BOSTON – President Aquino returned after three decades yesterday to the house where his family lived for three years while his father, the late senator Benigno Aquino Jr., was in exile during the Marcos dictatorship.
Aquino was all smiles when he entered the house at 175 Commonwealth Avenue in Newtown together with his childhood friends Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. chairman Cristino Naguiat and Romy Mercado, a staff of Secretary to the Cabinet Jose Rene Almendras.
The President toured the compound of his old home accompanied by some Cabinet secretaries and members of the US Secret Service.
Aquino was standing in front of the house reminiscing the best years he spent with his family during the martial law years when an elderly woman, Rebecca Valette, approached him and shook his hand.
Valette, a former neighbor of the Aquinos and a professor of Boston College, chatted with the President.
“We were neighbors of the Aquinos. We are acquainted with Benigno Aquino and also with Mrs. Aquino,” Valette’s husband, Jean Paul, told ABS-CBN News.
They described the Aquinos as a close-knit family.
“Mrs. Aquino was more homebound and of course they have four children, three of them – the girls – were going to the school there, including Kris who is an actress (now),” Jean Paul said. “There was also the son who came after… and now he’s your President.”
Aquino followed the family to Boston after he finished college at the Ateneo de Manila University in 1981.
The couple described the President as a homebody.
“He was inside the house most of the time. He did not appear very much, it was more his father,” they said.
“They were very close knit, they kept essentially to themselves. The one we had most contact with was Ninoy,” Valette added.
Aquino’s family lived in Boston from 1980 to 1983 after Marcos allowed Ninoy to be released from prison to undergo heart bypass surgery in the United States.