The day ‘Ermin Garcia’ was killed

By Ermin F. Garcia Jr.

It’s been 42 years since my father, Ermin Sr., was shot in the PUNCH’s editorial office.

It was in May 20, 1966 when a councilor of Lingayen barged into his office in an attempt to stop the publication of the news report exposing the ghost payroll racket that he led in the capitol town.

I was only 18 years old then, going into my 3rd year college in Ateneo.

On that fateful day, a typhoon lashed at the city and most everyone stayed home, except my father who insisted on doing some work at his office. The telephone rang at about 2:30 p.m. I took the call. It was Pete, my father’s assistant on the line.

“Your Papa has been shot,” he called out frantically but said my father was alive and already being brought to the hospital that very minute.

My mother, who overheard my own frantic responses to the caller, asked me what the ruckus was all about.

“Papa was shot,” I blurted out. She shrieked but kept her cool as she ran to the car with me. In minutes, we were driving through the city’s flooded streets.

On reaching the hospital, I saw my father laid on the wet floor by the entrance of the emergency room, his chest bloodied, surrounded by kibitzers. There were no doctors. As I knelt beside him, his eyes stared out blankly as he tried to speak. After few mumblings, I finally heard him talk, gasping. 

“Please tell Don Rafael to look after my family.” (‘Don Rafael’ was Rafael Gonzalez, the owner of Pantranco in those days, who was my father’s close friend).

Then, the doctors arrived and rushed him to the hospital’s operating room. That was the last time I heard his voice and the last time I saw him breathing.

I thought I felt his presence when his wristwatch that was removed from him was handed to me by a doctor after we were told he died on the operating table.

His self-winding watch showed the time stopped ticking at 4:47pm. 

***

We were shocked no end by his violent death. There were no answers to our questions.

It never occurred to anyone in the family that he was in a business that could cost him his life – at 45! Perhaps if we had  bothered to read his speech “Your Provincial Newspaperman”  that he delivered four years earlier when he assumed the presidency of the Pangasinan  Press and Radio Club, we would have better understood what it was that he did for a living.

Only later events told us that he did something heroic.

(We have reprinted his speech as our editorial this week for the readers’ own appreciation).

Manila dailies immediately reported his death in the front pages even as big names in national media demanded swift government response.

Max Soliven wrote in The Sunday Times, May 22, 1966: “Ermin Garcia was a symbol of what every newspaperman should aspire to be. Ermin could have come to Manila, as many journalist and writers of promise do, and made his mark in the metropolitan press. But he felt that his vocation lay at home, and it was to make happier and better the community in which he lived. And so he started the Sunday Punch, a weekly newspaper that never failed to live up to its name.”

Willie Ng wrote in The Manila Bulletin, May 22, 1966: “For Ermin Garcia, editor and publisher of Dagupan City’s Sunday Punch, we can gauge a very great respect among the newspaper community. He was a crusader, one of a vanishing breed. He was one of the few provincial newsmen who truly had the esteem of the Manila press. He belonged to that group of press elders whom cub reporters look up to. He had a fighting heart and he kept proving it.”

The media howl eventually prompted President Marcos to issue a “shoot-to-kill” order that led to the subsequent arrest of the councilor and his goons. (The news reports about his killing and updates on the investigation stayed on the front pages for at least a month).

After we buried our father, it was only then when we, his children, realized that he left us a legacy that we, and our own children, will forever be proud of.

(Readers may reach columnist at punch.sunday@gmail.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/
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