Here and There
We too remember and grieve over Max
By Gerry Garcia
OUT here in the province, a week after the unexpected passing of journalist icon Max Soliven in Japan, radio and print media, especially The Sunday Punch, could not help being aggrieved. This feeling of grief is no more or less than that expressed by Max himself, some 44 years ago, over the fatal gun-shooting of a close friend of his at the Punch office — Ermin Garcia, Sr.
Max, together with some Manila-based journalists, like Times publisher Joaquin “Chino” Roces, Nereo Andolong, then NPC president Tirso Rodriguez, PPI director Johnny Mercado and Press Secretary Jose Aspiras, was at Ermin’s necrological rites at the Pangasinan Medical Society building, this city, on May 29, 1966… up to the time when Ermin’s remains were interred at the cemetery in San Fabian where he was born.
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Although we’re admittedly concerned over the uncertainty of the cha-cha move to cause shift to the parliamentary system from bicameral Congress, we still are hopeful. The late Max’s Philippine Star issue of last Thursday headlined “New Charter in 15 Days–JDV”.
In the meantime we’re keeping our comments to ourselves, even if we have the gut feeling JDV was not talking through his hat.
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Recent local news account relating to Lingayen’s coming to an age ripe for cityhood really got us wondering again why, after so many years, the coastal capital town of Pangasinan has remained a rustic community while two others which are lesser knowns, Alaminos and Urdaneta, have become urbanized lately.
There are outstanding landmarks in rustic Lingayen that could make the town look more urbane than all the rest.
The provincial capital, for instance, is an imposing building standing at the extreme end of the Maramba Boulevard against the backdrop of historic Lingayen Gulf.
The capitol was built by Gov. Daniel Maramba in 1918 and it was under his name too that the boulevard was built.
Historian Resty Basa also relates the establishment of the Steward Memorial Methodist Church beside the town plaza where former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos as a child was baptized. FVR has remained a faithful protestant up to the present.
The Urduja House or the governor’s official residence behind the town hall is a misnomer, Resty says. Urduja should be changed to Gov. Juan de Rodriguez because it was the latter who built the House. Urduja, adds Resty, was not Pangasinense but a Cambodian. So why honor a Cambodian in Pangasinan.
A Lingayen woman also became the first woman senator of the country — Geronima Tomelden Pecson daughter of a provincial board member, the late Victor Tomelden who helped then Gov. Daniel Maramba build the Capitol building in 1918.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/)
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