Subversive Lives. Susan F. Quimpo
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Second Street was my first home, one that was in sharp contrast to the apartment on Concepción Aguila. And although the two addresses were only a short distance from each other, they came to represent completely different worlds for me.
(Norman)
MY FATHER, ISHMAEL (Maing) de los Reyes Quimpo, was the eldest son of Lolo Jose Quimpo and his first wife, Maria. Jose and Maria had fourteen children. When Maria died, Jose fathered another four with his second wife, Paz. Lolo Jose had been the provincial treasurer of Aklan before World War II. Aside from the local language Kinaray-a, he spoke Chinese, Spanish, English, and later also learned Japanese from a Japanese businessman whom he taught Chinese. Jose could have been considered a wealthy man because he owned property in Aklan and Capiz and tracts of land on the slopes of the mountain on the Aklan-Capiz boundary. He was also assigned to Tuguegarao as the provincial treasurer for Cagayan province, in northern Luzon.
My mother, Esperanza (Saning) Evangelista Ferrer, was her father’s favorite. Modesto Ferrer, whom we fondly called Laking, Pangasinense for grandfather, was the vice governor of Pangasinan during the time of President Elpidio Quirino. He was a member of the principalia and owned farms and mango orchards. Modesto lived in an old Spanish house in the town square of Mabini, a small town 11 kilometers from Alaminos. Laking was a traditional politician, a Liberal Party diehard. He used to declare that his tenants had to vote “straight Liberal” or else find some other fields to till. He had the habit of taking me along when he went to see his good friend, an incumbent congressman of Pangasinan, who lived in a palatial home somewhere in Quezon City. I used to accompany Laking to a small project house in Roxas district where the congressman kept his mistress.
Dad and Mom met as students in Manila. When World War II was declared, Dad went to Mabini, Pangasinan, Mom’s hometown, to say goodbye to her before joining his University of the Philippines ROTC unit which was preparing to move out of Manila. When he got back, his unit had already left for Bataan. Dad decided to return to Pangasinan. Thrice he tried to go to Manila so he could board a ship bound for his home province, Aklan. Twice the checkpoints set up by the Japanese military prevented him from proceeding farther. On his third try, he was apprehended by the Japanese as a possible spy (probably because he was an obvious stranger, not knowing how to speak the vernacular Pangasinense). In the nick of time, he was taken out of a file of prisoners destined for the firing squad. It was Laking who intervened and negotiated for his life. Dad then had to stay in Mabini. He and Mom were married soon after, and lived with Laking and Baing (grandmother) in Mabini until the war ended.
(Susan)
AT THE WAR’S END, Dad and Mom moved to Manila so Dad could complete his studies in engineering at the UP. Mom never finished her music degree at St. Scholastica’s College. By the early 1950s, they had moved to Iloilo City where Dad was hired as an engineer for the local Coca-Cola plant. With each move came new additions to the family. Elizabeth (Lys) was born in 1943, and Norman in 1945, in Laking’s old Spanish house in Mabini. Emilie was born in postwar Manila in 1948. Caren (1950), Lillian (1951), Nathan (1952), Ronald Jan (1954), and David Ryan (1955) were all born in Iloilo.
(Norman)
DAD EVENTUALLY BECAME chief engineer of the Iloilo Coca-Cola Plant. He had a good salary and a lucrative sideline repairing refrigerators on weekends. Life in Iloilo was pleasant although the family had to adopt a modest lifestyle due to the sheer number of mouths to feed.
My aunts said that the Quimpo family wealth was lost during the war in the panic to flee from the approaching Japanese.Lolo Jose died in 1949. Soon after, my father and his 17 siblings experienced poverty. In my father’s eyes, education was to be our deliverance. Dad and Mom vowed that their own children would have the best education possible. In Iloilo, this meant the Calvert School, the best elementary school where the province’s elite, mainly sugar barons, sent their children for their education.
(Lys)
GRADE SCHOOL AND high school were not particularly happy years for me. Growing up in Iloilo and going to the Calvert School with all the big shots, I was resentful of the fact that Mom and Dad had so many kids and couldn’t provide adequately for the family. As a grade school kid, I felt embarrassed going to the Calvert School riding a bus or a jeepney with Norman, Emilie, and Caren in tow and paying a two-for-one fare. I recall that on many occasions buses or jeepneys would bypass us because we were one too many kids. I would sometimes vent my humiliation by being very strict with my siblings, and even pinching Caren and Emilie if they so much as strayed from where we were waiting for a bus. Poverty and deprivation are harder to bear when you go to an elite school.
(Norman)
AT THE CALVERT School, I remember four of us Quimpo kids during recess, opening our common lunchbox containing mommy-made sandwiches and having to share those tiny bottles of Coke of the 1950s. (Since Dad worked for Coca-Cola, we were faithful Coke drinkers.) On the other hand, I had a classmate who showed me a 50-peso bill that was his allowance for the day, an amount that many workers counted as monthly pay back then.
(Susan)
UNTIL THEN, MY father had avoided taking his family to Manila where the cost of living was significantly higher than in the other provincial towns and cities the family had called home. But Manila eventually became a necessity. As an infant, my brother Ryan contracted polio and had to undergo five operations on his legs before the age of 10. The country’s only orthopedic hospital then was in Manila. That alone was enough reason to make the move.
In 1957, Lys and Norman were sent to live with Auntie Fe, my mother’s elder sister, and Laking and Baing in Roxas district in Quezon City. Lys started high school at Holy Ghost College (later renamed College of the Holy Spirit), a Catholic school for girls in the heart of Manila. Because of good grades in Calvert School, good entrance test scores, an obvious need for financial aid, and Mom’s earnest championing of her son, Norman was offered a scholarship at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila Grade School and later a scholarship at the Ateneo High School.
The siblings, then nine, pose for a Christmas photo in Diliman, Quezon City (1960). The boys in front are, from left, Jun, Nathan, Ryan and Jan. Behind are Lillian, Caren, Lys, Emilie and Norman.
(Lys)
FOR SOME PART of my high school years and part of Norman’s grade school years, the two of us lived with Auntie Fe. It was the second time I lived with her. She looked after me when Mom and Dad returned to Manila after the war, until I was seven, and she thoroughly spoiled me. She would often take the trouble to curl my hair Shirley Temple-style. On several occasions, when I did not want to go to school, I had to be bribed with a promise of a new dress or new shoes or a new bag.
This time it was different. We sensed that we were really a burden to my aunt, who was doing Mom a big favor. We depended on Laking and Baing for tuition as well as for our daily baon (allowance), and Auntie Fe paid for our transportation to and from school. The family left us with them to continue our studies while they stayed for a few years in San Fernando, Pampanga, within two hours of Manila and the National Orthopedic Hospital, where Ryan’s treatment for polio had started.
(Norman)
DAD WAS A GIFTED person. His brothers marveled at his confidence in overhauling their father’s car when he was 14, without his father’s knowledge, at a time when cars were a novelty in the province. He reassembled the car without his father noticing any change in its performance. Dad had an ear for music, shared a love for the classical composers with Mom, and could tune a piano. He made wine, cured and cooked his own ham for Christmas, and prepared many a dish with Mom.
Dad steadily advanced from junior mechanical, to mechanical, to plant, to professional engineer by taking all the government regulatory exams. His affinity for machines was such that his company made him a member of teams that built the large San Miguel breweries in Polo (Bulacan province) and Mandaue (Cebu province) and Coca-Cola plants in various provinces.
When the decision was made to move to Manila to facilitate