Think about it
Impromptu reunions
By Jun Velasco
SOME of our readers feel edgy for our series of death column articles lately.
We don’t want to further disappoint anyone. Bear with us, here’s another one.
But we wish to assure you that writing about the death of a friend isn’t a walk in the park.
A part of us dies, too.
After we said goodbye to our friends – Perla Novales, Rudy Fernandez, and Jimmy Lucas in three columns last, two more kindred souls left for the Great Beyond. They are Wilfredo T. Velasco and Victoriano Sevilleja, both engineers.
Wilfredo or simply Joe, is Melandrew’s elder. We were at his necro rites and saw much of him at the Carael chapel which the Velasco family built.
Kuya Vic and this columnist shared a lot things when he was provincial engineer and president of the national provincial engineers association. We were swapping amenities at the family’s Mouse House business a couple of months before he died. We used to hold impromptu reunions with former Gov Tito Primicias, now a Canada resident, and our cumpadre Esting Llanillo. We told him Tito Primicias owed him his (the former governor’s) moniker as “foremost road builder of Pangasinan.”
Is it incidental that we are on the death subject because of the cataclysmic events in the Middle East?
* * *
Yesterday, we reflected on the death subject over a cup of coffee with media leader Joe Fabia and Centro Escolar University EVP Dick de Leon. All three of us, by the way, were agreed that man or woman should lead a meaningful life so that he or she won’t get flatfooted when the time comes.
Now in our 60’s (though Joe is in his late 50’s), Dick felts that those in the “pre-departure area” should be prepared to be able to leave gracefully.
A top adviser of philanthropist Emilio Yap and top educator (he was five-year president of the Mindanao State U with 50,000 students), Dick was considering his comfort zones after a colorful national police career.
We hastened a view, “Blest is the man who has found his work.” It is in public service, we said, that a man would find his real comfort zone.
Dick said he’s already a senior citizen. But we recalled Douglas MacArthur’s definition of age as “the vigor of the imagination” and not to be computed by the years in the calendar (words to that effect).
By the way, we remembered two or three books Kuya Vic Sevilleja gifted us… they deal with a life devoted to man’s highest goals, and that to achieve it is to live each day as if it were our last.
* * *
In the press circle, we are fortunate to have an interesting VIP member, nay top officer — Ashok Vasandani, an Indian national, who managed to get elected in the Pangasinan Press Club as EVP.
He is a columnist of the Northern Times and a regular participant in media forums. He was our classmate in the Rotary, being the president of the Rotary Club of Central Pangasinan, when we were president of the Rotary Club of Metro Cubao last year.
He is the incumbent president of the More than Conquerors Club, founded by brod Norman Velasco.
Many Dagupenos find him a faithful and sincere friend. He is. We love to tell our friends that our admiration for Ashok is also based on our exposure to India. Our two-week visit of New and old Delhi in 2002 gave us an insight in to the nobility of the Indian people. We admire Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. What impressed us most was the story of Taj Mahal, which was built by a king on account of his immense love for his “mahal.”
When someone asked what makes the world go round, we said “it’s love, it’s love, it’s love.”
Need we say more?
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