In the name of the disabled

Senator Loren Legarda and Rep. Gina de Venecia have filed bills to help children with disabilities and special needs.

Senator Legarda’s bill seeks to provide free and suitable public education for children with disabilities to promote their integration to society and provide them opportunities afforded to other Filipinos.

 “As many as nine million of Filipinos suffer from disability, and we lack the government support even for the most basic of rights as free education for handicapped children,” Legarda lamented.

The World Health Organization estimates about 10 percent of Filipinos are living with some form of disability, among them autism, blindness, deafness, muteness, and physical or orthopedic impairments.

“Disability also disproportionately afflicts the poor due to various environmental factors that they are exposed to, and that is why we need the government to step in and provide support for this highly disadvantaged and vulnerable group who cannot afford specialized education.”

SB 1427 seeks to establish a Special Educational Center in provinces, cities, and municipalities to provide free and suitable pre-elementary and elementary education for children with disabilities.

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In the House of Representatives, Manay Gina de Venecia is championing another cause — the rights of special children. Among the 71 House bills she has authored and co-sponsored within a year as Representative of Pangasinan’s 4th District is House Bill 4447 or the Empowerment of Children with Special Needs Act to ensure that all special children will have the capability to live a productive life. There are about 8.3 million disabled persons in the country.

The bill calls for the establishment of Centers for Children with Special Needs in all provinces. These are assisted-living communities for children below 14 who suffer from autism and other mental and sensor impairment, she said.

“The centers will have therapists, teachers and social workers who can provide comprehensive developmental programs and services responsive to the needs of persons with disability to help them attain their highest possible level of functionality and facilitate their effective integration to a productive family and community life,” says Manay Gina.

De Venecia laments the lack of an aggressive government program to address the needs of other disability groups, especially those who suffer from autism, ADHD and Down syndrome and other mental and behavioral impairment. The DSWD operates area vocational and rehabilitation centers focusing on blind, deaf, and physically handicapped adults.

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Another friend has left ahead of us - Pearl Gamboa Doromal, whose husband, Quintin (King) Doromal, died just a year ago. Eulogies delivered at the memorial service held at Cosmopolitan Church on Taft Ave., Manila, and messages sent by Silliman alumni, friends and admirers, spoke of Pearl’s gentleness and regal bearing, her many talents, and the joy she spread about her.

 Pearl was born in Manila, but spent some of her childhood years in Oxford, England. Her father, Dr. Melquiades J. Gamboa, served as Philippine ambassador to India, the United Nations, and to the Court of St. James.

Pearl took her A.A. at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; her B.A. at Wilson College of Chambersburg, Pa., and her masters in creative writing at Silliman University in Dumaguete City.

Pearl is survived by children Quintin “Q” Jr., Norman, David and Melanie Grace, six grandchildren, and one great grandchild. The Doromal family lived in Dumaguete City for ten years (1973-1983) while King was president of Silliman University.

From Iowa, poet and novelist Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas wrote that she learned about Pearl’s going away “in the same gentle, dignified way she had lived her entire life: she rose from bed early . . . at around 5:30 in the morning, went back to bed, drew one deep breath, and was gone.” Rowena had written a poem for Pearl in the late 1970s, “after she had come to my family (in Dumaguete) in great distress over troubles on campus. It was then I saw the bright strength of her faith, that gentleness and civility is supremely strong: that her middle name, Grace, is true.” Below is a fragment of Rowena’s poem from her book, “The Sea Gypsies Stay”.

Grace for PGD

Willows bend by the gentle stream,

Sun-song of rising wind and water;

The crane lifts its wings in flight,

Catching the edge of the air

In surprised wonder.

. . . the hand hovers, a white wing

. . . Yet I recall the filigree gold

The angry pain twisted round

Your slender forefinger:

The ring went round once, twice,

Each bone articulated in circles

Of anguished questioning, and then

The hands lay still,

Palm upward, like a weary child’s,

The lines there wrought by reaching,

Touching surfaces strange and rough,

Smoothing down, smoothing down,

In anxious tentative caress to clam

The strength was always there, I saw:

It lay in your fragile, open palm,

The hand held open for the blow

That, when it came, was infinitely soft,

The gift unasked.

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Acting Silliman University president Betsy Joy Tan related, at the necrological service held at Cosmopolitan Church, that Pearl was not only the diplomat’s daughter on campus, and the King’s regal queen and partner; “She was also the university’s civic, social, cultural icon and a member of its literati.”

BJ said, as stage actress Pearl was a Russian countess in the Diamond Jubilee’s Luce presentation of “You Can’t Take It With You;” in the Negros Oriental Community Theater Guild in 1973, she was Eliza in “My Fair Lady.”

 “Pearl was also a published poet and the 1974 editor of Sands and Coral, the literary journal of Silliman University. Steeped in the arts, she promoted campus artists by marketing their paintings to her friends in Manila and abroad. That is how Louise Carey, Jaime An Lim, and Efren Garcellano, campus artists then, became household names beyond the portals of the University. 

“Today, she is also one of the authors in Amazon.com.  With her, the discipline of Humanities wasn’t only a passion, it was also her lifelong destination. She also even joined archaeological excavations of the Silliman Anthropology Museum.” 

From Boston, Prof. Priscilla Lasmarias Kelso wrote: “Pearl, as her name attests, was a highly cultured person who grew up and spent many years in the Court of Saint James as a child of the Philippine ambassador to England. Her sense of style and impeccable taste was a gift to Silliman University. That was also a time when English was spoken on campus consistently and with pride.”

Pastor Frank Beltran of California wrote: “When I was serving as an associate pastor of Cosmopolitan Church in the middle 60’s, Pearl and the late King were very active in the church’s life, and involved all their growing children in our activities. As a pastor, it was a great joy to have these committed Christians contributing to parts of the worshiping, learning and serving community.”

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