The following piece is the eulogy delivered last year by Dr. Ricky Soler, a long-time friend and business partner of STAR founding publisher Max Soliven. We are sharing it with you on the occasion of Mr. Soliven’s first death anniversary last Nov. 24.
During the last Tuesday Club meeting he was to attend, he motioned to me to sit next to him just when I was about to leave. He had tarried behind longer than usual, something rather odd for him. I recall that he and Rod Cornejo were two of just a very few people still at the head table. He turned to me and kidded, “Ricky Baby, you may have to say a eulogy for me soon.” “Yeah,” I said, “ in ten years time,” and left things at that.
A few years back, after having just read the very touching paean he had written for his sister, I told him that he just had to be the one to write my obituary. Since then he and I had been kidding each other in some macabre fashion about who would write whose obituary. That Tuesday, the kidding turned out to be a sad farewell from Max Soliven and the last time I saw him.
Yesterday afternoon, Sara asked me if I would like to say something about her dearest dad. I was afraid that words would only mock an attempt to express the cheerlessness I felt. Still I could not but say yes, especially when she said, “After all, in his darkest, lowest hours, you were the one who was there for him.”
This brought back a torrent of memories; memories that cover 40 years of friendship. You have heard the stories of Max at his grandest, his most glorious times. I will tell you a part of his darkest hours when martial law cast a gloomy shadow on his life and his writing.
I was the first friend to meet him after he was released from his martial law jail, waiting for him at his home fully aware that he was still under close surveillance. It was then I first sensed his sadness. Despite apprehensions, I did not stop my kids from displaying a huge “Welcome Home, Uncle Max” banner during a welcome party I tendered for him. Few of those invited came.
Indeed, after his release Max was somehow marked. His friends turned sparse and often were not around at all. The rich and powerful cowered to the New Society. I recall his saying he felt like a pariah, an untouchable — not unlike the dalits he had pitied in his travels to India, except that this was in a country where not long before, those who now shunned him would today sidle up to him; acclaim him their paladin and declare him the champion of their worthy causes.
His profession as a journalist had entered a twilight zone — a space where his skills as a writer had no place — for he wrote fact and not fiction. And the newspapers that the dispensation allowed to exist in this surreal space were not allowed to hire him.
Max never asked for help from anyone. It was as much a matter of pride as it was a matter of dignity for him to endure in silence and courage, sustained only by his natural resilience and by the strength of his Christian faith. But there was a compelling closeness between us that made it but natural that I do something for someone I not only liked but also respected a whole lot.
And it was not really difficult because it just so happened that my partners in business shared my sense of fair play and enjoyed a fondness for the underdog. They were big men with big hearts — and bigger minds: lawyer Leonardo Siguion-Reyna, banker Sixto Orosa Jr., economist Augusto Cesar Espiritu, diplomat Rolando Garcia. We elected Max a director in some of our companies and named him consultant in others. He was even my marketing adviser for the Joanne Drew Figure Salon, a firm where one of my partners was a law professor called Artemio Panganiban.
But I could sense he was not happy. His typewriter was silent. So we asked him to expand a minor tabloid we were publishing into a magazine format. This was the Manila Visitor which later became the Manila Magazine, the first successful, all-color, glossy published locally. Max was writing again. He was happy.
My deal with Max was simple. He had full editorial control and autonomy — he could even edit me — but could he please tone down political criticism to a level that would allow us to exist peaceably? He did not disagree. But he also did not agree. When the first issue came out, he listed himself in the masthead as “President and Publisher” and “Chairman of the Editorial Board.” Below these tabs, I was listed “Chairman of the Board.” He had named himself Boss.
Max did wonders for the Manila Magazine. In truth, this is not a story of what the magazine did for Max but what Max did for it and how he used it to give journalists space when there was none for them elsewhere and others a start on their careers. There are too many of these to mention here, but as Willy Capulong, one of those who could find no space elsewhere, told me just minutes ago, “None of us will ever forget those times. And we will always be thankful.”
But beyond the social conscience he imbued Manila with, Max developed it into a repository of the early writings of those who today are some of the leading journalists in the country. Search out the names of editors, columnists and writers who pound out the pages of today’s leading magazines and dailies and you will see a number of respected luminaries who at one time or another either worked for or contributed to the Manila Magazine. Listen: Federico Pascual, Antonio Lopez, Doreen Yu, Chelo Banal Formoso, Ninez Cacho-Olivares, Jaime Licauco, Alya Honasan, Ricky Lo, Abe Florendo, Mary Prieto, just to mention the ones that are today entrenched in their fields.
And as martial law slackened, Max also got all the writers of great worth to contribute to its pages such that no other publication will probably be able to match the distinguished veritable Hall of Fame of contributors he collected.
I don’t even remember if we paid them all — or at all. But most of them wrote because Max asked them to. Listen once more: Nick Joaquin, F. Sionil-Jose, NVM Gonzales, Alejandro Roces, Rosalinda Orosa, Renato Constantino, Teodoro Valencia, Baldomero “Toto” Olivera, Renato Tayag, Carlos Quirino, D.H. Soriano, Joe Guevarra, Celso Al Carunungan, Jose Luna Castro, Antonio Nieva, Honesto T. Vitug, Chit Navarro Pedrosa, Benedicto David, Joe Quirino, Pauline Paredes Sicam and Hilarion “Larry” Henares to name just the old-timers of those times.
Ultimately, the Manila Magazine, a spectacular critical success was a humongous financial disaster. Its fall began as Marcos began to fall. The economy had collapsed, and advertising, especially from government-influenced accounts, dwindled. Manila expired quietly. But I still keep hold of the satisfaction of knowing that it kept Max Soliven writing. That is more profit than money can ever buy.
Max, with you silent, Philippine journalism is somehow widowed. For in seizing your days, you caught life with its wisdom, happiness and adventure as well as you could — and shared all these with us as no one else could.
Brief though your light shone, you cast a bright spell that will see many suns rise and set. Even if your flame is snuffed and yours are now perpetual night and eternal sleep, you will always be with us. Recalling what you believed the finest line in all literature, Catullus’ Nox est perpetua una dormienda, I bid you — Sleep now your everlasting night!
(You may e-mail me at joanneraeramirez@yahoo.com)