ''I'm K-O- W in two weeks Mom," she said. Kid of the Week in Ms. B's second grade class at Independent Day School was what a week long newspaper feature column would be to the Tampa Tribune. Through this innovative project each child could reveal to her young audience anything that she wanted them to know about KOW. Linda decided that Mom would cook lumpia egg rolls for her classmates and teach them how to dance the tinikling. Dad would show slides about the Philippines. share his experiences as an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) and teach her classmates as he had taught her how to count in Tagalog from one to ten. Isa. dalawa. tatlo, apal. lima. animo pita. "I'alo. siyam. sampu. For her part my daughter chose to delve into genealogy which meant that she'd have to dig up her family roots. On the Hower-Judd side all she needed was a trowel. As to the GuipoGranas a spade was not long enough. Her first question was quite simple. "Mom, what's your Nanay's favorite colorT I had no clue. My mother Trining and I had never discussed matters like that as she was never one for yangkol-yangkol her favorite word for anything she deemed trivial. In his senior year at Tampa Preparatory School. Lee. my fifteen-year-old son. had a list of questions about my father Doroy too. Until homework compelled me to trace the Guipo-Grana family tree. my curiosity for details about my parents' life was cursory at best. My immediate preoccupation in 1980 was XI
aligned with my siblings' concern for Doroy and Trining, mainly their future, not their past. And it was limited to the dutiful act of giving back to an aging mother and father. Our collective goal was to make their retirement years as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. This was a Pilipino value system we inherited from them for they too took good care of their parents. My mother retired from the Philippine Public School System in May, 1976 and my father in January, 1978. I petitioned for them to immigrate to the United States. Doroy and Trining arrived in Tampa, Florida on August 16, 1980. After the excitement of their arrival had waned, my husband and I settled into the business of eking out a living, raising our children and taking care of my parents. The story of my parent's childhood was not on my "to do list" until the kids started asking questions. So began my earnest quest for answers. It started in 1981 and now in 2004 I still find this factfinding mission a fascinating journey as I peeled the segments of each parenf s life layer by layer. It is almost like opening a box filled with surprises, Forest-Gump-chocolate-pleasant, and otherwise. In the spring of 1994, my sister Susan accidentally stumbled upon the first set of Doroy's journals in his retirement home in Bulacan, Luzon. Some were typed in the pica of his portable Underwood typewriter and others handwritten on notebooks, loose-leaf paper, and scrapbooks, now yellowed with the passing of time. They were bundled together with abaca Manila hemp placed inside a well-worn recycled plastic LBC Cargo Air packet to keep them away from his enemy number one, the roaches. The earliest entry was January 1937. He would continue to update his journal until 1984 the year that my father ' s pancreas decided to go to pancreas heaven and take him with it. When r was a little girl, bedtime was synonymous to a date with Robin Hood. the traveling Gulliver, even a headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow as my mother and father regaled us with stories of adventures. romance and tragedies based on the XlI
books that they had read in their grade school years in the 1920s. On school days wake up time was six in the morning. Sometimes it got very late and the end of the story was still a few chapters away. Father would cut away at a very scintillating plot and say Ladies and Gentlemen, i-tuuuuu-tu-loy. We' d grumble a little then go to sleep knowing that the following night as he appointed he'd pick up where he left off. He was very faithful to his promises. Susan' s discovery of my father' s diaries propelled me to embark on a mission to scour for more materials because in the course of reading his journals I discovered so many blank pages under identified headings and pre-numbered chapters begging for a happy ending. I could glean itutuloy to be continued written all over these blank pages. In 1996, I went to the Philippines for two months. On top of my itinerary I wrote "visit parents ' birthplace Cabatuan, Iloilo". That first genealogical research was followed by numerous trips. Wanting to share my personal journey to a family ' s past that so inspired me, I invited my siblings to join the second sentimental vacation to Cabatuan. Except for Nena who was still in the Philippine Consulate in Washington DC replacing her stolen passport and Felipe who died in 1991, all six of us made it. Diana actually rushed home from Indonesia. In May 2002 Josie, Susan, Angelo, Tito, Diana, and I rendezvoused at the Biscocho House in Iloilo City. My parents sprinkled morsels of their lives in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao the three biggest of the 7,107 islands in my country. We followed the bread crumbs. The pieces that we picked up along the way more than sated our body and soul and empty computer discs. The smorgasbord of memories alone was enough to sustain us for the rest of our lifetime. And fill a book or two. To help the readers who are unfamiliar with Tagalog, (our national language), Ilongo, Cebuano and other words from close to 100 dialects in my country, a foreign word is followed XIII
