Remembering Cory

Yesterday, Jan. 25 was the 92nd birthday of President Cory Aquino. For several years now, some of her former officials, along with members of her immediate family, have been gathering for a “Remembering President Cory” evening. Last Thursday, the tradition continued at a dinner hosted by her agriculture secretary Sonny Dominguez and his wife Ball. It was a night of reminiscences and the warm memories to honor a president who has become a heroine in Philippine history. Those in attendance were Ballsy and Eldon Cruz, Viel and Dodo Dee, Adolf and Mariasun Azcuna, Ping and Mimi de Jesus, Popoy and Margie Juico, Maria and Boy Montelibano, Cesar and Teena Sarino, my wife Neni and me. This event has become more than a mere social as it always renews and reinforces the spirit that first brought us all together.

Much has been written about President Cory as a leader who restored democracy to the country. However, I would like to tell the story of her early education as a Scholastican with the interesting anecdotes her fellow Scholasticans, all gone now, remember and love to retell. That is why anyone who passes the Leon Guinto/Pablo Ocampo college campus will not fail to notice the large poster proudly showing off Cory as a Scholastican. Cory belonged to the Grade School class of 1943.

A close friend of hers, the late Carina Tancinco Mañalac, wife of the newsman Gabby Mañalac, recalls that during her grade school years at St. Scholastica’s College (SSC) with Cory Cojuangco (she was called Corazon or Core then, as her older sister was known as Tere), she was not particularly close to Core then, as she belonged to the quiet group that included the class nerds Celine Olaguer, Lita Trinidad and Aleli Bautista. A group that the lively and mischievous Carina could not be part of.

Carina remembers how she and Cory shared a love for reading. (In one of my wife’s interviews with Cory, Cory had said she developed her clear enunciation and public speaking voice because as a young child, she loved reading out aloud from any book, to an actual or an imagined audience.)

Carina said the class knew that Cory belonged to the politically prominent and wealthy Sumulong and Cojuangco clans, but one would never guess that because her uniforms were hand-me-downs from her Ate Tere.

Cory was class valedictorian of her sixth grade class in 1943, always in close and friendly competition with Celine Olaguer who was salutatorian. In other accounts, Cory would say that if Celine did not have to return to her hometown in Bicol, Celine would be the valedictorian rather than her. The German sisters who taught her described her as “quiet, but exceptionally bright.”

When she was president, she invited her Scholastican classmates and friends to Malacañang and even succeeded in having some of them work in her administration, for they were women she trusted. A classmate, Heidi Perez Cruz, was assigned to the Goldenberg Mansion, a 19th-century structure that is part of the Palace complex. Celine Olaguer Sarte also found herself, 42 years after their grade school graduation, “working next door to the conference room of President Cory… an honor and a privilege made possible by a friendship formed in grade school.”

One of the “quiet” classmates that Cory was close to was Aleli Bautista, with whom she was corresponding in the 1950s when they were already both in college, Cory in New York and Aleli in Manila in SSC. Aleli remembers attending Cory’s birthday parties at the Cojuangco home on Agno Street, and games of hide and seek there till it was dark. In an earlier interview, she had said, “She was really just one of the girls, even if she was one of the richest… She wasn’t snobbish at all, but was kind of shy.” She is amazed that despite the passage of time and the fire that razed Sandejas Street in the SSC neighborhood where the Bautista home was, her correspondence with Cory has remained intact. She returned these original letters to Cory and has kept for herself only a four-page chatty one dated July 13, 1951, when they were all in college.

Written from London on Claridge Hotel’s stationery (Claridge’s is today a five-star art deco hotel dating back to 1856), the 18-year-old Cory was talking about sailing to London with her parents and her sister – most likely Terry whom everyone knew was Cory’s closest friend – on the Queen Elizabeth and having to get visas from different consulates for the rest of the trip that lasted until Aug. 20 when they were scheduled to be back in Manila.

The elegant and graceful strokes of Cory’s legible penmanship were there, as she talked about summer vacation just beginning, her shopping not for herself but for the pabilins of her eldest sister Josephine, watching a play “Who is Sylvia” that starred Robert Fleming, admiring a Sadler’s Wells Ballet performance that was superior to the American ballets she had seen, meeting Minister Romero (father of Scholastican Teresita Romero, she pointed out) in the Philippine Legation (the forerunner of today’s embassy and consular offices) in London.

St. Scholastica’s College continues to take pride in its most outstanding alumna and the country’s first woman president, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. In March 1986, a month after the EDSA People Power Revolution, she was conferred the PAX award, the college’s highest tribute for its outstanding alumnae.