ALL SAINT’S Day on November 1st brought us good memories as were offered our prayers and pay tribute to f our parents, Atanacio and Feliciana, who were advocates of good education.
Our father, although he reached only grade school because he was orphaned early, became a top salesman of sewing machines during his working years in Iloilo.
There were six of us children in the family of one girl who is the eldest and five boys who all finished college even if our father was just Grade III when he quit school because he has to work for a living.
Our mother completed only Grade IV because her father’s theory is that girls do not need to go to college as they are just destined to become housewives.
Our eldest and only girl in our brood of six children finished law, passed the bar and worked as a labor lawyer. She got married also to a lawyer.
The second worked as a purser in a foreign vessel before graduating from college, but later retired early to finish a business degree in order not to be away anymore from his family.
The third (that’s me) finished a Bachelor of Arts degree (A.B.) and also a Commerce Course while already working in a private bank where he became a manager.
The fourth is a Chemist and Chemical Engineer who worked with a business group in Davao, married and retired there.
The fifth is a mechanical engineer who was employed by a transport company in Bicol and married a Bicolana physician. With their two children, they later moved to Metro Manila.
The sixth and youngest is a Bachelor in Industrial Engineering graduate and married one from Samar who grew up in Metro Manila.
Our parents were advocates of college education which they failed to achieve for themselves. We remember our father hanging a long bamboo stick near our dining table to remind us of his two wishes for all of us:
1) that we eat well to be healthy
2) to finish college which they themselves failed to achieve
They never used the stick because all of us six faithfully complied with their wishes.
We are glad that, following our parents’ wishes, all six of us are now seeing to it also that our children finish college as our basic obligation to them.
Like our parents, we believe that properties can be lost but education embedded in our heads will always be forever.
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GEM OF THOUGHT
“Have your place on the sun.” – If you have your place in the sun, you find wealth, happiness or whatever you are looking for in life.
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