(Following are excerpts from the profile of the same title, written from interviews in 1988 and 1996, by Thelma Sioson San Juan published in her book, “I’m Afraid of Heights (Or Why I Can’t Social-Climb)” by Inquirer Books, 2012)
Imelda Ongsiako Cojuangco is one Cojuangco who’s not in the news. She’s never been in the news, not while her husband was PLDT president, not while she was one of Imelda Marcos’ best friends, not even now that her husband’s first cousin Cory is president…
Imelda Cojuangco was the woman Imelda Marcos loved to have by her side. Why? History books will never have the answer to that sort of question—let’s just say that in the book of the “Blues” (as in Blue Ladies and Blue Boys), Imelda C. has beauty and breeding…
Meldy Co. has the stuff people-watchers love to munch on: wealth, prominence, influence, the two b’s, spic and span family life, and some interesting trademarks—a neck like a swan’s, the creamy shoulders, the clothes “only she could get away with,” as designers love to say, the exaggerated updo, again, only she could get away with, the impeccably written thank-you notes, the rope of pearls, the ubiquitous white lace handkerchief, the obsessive-compulsiveness with neatness.
By Forbes Park standards, the Cojuangco home is not imposing, just hard and cold concrete…
Mrs. Cojuangco appears at the door, dressed in an immaculate white cotton dress, flimsy white stocking and white pumps, her hair coiffed and adorned with a pearl barrette, a white lace hankie and white fan in hand.
A while ago, she bumped her foot against something, she says, and now her toe is beginning to swell. “It hurts in these pumps,” she says, demurely. And Imelda Cojuangco seems as fragile as the Meldy Co. we hear about. In a second she calls in the help, explains to her again, demurely, what has happened, and will she please go and get her the white mule…
Since her husband died four years ago while at the helm of PLDT, and with their five children having families of their own, she’s been devoting her time to church activities, which she’s not to talk about because “they’re better kept private.”
Never stops praying
She’s been active in the Santuario de San Antonio Parish Council and especially now that she’s widowed, she always runs to the Virgin for help, to pray for the family and the businesses. “A mother never stops praying for her children.”
Her husband, she says, had shaped her, and this she’ll reiterate now and then. “He’d go to Mass every day and pray the rosary.”
For Mrs. Cojuangco, the family is the most dominant topic. She’s never had a career, having gotten married while still a music student at Georgian Court College in Lakewood, New Jersey.
Ramon Cojuangco, a widower, courted her while he was a student at Fordham University. (Ramon’s wife died during a massacre of Filipino civilians by Japanese forces at the De La Salle campus in Taft Avenue, Manila, during the Japanese occupation.)
Imelda was then frantic at the prospect of taking a difficult exam in orchestration. “I love piano most of all but I knew I didn’t have the talent for music and my father expected so much,” she says, her self-effacement evident from here on—“I really didn’t know how I could manage the exams.”
And so, dreading the prospect of failing the exams, she was drawn instead to marrying “Monching.” The ironic twist of fate set Imelda—the least achievement-oriented of the six Ongsiako children—on the path to prominence.
Imelda and Ramon have two girls and three boys, and many in her circle say that having a well-brought-up brood is Imelda’s achievement. Marvie, 37, and Ningning, 32, are now married to two Yulo brothers. Tonyboy, 36, is president of PLDT, Ramon, 30, is another PLDT executive, Mickey, 26, is also with PLDT and now the managing director of Landmark, the new Makati shopping complex.
“I just wanted my children to have good moral values and to grow up to be like their father” is how Imelda describes the result of her full-time job…
Imelda played the traditional role to the hilt—as supportive wife who knew her place in her husband’s social and business scheme of things, and as a very strict mother.
Quantity and quality
“I gave my children quantity, my husband gave quality time,” she says.
The children were not given big allowances, so they had to bring their baon to school and had money to spare only for soft drink. On school days, they followed a rigid regimen—merienda after school, shower, homework for two hours and absolutely no TV until Friday and Saturday, and then again on Sunday…
And she didn’t spare the rod. She’d scold and pinch them. A pinch that hurt, although it’s hard to imagine how a Meldy Co. pinch could hurt. But it must have, really, because one time she overheard a freshly pinched small Tonyboy whining about his mother to his yaya, calling his mom a “bag of bones.” He was that miffed—and graphic…
As the children were growing up, Imelda and her husband would have a priest or nun for lunch on weekends so the children could be exposed to the religious. After the lunch, the priest would hear the confession of Imelda and her two daughters.
Asked to look back, she says the primary values she tried to impart to her children were first, love of God; second, honor their elders; and third, “never to look down on people.”
