Humble like a true-blooded Visayanian

I was driving my car on my way to a meeting last Tuesday noon when I heard a newscaster saying that Cerge was found unconscious in his home in Makati. What happened? I ask myself. Then the answer came: Cerge had breathed his last just 30 minutes earlier!

Shock and disbelief were my immediate reaction. How could a young and apparently healthy guy go just like that? Seven days earlier, on January 12, we enthused with him when he accepted UV’s award of Most Outstanding Visayanian. When he came in that evening with wife Marit he was all smile as he greeted his well-wishers, and as he sashayed from table to table to shake hands. We were seated at the far end of the hall with former Visayanian writers, but he took the bother to approach our group to say hello. When I tried to shake hands, he bent low and made the motion of kissing my hand even as I did the same, a gesture we jokingly extended to each other every time we met. I did not expect him to repeat the joke, aware as I was of the high office he was occupying. Yet there he was, the same old “barkada”, the good natured guy we knew as a media man and as a Malacañang cabinet man.

That was Cerge, always the same fellow despite his stellar success seldom equaled among his fellow Cebuanos.

Such trait must have been the reason why he was almost always present in our yearly reunion with former “Visayanian” staffers. For the last twenty years UV’s former campus writers have been coming together on a Friday before the Santo Niño procession to renew acquaintances or just talk about things and events. Some of them, like The Freeman’s Jerry Tundag, SunStar’s Pacheco Seares, and of course, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde are big name in local and national media while some are well-known professionals. Compared to the high profile gatherings in Manila and abroad, the “V” reunion is a mere provinciano affair, but Cerge seldom missed it, possibly because he wanted to be counted as a loyal friend of his former school mates. Or perhaps, he wanted to make himself available for whatever help he could give to his less fortunate colleagues.

For indeed, some of these former campus writers, worn and aged as they are, are in need of help. And on one occasion, when Cerge learned that a fellow urgently needed money for medication, he immediately responded with a substantial donation for the latter. Generosity and humility - these had been among the qualities of the late Press Secretary.

Such qualities indeed made Cerge a true blooded Visayanian. Exemplified by UV founder Don Vicente Gullas, humility and generosity are the personal marks most students get imbibed with after an academic stint in the school. The reason is that Don Vicente’s personal trait of simplicity and open-heartedness still pervades in the campus today and this inevitably influences the value formation of the students in his school.

Humility makes people look back to the past, and if that past was a humbling one, the effect on one’s outlook is also humbling. Cerge worked his way in college as a campus writer and through hard work and diligence finished his arts and sciences course with high honors. Because Cerge looked back to his past he could not forget his acquaintances during his school days. More, he could not forget his alma mater.

In his talk during the UV Alumni Assembly a week before he joined his Creator, he said he had been proudly telling his colleagues in Malacañang (some of whom are graduates of high profile schools abroad) that he was a product of UV. Of course, the school is very proud of itself to have turned out a Visayanian who as a government executive was described by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita as “a hardworking public official whose heart was always focused on service with integrity” and who President Arroyo said “gave fully of himself for the sake of our country…”

Love, service and leadership are the very ideals the UV has been trying to internalize in its students in the last 91 years. The thousands of young people who have had a seasoning of such values have served this country in various levels of work – from a humble teacher in barangays to a DepEd regional director, from a clerk of court to a presiding justice of the Court of Appeals (like Justice Portia Hormochuelos) and from a beat reporter to a Press Secretary (like Cerge).

Yet of the dozens of outstanding Visayanians UV has produced no one has attained the level the late Cerge Remonde had attained. Nor was there ever a Visayanian who got awarded the prestigious Order of Sikatuna. Truly, his alma mater lost a great alumnus with his passing away.

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