Here and There
CA Justice Regino, retired but not tired
By Gerry Garcia
TODAY, 2006, law class ’56 from the University of Santo Tomas of which Dagupeño Teddy P. Regino is a leading member, basks in a euphoria of golden jubilee… as the surviving judicial Thomasites gear for a joyful reunion next month.
Teddy and this writer, both Dagupeños, are former Thomasites though he’s probably younger by a few years. But we are virtual contemporaries as we were part of the same era in the UST campus during which Eugenia Duran Apostol of Philippine Daily Inquirer and Ben Rodriguez, former Manila Bulletin Editor-in-Chief and the late Celso Al Carunungan were still students there. Including Eric Giron, former FAMA head, and PR-man Carlos “Charles” Agatep.
Eugenia or “Eggie”, Ben, Celso and Charles were formerly Philets, like this writer. We belonged to the same department — Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UST. We remember former Bulletin correspondent Teodore “Teddy” Owen was also part of the barkada.
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Teddy Regino’s reminiscences of the good old days also referred to a collegue of his in the Faculty of Law — Enrique Syquia, the late ambassador, who as far as I can recall was a bespectacled classmate of this writer in the College of Liberal Arts. Syquia, a fellow-undergraduate of Teddy, had been Editor-in-Chief of the law faculty’s Law Review with Teddy himself being Legislation editor… besides holding post as Law Representative of the Central Board of Students of the university.
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Teddy was proud and actually ecstatic when the afternoon papers on February 22, 1957 carried the results of the 1956 bar exams revealing the splendid showing of law class ’56. They scored a passing percentage of 100%. All 61 of them passed.
In fact this was the second post-war time the UST law grads made a perfect score, Teddy says. The first time was in 1954. Both events taking place under the administration of then College of law Dean Ramon T. Oben.
Teddy was no less ecstatic when he revealed the achievements of some men and women of Batch ’56 in government service. Aside from Syquia who served as ambassador to a European nation, he mentioned lawyers Daniel G. Victoria and David M. Castro who, respectively, was appointed Auditor of the Supreme Court and Malacañang Palace under then Pres. Corazon Aquino, and then as Protocol.
Officer under Pres. Joseph Estrada with rank of ambassador; Castro was Chair of the Presidential Commission on Good Government. Another Batch ’56 element also made it to the governorship of Batangas — lawyer Vicente A. Mayo.
Teddy P. Regino himself was not left wanting. He was appointed Court of Appeals Associate Justice.
In the meantime Teddy is Secretary – General of the Philippine Judges Association and president of the Association of Retired Court of Appeals Justices, Inc.
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