Jose Gullas and the enduring pages of Cebu's dynamic newspaper, The Freeman

While the parents of my lovely lady Carmen were Tagalogs, I myself have not become a great lover of the Tagalog tongue. Just the same, from my Pilipino high school teacher in UV, Mrs. Elisa Manalo, I remember a Tagalog proverb. Today, however, I only recall its rough English translation: “He who looks back deep into the past, looks further beyond into the future.”

This morning, I speak using the American language and not the Tagalog because I have become a dual citizen. For more than 50 years I have held unto being a proud Filipino citizen, but since September 2010, when my muscles began to sag and cling to my brittle and aging bones, I have become a citizen of the world of seniors, meaning tiguwang na. Kaming mga tiguwang kon manglinkod, katulgon, apan kon manghigda, di ka tulog. Kaming mga tiguwang mahinumdom sa mga panghitabo sa dugay nang kagahapon pero makalimot sa hitabo gahapon.  It is a testament to my old age that I remember what happened many years ago clearer than those that took place fairly recently.

People call it senility for me to keep on recalling, over and over again, what happened in November 1982. I have become senile, the kind of ailment that old men like me are sick with.

You see, there was then an early morning English newscast over Radio Station DYRC. The newscaster was Mr. Jun Kintanar. In his booming voice, he reported that the staff of the newspaper, The Freeman, packed their bags in the black canopy of the unsuspecting evening that just passed, jumped their ship of many years, and changed loyalties. In a move that was believed designed to ensure the increasing and unmistakable crescendo of the Freeman’s funeral dirge, those staffers hideously signed a compact to murder the Freeman, bury it in an unmarked grave and leave nothing, not even a stone, to identify its final resting place.

Of course, it was not the very way the news was written. As I replay the event to you, I have consciously added unto the story the pain that my young heart felt. Sadly, I know of no better way. The old man in me has added words that were not present in the text as it was read by renowned newscaster on air then, but in all candidness the message, shorn of its emotional context and freed from its indignant character, was disturbingly similar. Ah yes, it was the very way I perceived the news was.

I was a struggling young lawyer craving to earn my remote place in the arena of great legal practitioners. Conscious of my own limitations, I hurriedly took my glass of milk which served as my breakfast that morning, and headed, not for the courtroom to do legal jousts, but to a very unusual direction, a very unfamiliar destination. I was going to the residence of owner of the school where I earned my legal spurs. I was unsure though if I would be allowed even just beyond the gates of the house that, in the ’60s, was described as among the most beautiful in this side of the world. But, the pain that was somehow inflicted in my heart by the wicked news report, pushed me to dimensions of courage I never knew I ever had.

Luckily, the dominant silence that characterized the residence of Sir Dodong Gullas yielded to my impertinence. I was led inside a veritable palace. Oh my gosh what a lovely house it was! I have never seen anything like it before in my whole life. But, ladies and gentlemen, I was not there to marvel at its beauty. I went to his home for a mission I did not know yet what! When I finally met Sir Dodong, I mustered my courage to mumble words whose meaning I did not actually comprehend. I said, “Sir, I am reporting for duty. What is your marching order?” or words to that effect.

Sir Dodong, the father image I had always known him to be, put his arm here. While his action assured me I was welcome to his famous residence, he was just as surprised and uncertain how to deal with my bravado of an offer. His face registered deep burrows of anguish, and his own shoulders were stooped by the burdensome weight of human treachery. Yet, in the softest of his firm voice we are all familiar with, he almost whispered to me. “Just make sure the Freeman hits the streets tomorrow.” It was an order that I was neither equipped to handle nor prepared to execute, but more importantly, it was a singular directive that had to be done no matter how.

Believe me, friends, ladies and gentlemen, when I asked him for any marching order, I just wanted to find out if there was anything, no matter how insignificant, I could do to fill the yawning void created by the sudden departure of the Freeman’s key and knowledgeable people. But, deep in my inner gut, I thought that the infidels gravely miscalculated him. They forgot the fact that it was Sir Dodong who plucked them from the depths of nowhere and gave them the foundation to their future fame and glory. They thought that by their malicious cabal, they would forever ditch Sir Dodong and throw The Freeman into the limbo of the discredited. And they were all wrong.

Indeed, Sir Dodong might been weakened by the venom of their betrayal but his resolve was steady and unwavering and his skill phenomenally unerring.

From the disorganized remnants of the very few workers left behind by the unprecedented corporate raid, we managed to weave a skeletal structure of dedicated men and women. They all had forgettable names, unfancied positions and indistinct job descriptions to me. Even then, inch by each excruciating inch, copy by each laborious copy, article by each substantive article, the Freeman started to assume form from the ravages of its deserters. Where it was expected to lie dead in the wreckage of unassembled materials, we put it to bed in its vibrant masthead and came forth screaming its renewed life.

We all gave our best as we responded to the purposeful direction of Sir Dodong of coming up with an issue of The Freeman the following morning and deny its saboteurs of the devious joy of seeing the fruit of their wickedness. He guided us into making sure that there was going to be The Freeman issue on the day it was predicted, if not cast, by modern Brutuses to have suffered its last fatal convulsion. And the rest is now eternally and happily etched in the enduring pages of Cebu’s dynamic newspaper history.

Friends, if the Freeman will lead many generations into the future, it is because the deeper part of its history told us that it was, at some time ago, propped up by the indomitable spirit of one man, the nobility of his purpose and the vision of its resurgent publisher Dr. Jose R. Gullas.