Love & Justice

Justice” is the late Justice Secretary Ricardo C. Puno Sr., who passed away recently at the age of 95. The love of his life and his wife of 73 years, Priscilla or “Cheling,” only let him go when she was told by her caregiver Grace that her “Carding” was tired and perhaps it was time to “surrender” him to Jesus.

“She nodded,” recalls her daughter-in-law Ann, wife of son Rene, the seventh of Carding and Cheling’s 13 children (the oldest girl Regina died in infancy), a lawyer like his father. Ann recalls that her parents-in-law would hold hands every time her wheelchair-bound mother-in-law, 95, would visit the hospital, where he was confined for close to three weeks.

Justice Puno, who graduated in 1947 from the Ateneo de Manila University, summa cum laude, and in 1948 from the Manuel L. Quezon University law school, magna cum laude, was also a former Court of Appeals Justice and assembly of the Batasang Pambansa (Parliament).

Cheling and Carding Puno on their wedding day in 1945.

And yet son Rene answers in a heartbeat when I asked him what his father’s greatest legacy is, “For me, it was fidelity. It made my life simple, knowing I am to live my life with one love of my life. When you are honest with your spouse, you will probably be honest in most other things.”

“Dad was a hard act to follow,” says Rene of his father, who opened his own law firm in 1984 after he retired from public service.

Carding and Cheling had 13 children (five are lawyers like their father), 12 of who survived him. The Puno children, despite their father’s advanced age, were still unprepared with life without the family patriarch. They had not buried anyone in their immediate family before (baby Regina was a middle child and the younger children did not experience her death) and all their lives, they had their parents in their lives. In fact, Rene reflects, despite the fact that they are a big family, the family plot only had one tombstone — baby Regina’s.

Indeed, the Punos were blessed with 73 years together, 13 children, 48 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren. One great-grandchild is due in December.

By any measure their blessings were multiplied.

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How did the road to forever begin with Carding and Cheling? They met in Baguio City through a mutual friend, right after Cheling graduated from Assumption Convent High School in Herran, Manila.

In an interview with Jacs Sampayan published in PeopleAsia magazine in February 2004, Justice Puno, then 81, recalled: “I was attracted by her simplicity. While others were very much affected with their mannerisms, she was very simple. She is still as simple as she was then.” Cheling, for her part, told PeopleAsia, “When I first met him, I thought, ‘I wish somebody like him would be my boyfriend.’ I didn’t know that we would end up together.”

Not even World War II could separate them for good. During Liberation, Carding left his hometown in Pampanga to look for his beloved in Manila and found her seeking refuge in a San Beda classroom with other Manileños who had lost their homes during the bombing of the city. They got married soon after on April 4, 1945, never to be separated again till Carding breathed his last.

When they got married, Carding was still going through law school and teaching in college. Then the children started coming one after the other: Ricardo Jr. or Dong, Ronaldo, Rodolfo, Ramon, Rogelio, Raul, Renato or Rene, Regina, Regis, Rosario, Rosella, Roberto and Roderico.

(Seated) Ricardo and Priscilla Puno; (standing, from left) Eric Puno, Rene Puno, Martin Puno Mapa, Butch Mapa and Luis Puno in 2012.

“There was a time when finances were difficult, and Mommy ran the canteen at the Ateneo grade school. She was earning well and her sons got to eat in the cafeteria for free. But when Daddy told her to stop working she immediately did so,” Rene remembers. No questions asked.

When PeopleAsia asked the couple the secret to their happy and long-lasting union, Carding politely asked his wife if he could be the first to respond to the question. “Well, first of all, the characters merge perfectly. The differences, if any, disappear after a while. You develop the same likes, the same dislikes and the same preferences, the same values and the same standards.”

Cheling simply said, “It just comes to a point when you cannot live without him.” To which her husband replied, “She says it better.”

Perhaps, that was one secret of their happy marriage: The justice let the speaker of the house have the last word.

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Justice Puno’s wake was a testament to his illustrious legal career and solid family life. His children strove not to let their parents down in their own careers and family life and their friends came to condole with them. His peers and many legal luminaries obviously remembered him with respect — his wake was overflowing with flowers. Name a legal eagle and his firm and you would have seen a topiary or a wreath from him in the justice’s wake.

Priscilla and Ricardo in Calatagan with some of their grandkids in the early 1990s.

In many countries including the Philippines, a person’s wake reflects his life, and the departed is often, fairly or unfairly, judged by the caliber of the people who go to his wake.

In Justice’s Puno’s wake, you could see that he was loved, looked up to and respected, a giant of a lawyer who was given a gift priceless and rare — 73 years with the great love of his life.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)