Dean Legaspi
The late afternoon in UP Los Baños was unusually warm last Friday. Warmer was my heart when an indelible smile mixed with utmost pride crossed my face when university officials unveiled the commemorative plaque that publicly declared the formal renaming of the College of Arts and Sciences Building as Dean Edelwina C. Legaspi Hall.
As I bore witness to this momentous event, memories brought me back to my beautiful experience of Dean Legaspi…
“I am very disappointed with you, Büm,” UPLB College of Arts and Sciences Dean Edelwina C. Legaspi once told me. Her disappointment stemmed from the low grade I got in her subject Speech Com 104 (Occasional Speeches). Her eyes were a well of sadness. Dismay lounged on her face. It was 1990, first semester. I entered college in 1988.
I kept quiet. My silence was almost sepulchral. My eyes found comfort, albeit temporarily, on her Mikimoto-like pearls around her neck.
“What’s your plan? Tell me.”
I was almost teary-eyed. I let her down. She expected much from me but I let her down with my final grade of 2.50 in my Speech Com 104; it was a result of my being a delinquent student. I was 18.
“Are you going to accept it? Or do you want me to give you an INC (incomplete grade) so you have time to complete to improve your grade?”
“I will take INC, Dean. Thank you. Thank you very much,” I said, with tears, forlorn. Gratitude and humiliation became me that moment.
The agreement was I would do a research paper, deliver a final speech from a well-written text. If I did well in my completion, she would elevate my grade to 1.50.
Every sem, she would wait for my completion. Every sem, I would always find an excuse.
Until the day of my graduation in October 1991 (I finished Com Arts in three and a half years), she was hoping and praying I would complete my requirements in SPCM 104.
One day in September 1991, I went up to her office, head bowed down, hands shaking, voice trembling.
“I’m sorry, Dean. I will regret this for the rest of my life,” I said, crying. It was like I dropped a bomb before her when I told her I would not be able to complete the requirements and I would settle for a grade of 2.50, my original grade.
She did not say a word. She stood up. Placed her hand on my shoulder.
“I waited this long because I knew you could do better.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do better in life. And let this be a lesson for you. I accept your apology.”
I hugged her.
Many years later, I came back to UPLB to visit her. She welcomed me with a big smile, so big I could feel her heart was as open as the sky.
“I read you. I always read your column in STAR. And congratulations on your back-to-back CMMA. ”
“Thank you, Dean. I am very grateful. I will be grateful to you forever. I’m sorry still.”
“Stop. Know that I am proud of what you have become. Now, I am happy to give you a Flat One.”
I melted in her arms.
***
Dean Legaspi, founding dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, was a household name—a force to reckon with — in the university. Her students, who learned analytical and critical thinking when they wrote and delivered their speeches, knew her credentials: PhD degree in Rhetoric and Public Address in Cornell University; master’s degree in English at Radcliffe College at Harvard; AB English, UP Diliman, magna cum laude.
The renaming of the CAS Building to Dean Edelwina C. Legaspi Hall, said CAS dean Maribel L. Dionisio-Sese, “was envisioned to be among the highlights of the 50th founding anniversary of the College of Arts and Sciences last year.”
“Dean Legaspi led the College of Arts and Sciences amidst its birthing pains and the high noon of liberal education in our academe — when real and imagined state forces were correctly or incorrectly perceived to be muzzling militant and liberal thinking. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak, the rhetorician in Dean Legaspi must have served her leadership of the CAS well in persuading the powers that be to let CAS be,” said Dionisio-Sese at the unveiling.
Dean was love. She was motherly at all times — strict and sweet, a darling and a disciplinarian.
But inside her own home, she was a “supermom,” according to her son Al Legaspi, former president and now director of AyalaLand Hotels and Resorts. “She taught us about integrity, never to be mean-spirited, and not to do harm to your fellow man.”
“We are super honored that the CAS Building is named after her… because this building, the center of the university, represents the blood, sweat and tears she gave to the college,” Al said.
Al’s brother, Dr. Eric Legaspi, said, “If our mother were here today, we know that this honor would mark the highlight of her career… She would also feel a slight sense of embarrassment for receiving all the honor and recognition, because — for all her achievements — she was at heart a modest person.”
Eric, who graduated summa cum laude in UPLB (Biology) and was the medical board topnotcher in his time, added: “She would always introduce herself as “Mrs. Legaspi.” She was a modest woman who did not seek recognition or material possessions.
National Scientist Dolores Ramirez said, “When the BA Communication Arts program was being conceived, it was not very smooth sailing as there was reservation among the people in the university. But nobody could beat Edel in her rhetoric. She was excellent. She was very good. In the ‘70s, the Com Arts program was offered in UPLB,” said Ramirez, a UP professor emeritus.
“(The CAS) building’s significance is based on the goodness of the human heart. Dean Legaspi chose this building to house the humanities and social sciences department because it stands in the middle of the campus. She believed that the College of Arts and Sciences should be the heart of the university,” said Dr. Layeta Bucoy, a no-nonsense award-winning playwright and a “Legaspi baby.”
“It is therefore just fitting that this former home of knowledge resource and this physical cradle of liberal education in UP Los Baños be named after a pioneering humanist and educator who dedicated her life so that students of this institution would not only know the physical properties of the sun, but would also be able to embrace the radiance of the sunset,” Bucoy said.
Truly, Dean Legaspi was a nurturer of goodness. Seven years after her death, her memory remains to be a nurturer of both mind and heart. *
(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at [email protected]. I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio and Instagram @bumtenorio. Have a blessed weekend.)
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