by the closest English equivalent to explain it. Some that required lengthy definitions appear in footnotes and glossary. My sister Nena explained that as a race we are referred to as Filipinos and our language is Pilipino. I chose to spell both with a P (except when quoting another source) to remain true to my language as there is no F in the twenty-letter Philippine alphabet-A Ba Ka Da E Ga Ha I La Ma Na Nga 0 Pa Ra Sa Ta U Wa Va. There are no C, J, V, X or Z either. Don ' t quote me on the following dissection of the Pilipino language but I know for a fact that we substitute the letter K for C as in Kumusta Ka for Como Esta Us ted. The Pilipino linguist or whoever it was who made up the rule decided that when necessary, H took the place of J and B for V. As for Z, she just excluded any word with Z except in people"s name such as Leilanie Zerrudo. As for X, I use eks as in Ekskyus me. Our polyglot demonstrated Pilipino creativity by throwing into the mix a two-letter consonant NG as the Ith entity in our alphabet. My husband Al recalled that during his 1969 Peace Corps language training in Hilo, Hawaii he was taught to pronounce this nuance by holding his nose and saying "ngaaaaa" through his mouth. One could also produce the same result by mimicking the sound of the carabao water buffalo. My father"s journal is presented in contrasting italics and in first person to preserve its dramatic import. The entries that he had marked rewritten appear in its polished form. I exercised my editorial option for brevity, clarity and to minimize brackets and sic that could be distracting to the reader on the portion of his diaries that he wasn't able to revise before he died. My father was an excellent speller but sometimes he would misspell a word in one paragraph and the same word would appear in ensuing paragraphs in its correct form. I retained only the correct spelling to remedy this inconsistency. His diary is not without grammatical flaws. I chose to leave them so, on the premise that the author of the journal was recording his raw musings and warrants consideration from XlV
posterity. He had a curious fondness for the word "specially". I did not change it to '"especially". To avoid confusing the readers as I did my own daughter Linda. Doroteo is also referred to as Tatay (father), Sir Guipo. and his common nickname Doroy. Nicknames are big a deal in the Philippines. They are explained in Chapter 2. Even after thorough research. the names of composers of the Ilongo songs and lullabies included here elude me. I request help from the readers to supply the missing information so these lyrical artists shall not remain nameless. Sometimes my siblings and I differ in our recollections of events. Some do not remember at all a particular experience I recalled in this book just as I don't remember many of theirs. But as long as there was one sibling. relative or neighbor to corroborate an incident it was included. I believe that all of us the eight children could tell the story of Doroy in eight different ways from eight different perspectives and they would all hold true. This is only one of them. my ilulufo), of his life story as I remember it. My daughter in second grade prepared family trees for her maternal and paternal side of the family. My son in his senior year in high school wrote my father's biography as homework in Ms. Markowitz' English Class. He entitled it: Unknown Greatness: Doroteo Diu:: Guipo. An excerpt read: On January 27. 1915. a humble man of unknown greatness was born. In the village of Tacdangan, town of Cabatuan. province of Iloilo. island of Panay. in the former United States protectorate of the Philippines, Doroteo Diaz Guipo. my grandfather. was born. A man of fascination. marveling at all that he saw or touched would in many ways fascinate those around him. Based on journals written throughout his life. as well as conversations ""ith friends and family. I came to a better understanding of the man I called 路路Tatay路路. Tagalog for father. On that day. the world gained a quiet. precise.
xv
caring and brilliant person, and Tatay gained the world in which he was to explore, achieve and contribute. In all that he did, Tatay's precision, patience, and perseverance astonished me. A kind, humble man was able to envision and live a dream, a dream that carries on after him. Though his passing marked a great loss to me, it marked an even greater loss to humanity and the world. Yet, in more ways than one, he let his unknown greatness shine through to touch the lives of those around him. One of his favorite words was to emulate, "to strive to equal or excel ," his only desire for himself and his children. It is what I can only hope to do. - Lee Guipo Hower, March 29, 1996
For Linda and Lee this was homework. For me, this is a heartwarming journey that led me to my beginning. I cherished what I found. A friend once asked, "Why are you writing a book about your father. Is he famous?" I said no. "Did he do something really special?" Well, yeah he was a teacher like Frank McCourt I proudly replied. "McCord who?" My friend and I hugged our good byes but not before she promised to read the best selling novel Angela's Ashes by McCourt and she made me promise to finish Tio Doray 's Field Famous after all is a relative word. So is relevance. Prima-Angeles Guipo Hower Tampa. Florida, USA January 27.2004
XVI
110 ABOOKEV "If my father had not had eight mouths to feed, he would have been a successful starving artist. .. but he became a Public School teacher instead and no one starved." So writes the author of this compelling and reflective narrative about a family whose true story takes the reader to exotic places- from the land of the geckos, Mt. Matutum and Sarangani Bay to the shores of America. , This is a journey that traverses her father's escape from death during World War II and the dark secrets of her motber's past on the hills of Ingas. Follow her father's twenty-year pursuit of a college degree starting from the thatched nipa huts of the Philippine Public Schools in the 1920s to the storied halls of America's Ivy League Schools where the elusive dream to become an engineer is fulfilled at last. "Prima Hower invites the reader to meet four generations of her family as she chronicles their lives, aspirations, and endeavors in the Philippines and in America. Of particular interest is the harrowing experience of the family during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II. Entertaining, educational and amusing, this book is wonderful and delightful" - Anastacio Hoyumpa. MD, Professor of Medicine and Founder and Director of Hepatology Clinics, University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, Texas, USA "This is a blend of family and Philippine history. The author captures the essence of life in her barrio Lagao of the 1950s ... transcends distance and cultural divide. If her goal is to enlighten and entertain her FilipinoAmerican children and readers alike, she has more than succeeded. I am proud of my Notre Darner and I highly recommend Tio Doroy's Field" -Bro. Joseph Damian Teston, FMS, one of the Founders of Notre Dame Schools of the Philippines. Miami, Florida, USA
Prima Guipo Hower graduated from Notre Dame of Dadiangas College summa cum laude, the author of a book on the Hower-Hauer genealogy aAd a public ledurer in the United States and the Philippines. Prepare to laugh, cry, sing and be thoroughly entertained.