I started and
finished my high school education at the Romblon College.
It is a small
school in the most beautiful and the greatest province in the Far
East, Romblon.
Romblon is a very
small province composed of some 20 very small islands scattered in
a pristine, unspoiled sea whose bottom and fishes meters below you
can see with your naked eye because the waters are so clear.
The Romblon College
is located in Odiongan, the province' biggest municipality.
For five decades
now, it has been producing every year hundreds of graduates. Many
of them are successful in Metro Manila.
One is a bishop,
some are priests and nuns, one is a dean at FEU, some are journalists,
many are successful business executives and bankers, others are writers,
sportsmen, brilliant lawyers, government officials- and a few of those
who have gone abroad are now self-made millionaires.
Some of them at
times come back to Romblon to splurge money with confidence- and beyond
sane or normal limits because the exchange rate between the peso and
the dollar is becoming wider.
If you, reader,
are a graduate of the Romblon College, you should have learned by
now that a general alumni homecoming of graduates from 1953 to 2003
was held in April 2003, simultaneous with the town fiesta of the greatest,
loveliest, cutest, and best town in the Far East bar none- Odiongan,
my hometown, a heaven on earth which you can reach without passing
purgatory.
It is unfortunate
that the one declared to be the most outstanding alumnus for the past
50 years has a predilection for Bacchic accumulation, is a political
washout, a disease-ridden and prematurely-aged man, did not finish
a college degree, and was seen in Odiongan only to re-apply for his
lost driver's license.
It is also unfortunate
that he was also chosen as the guest speaker of the principal evening
of the awesome alumni general gathering. This is apprently due to
his on-again, off-again public speaking semi-gifts and unimaginative
exhilations with which he entertains the audience- sometimes.
When I was a high
school student there, it was a time when there was no electricity,
no moviehouses, no tricycles, no cars, no nothing except the stunning
rural beauty of the place and the goodwill of the people.
It was an agricultural
community then.
Today, the beauty
and the goodwill hardly exist anymore, because the rapid population
growth and technnological progress have commercialized the place -
at least the poblacion.
The Romblon College
in those days had a faculty which could match that of any school in
the country, like Manang Lyd Fetalino.
My mother also
taught there. Victoria Festin Martinez, my great mother, I repeat
was validictorian in elementary in St. Scholasticas's before the war,
again was at the top of her class when she graduated from high school
in the same institution, was summa cum laude in English at UST, was
meritissimus in her master's degree. and would have also gotten top
honors in her doctorate had the war not intervened.
Instead of living
in Manila, where she was well known and where she could have made
good even without effort, she chose anonymity in that small school,
the Romblon Colege, because she was obedient to the wishes of her
agricultural parents.
And she served
the students of Romblon to the best of her ability. They all respected
and loved her.
