Like father, like daughter

In his recent Twitter post, former senator-turned “influencer” Panfilo Lacson honored the memories of two outstanding public servants. Retired from public service and politics but active in social media engagements, Lacson posted the following personal tribute on Aug. 23, or a day after Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) Secretary Susan “Toots” Ople succumbed to stage-4 breast cancer.

“The father served under the father; the daughter served the son. Both were Cabinet secretaries and died while in office. They loved their country and lived their lives looking after the welfare of Filipino workers. Blas and Toots Ople are now reunited in peace.”

The “father” was the late Senate president Blas F. Ople who once served as the Minister of Labor and Employment during the martial law regime. The 75-year-old Ople died on Dec. 14, 2003 while he was still the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

The “daughter,” of course, is the 61-year-old DMW secretary, the youngest of the six Ople children. Let me call our late DMW secretary by her pet name “Toots.” I first met Toots in 1992 when she worked at her father’s office at the Senate, writing and distributing bunch of press releases for him.

Toots died a few weeks after two other siblings passed away one after the other, also due to cancer. Eldest brother, former Mayor Felix “Toti” Ople of Hagonoy, Bulacan and elder brother, former journalist Blas F. Ople Jr. both died of lung cancer. The deaths of her two brothers were simply too much to bear for Toots, whose cheerful self could not escape fears of human mortality. She was diagnosed with stage-2 breast cancer in 2019. She initially had remission after chemotherapy that followed her surgery to remove the tumor in 2020.

Toots was among the first Cabinet members named by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) a month before he assumed office at Malacañang Palace in June 2022. After all, Toots’ passion and advocacy for the interests and welfare of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) preceded her.

She formed in 2004 the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute (Ople Center), a non-profit organization accredited with the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) and an active partner of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the DFA, among other government agencies attending to migrant workers’ rights and welfare concerns.

She tried to follow the footsteps of her late father when she ran twice for a Senate seat. But she lost in her two attempts in the May 2010 and May 2016 elections.

But the DMW secretary quickly breezed through her confirmation hearing, bragged Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, who chairs the 25-man congressional Commission on Appointments (CA). Thus, Toots became among the first PBBM appointees approved by the powerful CA.

As such, Toots became the first secretary of the newly created DMW that was spun off from the DOLE.

The DMW was established under Republic Act (RA) No. 11641 that was signed into law by then president Rodrigo Duterte on Dec. 30, 2021. It officially functioned several months later by the time PBBM took office.

Actually, Toots was most hesitant to accept the Cabinet post because of her health situation, DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma revealed. Laguesma recalled how Toots doubted if she was even qualified to hold a Cabinet post. But the calling on how to best serve and to fully help her beloved OFW flocks was much too important for Toots, who eventually accept the DMW post, Laguesma noted.

Toots was only too humble despite her outstanding credentials. She graduated in 1995 from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Boston. She finished a masters’ degree in Public Administration and received the Josephine Vernon Award for Excellence in Communications.

Former DOLE secretary Nieves Confesor noted the same lack of confidence of Toots, making the latter more endearing to her late father’s colleagues from whom she would often ask for advice. Confesor remembered how Toots was tagged along to her father’s office where the young daughter learned to love the work of being a public servant.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III, on the other hand, considered Toots as his favorite seatmate during Cabinet meetings with PBBM. He disclosed having gifted her last year with a white Bichon puppy, knowing Toots as a “fur mom” to 26 dogs at her home.

Laguesma and Confesor were once young bureaucrats at the labor ministry headed by the elder Ople, while Estrella is the grandson of his namesake grandfather who served along with the elder Ople during the martial law regime. The three of them spoke highly about Toots in their respective eulogy at her wake last week.

In response to the eulogies, Estelle Ople-Osorio, the only daughter of Toots, vowed to continue her mother’s outreach assistance for OFWs through the Ople Center. She echoed her late mother’s “dream” to assist in distress, cancer-stricken OFWs even after the demise of the DMW chief.

Malacañang is again opening its door to hold necrological rites today for the late DMW secretary. The last one held at Malacañang for a Cabinet member was for the late Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo who died in a plane crash on Aug. 18, 2012.

After she attended PBBM’s State of the Nation Address last July 25, the Chief Executive personally advised Toots to take a “wellness leave” for her own sake and delegate whatever her pressing OFWs concerns to her DMW deputies. Feeling the deep loss of a very kind-hearted public servant, PBBM was visibly most saddened when he spoke about Toots’ compassion for our OFWs as without equal.

Malacañang has announced Undersecretary Bernardo Olalia will serve as officer-in-charge of the DMW pending the final decision of PBBM on who will replace the late Secretary Toots.

Like father, like daughter, they stood for OPLE, or Outstanding Public Leaders Endearing to all Filipino workers they fought for and died with their boots on.