If there’s a theme uniting the 136 articles filling the thick “Heartbeat Manila Hilton,” it’s a line from a song Bob Hope used to sing to close his TV specials: “Thanks for the memory.”
When I was a child, there used to be a Kindergarten A and B in my school. You had to go through it before you could step into Grade I. It is notable that the public school system has belatedly found the necessity to add that to their curriculum. In St. Theresa’s College, if the teacher thought a pupil bright, you were allowed to “skip” or “jump” Grade I and go straight to Grade II, as I was.
Aunt Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, the essayist, once called the actress Cecilia Bulaong “the calmly beautiful Miss Bulaong.” That was a long time ago, and for some reason the phrase has stuck in my mind. Later Bulaong got married, became a mother and reinvented herself as CB Garrucho—which has since become her professional name.
Let’s hear it from the old gal herself: Glancing up as she edited one of my pieces on fashion history, she said, “You know what you lack? Uhm… gravitas.”
People still ask me where I learned to walk and how I prepared for the Miss International title which I won 50 years ago. Those questions never fail to surprise me. Who else could have taught me how to walk but my mother? And because she also taught me to be proud of being Filipino, that was the best preparation a Philippine representative, to anywhere, could have had.
Today is Father’s Day and the most important father of all is our Father in heaven within. Speaking of “Our Father,” the prayer is the only known prayer that Jesus ever taught.
Forty-one years ago, on Sept. 22, I reported to the pre-martial law Graphic Magazine office in Port Area only to find it closed.
The war destroyed Ermita and left its residents destitute. One by one, the families left their snooty,...
In high school, four decades before I became a senior citizen, I turned to three writers as models of good writing: Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, Kerima Polotan, and Gilda Cordero Fernando.
On the morning of Sept. 23, 1972, a driver from Graphic magazine, headed by Don Antonio Araneta, called to inform me that our boss, Luis (Morik) Mauricio, had been arrested and that the building had been padlocked. Martial law had been declared, and staffers more radical than I were being hunted down. The military had swung into action.
