Guia Gomez: The woman behind the legend

Having long been a resident of San Juan and graduate of its private school St. John’s Academy, there was no way we wouldn’t have known of or met Guia Gomez, current mayor of San Juan. We knew her to be an actress in her prime, appearing in action movies Cuatro Cantos with Pempe Padilla, Rancho Grande with FPJ and Asiong Salonga with Joseph “Erap” Estrada. It is also well-documented that when she fell in love with Erap and bore him a son JV Ejercito-Estrada, she retired from show business.

However, last graduation day was our first real encounter with the mayor, and our first to discover the woman behind the legend. She was our commencement speaker, her first time to do so. She came early accompanied by long-time councilor of San Juan, Vincent Pacheco, a St. John’s graduate, whose son was also graduating.

In her graduation address, she made mention of her pride in the school founded by matriarch Concepcion Gil and the quality education it has offered through the years. She spoke of her admiration in meeting the late Colonel Jose Gil, whom she described as an officer and a gentleman, and his ever prim and proper wife Victoria. The colonel was the son of Concepcion Marquez Gil, the school’s founder.

Of course, she couldn’t help but share the fact that many of her friends had roots in St. John’s. The son of the colonel, the late Tito Gil, was her best friend, which his wife Josephine Arellano Gil, the current school administrator and her son Angel Jr. corroborated. The City Environment and Natural Resources officer Dante Santiago is also a St. John’s graduate. And of course, the biggest St. Johnite of them all is former mayor and former Pres. Joseph Estrada, whom she shared was captain of their basketball team during his grade school years, prior to transferring to Ateneo.

Over dinner in the school, Guia regaled us with plans for the city, which had already won national attention under her tenure. It is well-known that prior to her own entry into politics, Guia, together with her son JV, had already set up over 30 businesses in real estate, food and trading, cementing her reputation as a businesswoman and entrepreneur. In 2009, Guia won a landslide victory as mayor, with over 42,000 votes or 75 percent of the total vote.

Apart from being the eldest child of Dr. Dominador Gomez of Silay City and Paz Guanzon of Iloilo City, Guia was a valedictorian during her elementary years at the University of Negros Oriental-Recoletos. Moving to Manila, she studied at the Philippine Women’s University. As a student, according to Tess Manson-Alegre of Silay, “she was a student council treasurer, a girl scout, a hula and ballet dancer, a declaimer, a glee club member, a drama artist, an editor of the school paper, a piano freak, among others.”

Early on, it has already been quite obvious that she had multiple interests.

It is under her watch as mayor that the Department of Interior and Local Government declared San Juan as the Top Highly Urbanized City in the country in terms of governance for 2011. An important program has been the transformation of San Juan into a vertical green city with elevated sidewalks in response to the danger of floods. As president of Balikatan sa Kaunlaran (BSK) Movement, an NGO dedicated to uplifting the quality of life of women and their families, the organization has been training female entrepreneurs in the creation of Christmas decors and dolls for export. And the single biggest accomplishment has been the construction of the huge new city hall and library where we encountered children biking and couples enjoying the breeze under the trees during our visit.

What comes next, we asked the mayor, and she opened up her plan to acquire for the city the remaining heritage homes that are either rotting away or are in danger of being turned into commercial buildings. We are familiar with many of them — the home of literary figure Paz Marquez Benitez (our mother’s elder), now smaller than before, still home to two granddaughters; a house on No. 24 Artiaga, of which no one seems to know the owner; the crumbling vintage home on P. Paterno whose caretaker appeared allergic to our taking photos.  Of course, everyone knows of the handsome vintage Café Ysabel turned by famous chef and teacher Gene Gonzalez into San Juan’s most popular eatery.

To us, however, San Juan’s pride would still be the Munarriz home on F. Fernandez treated as any heirloom should by sisters Naty and Charrie.

Mayor Guia then turned to Natividad Munarriz, board member of St. John’s, to her left saying, “I hope you don’t intend to sell your house.”

(E-mail me at [email protected].)