To understand how the famous Meldy Co. came to be, we need to go back to how her friendship with Imelda Marcos started—or even farther back, how her father had tremendous influence on her. In time, she became Meldy Co., the social arbiter whose beauty and social graces became an asset to her husband’s business. She went beyond the role of the traditional wife.
How it all started? Ironically, through a woman’s traditional domestic skill.
Mrs. Cojuangco can sew very well. She embroidered priests’ vestments for the Mother Butler Guild. Her sewing circle was close-knit, then came an additional member who didn’t know how to sew but somehow submitted embroidered vestments just the same—Imelda Marcos.
Her national reign still decades away, the social neophyte Imelda M. was drawn to Imelda C.’s group of three. They became a sewing foursome and the friendship developed, which would later extend to Malacañang.
Mrs. Cojuangco became not only a “true Blue” but also a constant companion of IM—to Malacañang functions, concerts, private dinners, even to the papal funeral in Rome. “That’s why perhaps I never put on weight,” she now says of the whirl of a life then.
Mrs. Cojuangco had the right pedigree. She came from a landed family. Her father, Ramon, was a leading eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, and her mother, Carmen de la Paz, was also socially prominent. She’s the third of six children, one of them now a leading lawyer, another an EENT specialist, and still another, a former assemblywoman (Carmencita Reyes)…
Long before Christian Lacroix became a hot fashion brand known for poufs, ruffles and theatrical show-stoppers, Meldy Co. was already an eye-grabber, with her cinched waist (her waistline is only the span of two hands), barely lily-white shoulders and a flourish of ruffles, sashes and bows…
‘Strombotic’
Why the “strombotic” (the word is not found in the dictionary, but I’ve often heard Filipino fashion designers use it to describe Meldy Co.) style? Our merienda hostess smiles bashfully—“I don’t know. I guess because I’m the plainest in the family so I try to make up for it. I felt insecure beside my good-looking husband and I wanted to look good for him.”
Her neatness is almost legendary— the stuff Forbes Park watchers could turn into urban lore. Can’t she ever touch anything—not even a doorknob or an elevator button—without a hankie or a tissue, they’d ask. Or how could she kneel without letting her toes touch the floor, as if her limbs were suspended on air? Or how could she sit so erect that her spine doesn’t touch the back of the chair, they’d say.
“You mean they say that?” our hostess asks with painful shyness, then a giggle. “It’s true. I don’t know why. Perhaps because my father was so strict he wanted us to be always so neat. I wanted to please him so much. It’s become a habit.” So there.
Notwithstanding the people’s curiosity about Meldy Co., she never figured in any scandal in the intrigue-ridden high society. “She has yet to say a bad thing about anybody or anything, that’s why. One thing she has is loyalty to her friends. She’s fina and complida,” said a battle-weary Marcos circle insider.
She’s the fragile woman everybody wants to protect, everybody, especially Imelda Marcos. When Mrs. Cojuangco speaks of the former First Lady, it’s as if their friendship sprang from IM’s strong character and protectiveness of her, especially after Ramon Cojuangco died at age 58, after only a two-month battle with cancer.
For Mrs. Cojuangco, the loss was swift and irreparable. She lost an anchor and a soul mate. “We were kindred spirits,” she says, tearing up. “We could communicate [with each other] even from across the room, without having to say a word. That was how in tune we were to each other. Just before he died, he said he wished he could live with me longer but just couldn’t anymore.”
The widow can also be prodded to talk, if sparingly, about another loss—her ties to Imelda Marcos. Since the 1986 Edsa Revolution, Imelda C. has not been in touch with Imelda M., unlike other Blue Ladies. People say it’s the proper thing
to do.
A sense of propriety has been the mark of this widow who strikes one as fragile and naive but who, as a close friend says, “is actually stronger than all these Ming jars combined.”
One summer, when Mrs. Cojuangco and her devoted ally Marietta Santos asked me to join their weekend religious retreat being organized by the Santuario de San Antonio (or Forbes Park) Parish Council which was then divided into factions, I saw for myself how Mrs. Cojuangco could be a firm, yet seemingly coy, mediator who was able to bring the not-so-friendly camps together, perhaps even against their will…
These days, she is busy with her grandchildren, her church activities and other community obligations.
There are rough times, particularly when a prominent businessman like Tonyboy lands in gossip columns. During such times, Imelda —who doesn’t read gossip columns; they’re just shown her by friends— just goes to the Blessed Sacrament at Santuario de San Antonio.
“Just pray and talk to Him like your friend and confidant, then listen,” she says.
She adds with sadness but with firmness: “Pray for forgiveness, that the forgiveness you give is the same measure of forgiveness you’ll receive.”
Then she smiles: “Just trust in the Lord. That’s so little He asks of you.”