Danny Fajardo died in action

WE sent off our friend Danny Fajardo, founder of Panay News, to his resting place with a heavy heart yesterday.

It was not easy to lose a father, brother and friend who had contributed much of himself in the growth of the regional print media. Although already 72 years old and going on 73 in December, he looked young and healthy the last time we saw him alive.

Of course, Danny would have preferred to live much longer. One day before he entrusted his life to a surgeon for triple heart bypass operation, I had talked to him on the telephone. He asked me about a former Panay News colleague, now chief information officer of the Iloilo Provincial Government, who had much earlier undergone a similar surgical procedure. I told him that Nereo Lujan had fully recovered and had gained weight.

“I have no choice but take the same risk,” he said of the surgery he was to go through. “There is no alternative. But I am prepared for whatever consequences.”

To us in the media, his passing is a big loss. He could have done much more in his self-imposed mission “to expand the frontiers of press freedom in this part of the country.” In a sense, he died in action, armed by the proverbial pen mightier than the sword and that had subdued more than a hundred libel cases.

There are probably not enough words in the dictionary to describe his performance in the arena he had chosen to fight in. Definitely, he was no ordinary media man. But if I have to say it in one word, he was extraordinary or extra-special. Ironically, both seemingly contradictory words mean almost the same.

Were it possible for the dead to appraise his entry into the next world, he would have thundered, “Mission accomplished!” Indeed, he did not die in vain because he had convincingly played his role as a leader of the Fourth Estate.

Danny has joined a number of Panay News colleagues in the afterlife, namely Vickie Primero, Lydia Pendon, Teddy Sumaray, and Sammy Julian.

I have repeatedly recalled in this corner how Danny Fajardo started publishing Panay News initially on weekly frequency, though there were weeks with no issue for lack of sufficient funds to pay the printer. But he persevered, steadfast in his belief that he was filling a realizable need. To cut the long story short, the weekly has metamorphosed into a 37-year-old regional daily today – with its own modern printing press.

Danny Fajardo is gone but his memory will live on because of his unprecedented accomplishments. As publisher of what used to be a weak weekly that has turned into a strong daily, he charted a never-done-before journey. He died confident that this newspaper would not die with him.

As a journalist, he had never ceased working. Unknown to many, although he did not have to, he wrote the daily column Lapsus Calami (Slip of the Pen) – a potpourri of tidbits, anecdotes and blind items, knowing that it was a key to keeping his brain working and resistant to Alzheimer’s disease. Danny was also a good “breeder,” not only because he and wife Mary had produced well-bred children. He had turned Panay News into a breeding ground for so many editors and reporters that it’s not possible to name them all. Suffice it to say that many of the present-day media practitioners in Iloilo began working for this paper – including Lemuel Fernandez, publisher of The Daily Guardian, and John Paul Tia, station manager of Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo.

Peace be with you in the afterlife, Boss Danny. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)