THESE PAST two weeks have been marked by all kinds of unexpected and almost odd but happy reconnections with a part of my youth that, until recently, I hadn’t thought about in a long, long while. That’s the time I spent as a schoolboy at La Salle Green Hills in the early ‘60s.
A couple of weekends ago, Beng and I drove out to what’s becoming one of our favorite hideaways, One Tagaytay Place near People’s Park in that city, on the ridge overlooking the lake. I’d written about One Tagaytay before and how glad we were to discover it for its cozy appointments, tasteful décor, and reasonable rates. I was even more pleased to find that its manager was an old batchmate from LSGH, Karl Velhagen, whom I sought out for a chat before checking out. It turns out that Karl had worked previously with another La Salle classmate of mine, Johnny Valdes. I haven’t seen Johnny since I left La Salle in 1966, but many Filipinos will know and appreciate the company he founded: Johnny Air Cargo, which transports parcels and packages quickly and cheaply from the US to the Philippines. I’d been a JAC suki long before I realized that the “Johnny” in the company name was someone I knew; I use them to bring my fountain pens and other eBay pickups over.
Two Saturdays ago, our special guests at the monthly meeting of our pen club were the JAC sales people, who had come over to promote their services. (The Parker pen sales representatives were there, too, but I’ll write more about Parkers another time.) They lit up when they learned that I knew their boss from way back; they were even more surprised when—after they described him as a “soft-spoken” man—I told them that Johnny was a great orator, who creamed us regularly in the declamation contests with such memorable pieces as the climactic monologue from Christopher Marlowe’s “Faustus.”
That was the kind of training we got at La Salle, which has been on my mind a lot these past few months, since I began working on a book to commemorate the centennial of the arrival of the La Salle brothers in the Philippines in 1911. I’ve been interviewing the brothers and their students for the book, which we expect to launch later this year.
I can’t write about my own experience with the La Salle brothers in the book, so let me tell my story now, in the hope that it will spur others to share their own recollections. It’s a sob story that I’ve told many times before, so bear with me when I say, again, that I must have been the poorest boy in La Salle Green Hills, which I attended from 1960 to 1966, covering Prep to Grade 7; our class was accelerated twice, saving me some time and my parents a lot of money. My mother was a minimum-wage postal clerk in Mandaluyong, and my father was often in between jobs, but they had resolved to give me, their first-born, the best schooling they thought I could get.
La Salle Green Hills had just opened, and it looked very promising, so they enrolled me there, marshaling every peso they could find for that purpose; my younger siblings either went to public school or stopped schooling for a year so their kuya could be a La Sallista who spoke and used English as well as anyone could—a family sacrifice I was expected to repay later in life.
Still, we were happy at home, and I enjoyed my days in school. My teachers and classmates were kind to me; some friends would give me rides in their family car—otherwise, I would have had to walk, as a I did most days, to the bus stop on EDSA (then Highway 54), and then walk the same distance from the highway to where we lived on Boni Avenue; others shared their sandwiches and candy bars. While I couldn’t share in my classmates’ enthusiasm for remote-controlled cars, I found comfort in the library, and became a bookworm.
That, I’m sure, is how and why I wanted to become a writer, beginning with crude but spirited imitations of the Hardy Boys and whatever else I was devouring. I wasn’t the smartest kid in my class—a quiet but very bright boy named Tofi Reyes seemed to have a lock on that distinction—but I picked up enough “green stars” to keep my parents happy. I also somehow became the Most Outstanding Cub Scout and then Senior Patrol Leader of our Boy Scout troop.
This is where my recollection of our principal—a tall, lean, and stern-looking German named Brother Alphonsus—comes in. Trained as an engineer, Br. Alphonsus liked to oversee every little thing that was going on in his fiefdom, from construction projects to misbehaving boys. From our knee-high point of view, he seemed to be the last person you would expect any favors from.
And yet, kept by my parents among the family’s most treasured papers, is a handwritten note from Br. Alphonsus to the school cashier. I had been due to receive an honor as a Boy Scout, but my parents couldn’t afford to pay the P25.00 that a new uniform would cost. So my father had written the principal to ask if he could sign a promissory note for the uniform, or else we would have to decline the honor. Br. Alphonsus directed that the uniform be given to me, free of charge.
I’m sure my father found a way to thank Br. Alphonsus for that kindness, but I don’t recall that I ever did. So let the book be my token of thanks for what Br. Alphonsus and the good brothers did for boys like me.
Working on this book has led to some fascinating stories and discoveries. Dr. Joey Lapeña, now a professor of otorhinolaryngology at the UP College of Medicine, sent in a story about Br. Francis Cody that I’m not even sure will make it to the final text of the book in these days of political correctness, but which, you might say, packs a narrative wallop, and so deserves to be shared:
“Brother Francis was a ruddy, robust monk whose bite left as strong an impression as his bark. When we were in seventh grade, some fellows had been caught fooling around with maryjane and Br. Francis paraded them from one class to another to teach us all a lesson. He made them stand on the platform facing the board and brace themselves with their buttocks facing the class, then roll up the sleeves of his holy habit, holding the hefty wooden paddle (a.k.a. the ‘hot seat’) like a baseball bat (or so it seemed to me as I contemplated ‘the loss of heaven and the pains of hell’), relating the litany of their transgressions as he took a few practice swings (that seemed like an eternity) before making audible (from the whack as well as the whacked) contact that reverberated through the deathly-quiet room and the lads therein. He definitely left his mark on us all.”
The other stories, I assure you, are much more pleasant than that, and you’ll read them all in the book when it’s done.
On a visit to the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod—the alma mater of such notables as business leader Oscar Hilado and film director Peque Gallaga—I interviewed Br. Ray Suplido. Quite apart from his own remarkable odyssey as a Bacolod boy returning as USLS president, I learned from Br. Ray that one of the rules of the brothers stipulated that ink should be provided to the students, and a brother went around with a very large bottle of Quink (yes, they used to make them in liter sizes) so people could fill up their fountain pens from it. In more olden times, a brother was permitted to bring a knife into the school—for the sole purpose of sharpening quills!
Incidentally, if you’re a La Salle alumnus and have an interesting story to tell, serious or funny, about the brothers who made a difference in your life or left a firm impression on you (not necessarily of the kind described by Dr. Lapeña), I’d be happy to hear it. Please download the questionnaire I posted for this purpose here and email me your responses at jdalisay@mac.com.
Animo, La Salle!
(That's our Grade 1 class with Br. Alphonsus and, if I remember right, Ms. Elena San Juan. I'm the rearmost, rightmost guy.)