Guido Jonas was the opening and the first general manager of the former Century Park Sheraton Hotel on Vito Cruz, Manila, when it opened in 1976. The Japanese company All Nippon Airways (ANA) operated the hotel owned by the Martel family while holding a franchise agreement with the Boston-based Sheraton Hotel chain.
Like many hoteliers, Guido lived the life of a nomad relocating his wife Mary and daughter Sabrina every two or three years. He moved his family from Manila to Hawaii to Singapore to Australia to Guam.
In this profession, it has become a standing joke among hoteliers that it takes at least a full year for the harassed missus to settle into a new place; by the time she can heave a sigh of relief for having faithfully installed children, pets and appliances, it’s time to pack up again. In my personal experience, there was one assignment where we moved eight times over a three-year period. A veteran mover, in fact, once advised me, "Don’t ever let the mother company know that you have settled in well – if you do, they will move you again!"
It was the story of our lives.
While serving as GM of the Pacific Star Hotel in Guam, Guido suffered a massive stroke and was given a choice to be airlifted to either Honolulu or Manila for rehabilitation. He chose Manila. Mary looked back at that dark time in their lives as a blessing in disguise. "It took a serious ailment to convince Guido to slow down and finally agree with me to set up home permanently. No more moving and uprooting Sabrina from her school and friends."
After settling a few domestic matters in Guido’s hometown in Germany, Mary scoured real estate properties all over America (Guido is a US citizen) to find a most suitable place. She settled for San Diego in Southern California and immediately bought a four-bedroom, four-car garage, red brick-tiled roof house at Villa Montecito. Even then, Mary was already making a mental checklist and/or calculation of where each piece of furniture would go. She had to. They had enough stuff to fill up a three-story building!
What is Mary like? There are four icons I associate with her: America’s Betsy Johnson, England’s Vivienne Westwood, Australia’s Alannah Hill, and Italy’s Moschino and Donatella Versace.
Whenever I sort through their inimitable designs, I can’t help but think of Mary who has that combined funky, outrageous and glamorous flair to show off each far-out outfit with aplomb and chutzpah. Add to that is her being a die-hard fan of Hello Kitty. Her signature multi-layered dangling earrings and multi-colored Hello Kitty hairpins look so right on her.
Mary starts her day at 5 a.m., baking homemade bread (no salt, sugar or additives) and lining up a pillbox container of medication (vitamins, fiber, herbs, therapeutic) for Guido to take on schedule. Aside from her daily household and caregiving chores, she is a volunteer at the hospital where she teaches elderly patients to dance the tango and the rhumba, and she sings Abba and Streisand songs on her karaoke with close friends. She had thrice successfully staged a one-woman art exhibition of her Chinese brush paintings and sold each piece aside from commissioning a card shop to print and sell reproductions as greeting cards. She teaches scrapbook making to different women groups in San Diego and conducts cooking classes at home for those interested in Chinese, Singaporean and Japanese cuisine. She doesn’t fail to bike to the post office to collect their daily mail. She speaks fluent Japanese, Mandarin, Fookien and English. Oh, don’t forget the odd expressions in Tagalog that she uses to this very day.
She knows everything about shoemaking and can make leather shoes and matching handbags from scratch. She was also a successful antique/curio shop owner and operator in Sydney and Singapore.
While Guido collected objets d’art like paintings, buddhas, cabinets, cannons, etc., Mary collected European bric-a-bracs, estate jewelry including vintage purses, lace, tapestries, china, silver, enamel, brass, antique dressers, woven baskets and woodwork from highland tribes in Luzon and other Pacific islands. While in Sydney, Mary joined a club of car plate-exchange collectors and today, she has two garden walls lined with car plates bearing the cities and states, even the remote towns and villages in Australia and America.
One time, she read in a foreign classified ad that London was auctioning off several authentic red phone booths made of heavy steel, so Mary flew there and successfully bid for one. Looking back, I surmised that she spent more time and hard cash to ship that phone booth to where they were stationed. She chuckled, "I just could not resist having a fully operational old English phone booth right in my own yard!"
I said, "What if a red double-decker bus was auctioned?"
Mary’s eyes gleamed with excitement, "Hey, that would be a perfect match!"
Guido is now fully retired, catching up on his reading and writing. He actively stays in touch with his former hotel staff and colleagues and networks with investors and developers on current or future hotel projects. Mary, however, is miles away from hanging her apron. Grateful for a house that’s brimming with memories, she’s obviously up at the crack of dawn making many more.
For friends of Guido and Mary, the greater news is they have kept the spirit of dispensing hospitality freely and generously at all times right at home.
You can feel it in their walls.