In George Sison’s inner circle of friends was restaurateur Glenda Barretto.
“All our conversations were peppered with fun and laughter,” Barretto recalled. “Not to say we did not converse about serious matters, but George saw the positive side of things.”
She first met him in the 1980s when she put up her own company, GRB F&B Consultants, in Warehouse 55—a property Sison owned on Chino Roces Avenue Extension in Makati.
“Since it was the head office of Via Mare’s catering division, we put up a restaurant in the building, which George and his friends would frequent,” said Barretto.
Soon she joined his group. She remembered the times he would read to them his fortune-telling cards.
She noted, “He has always taken pride in his trim figure, careful with his diet, to the point of being vain in his looks, in a good way. Although, truth be told, he could eat a ton. When roast turkey was being served, he would graciously eat the tasty tail portion of the turkey.”
As far as she could remember, he avoided using the word “no”: “When offered food he would rather not eat, he would simply say, ‘Thank you, I’ll have that later.’”
She added that another word, “problem,” was “simply not in his vocabulary. Even ‘challenge’ was an alien word. He saw only solutions.”
Secrecy
Barretto said she followed his Inquirer Lifestyle column: “I loved reading his affirmations and his trademark positive way of looking at life. I can’t forget his line, de buena familia vis-a-vis de binuenas na familia.”
As for the secrecy over his ailment and demise, she said: “He really was never the type to show that there was anything wrong with him. He would rather keep these things to himself. He did not go to hospitals to visit friends, as he believed these were where all the sickness was. He also never went to wakes. To him, these places brought negative vibrations and affected the consciousness, and we respected that.”
Looking back, she felt gratified to have known him: “If I could describe George in one word, that would be ‘fun.’ His positivity and energy were magnetic. He was a man at ease with all the characters he met. There was never a dull moment with him.” —POCHOLO CONCEPCION