Good, bad memories for P-Noy in Boston

NEW YORK, Philippines – For President Aquino, his visit to Boston was a homecoming that brought back sweet and bitter memories of being the young son of an outspoken politician forced into exile by an authoritarian regime.

“It’s nice to remember all those times because there’s a saying: You have to look back if you want to reach your destination. That’s one of the points that shaped me,” he told Manila-based journalists in Filipino last Wednesday at the Omni Berkshire hotel here.

Two of Aquino’s closest childhood friends also related to The STAR how emotional and difficult it was for their Ateneo classmate to return to his old home at 175 Commonwealth Avenue in Newton municipality.

“It felt heavy in the heart. The memories were too much,” businessman Romy Mercado said. “Lots of flashback in the house. There were a lot of good and bad memories,” Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras recalled. “It’s real heavy.”

Aquino himself recounted that it was in the living room where he first learned on CNN of his father’s assassination on Aug. 21, 1983.

He showed reporters an area in the house where his father used to entertain guests.

The President credited its new owner, English teacher Ione Malloy, for doing significant improvements in his family’s former residence.

He said they spent three years in the house as a “normal family” after leaving an “abnormal situation” in the Philippines.

Aquino said their Boston house was their “home away from home,” and he could visualize every nook and cranny of their former home, a two-story English-inspired brick house with a basement and an attic, as well as verandas on two sides.

He fondly recalled getting help from his father in his attempt to make a “triangular” snowman. His father added more snow and decorated it with a cap and a scarf.

The late senator then called the woman of the house – housewife Corazon – to take a photo of the father-and-son moment.

“Memories have been rekindled. Maybe it should stay that way,” he said.

He also recalled that he would shovel snow from the driveway so that the car wouldn’t slide down toward Mount Alverina Road.

He said the snow had to be removed so that it would not melt and turn to slippery ice and endanger passersby.

He said he was glad that the nearby Boston College invited him to speak before the academic community. He said his sisters Viel and now popular TV host Kris attended the school in the early 80s.