Punchline
Papa and his Sunday Punch
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THIS week I’m giving way to my younger sister Charisse’s thoughts and account of our father’s death on May 20, 1966. Unknown to many, she would or should have been the editor-publisher of The PUNCH today, not I, because she, more than anyone in the family, has the skill and the facility to write nearly as good as our father. Me? I wanted to be a priest or a soldier but as fate would have it, I am where I am today because our father died ten years after founding this paper.
Charisse, who was 17 when our father was shot in his editorial office, graduated valedictorian in high school at the Blessed Imelda’s Academy (Now Dominican School), and eventually earned her degree in Communication Arts in Maryknoll College (now Miriam College). Her public relations practice started in Ayala Corporation then on to hotels in Manila (Century Park Sheraton and Mandarin Oriental). She is presently the vice president for communications of City of Dreams.
In case, the many Charisses in our midst today wonder where that name came from, it was our father who gave it to her as her second name (after the post war Hollywood dramatic actress Cyd Charisse)
So meet the original Charisse of the Philippines.
* * * * *
On May 19, 1962, Ermin Garcia Sr. delivered a poignant speech, “Your Provincial Newspaperman” at his induction as President of the Pangasinan Press and Radio Club. He said:
“Your local press keeps watch over the affairs of the people of the community. It expresses their hopes and aspirations, echoes their frustrations and disappointments, and chronicles their glories and successes, as well as their tragedies and agonies. A newsman cannot write of these adequately without sincerely feeling this gamut of deep emotions. Thus he dies a thousand deaths as he writes about his people’s tragedies. And in the process, his own mental attitudes waver in cynicism with his ringside view of man’s inhumanity to man.”
A provincial journalist worth his calling should hold close to his chest this testament that Papa wrote (the foregoing quote is but a small part of his discourse). It is a pure expression of his dedication to the ideals of the Sunday Punch which regretfully I had not fathomed at the time of his death because I was too young, perhaps; as I was also oblivious, until weeks after his death, of his civic and community undertakings: that he was the Founding President of the Federation of Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines, a director of the Philippine Press Institute, a member of the Philippine delegation to the Afro-Asian Press Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, and that his weekly radio program “Stand Up for Your Rights” had won the Rotary Club International’s Paul Harris Award.
I clearly remember that afternoon of May 20, 1966. Papa had come home for lunch as was his usual schedule. He was deep in thought, and being a Friday when the Sunday Punch was being put to bed, we had presumed that the pressure of deadlines put him in this somber mood. He went back to his office shortly after. And some two hours later, we received the news that he was shot in his office by one who would later be identified as a Lingayen councilor who had been involved in ghost payroll padding for years. The ensuing seven hours at the hospital as he fought for his life until he perished, would then change the course of our lives.
“Personal heroism in the newsrooms and on the news beats is a day-to-day routine, but in the anonymity that is the hallmark of journalism, you never get to read these bits of heroism. The columns of your newspapers are replete with sagas of heroism, taxi and bus drivers, but rarely a line of the heroism sometimes demanded by the gathering and writing of certain news. The only newspaperman hero is a dead newspaperman…” thus Papa also said in his speech.
Papa died a hero and left us a sterling legacy that no money could equal or buy. A street in Quezon City where Mama eventually purchased a house, carries his name. Papa died young, at 45 years old, making our mother Pauling a widow at 40. We, his children except for our youngest sister Karina who died two-and-a-half years before his death, have outlived him. I have often wondered how our lives would have turned out had that fateful afternoon not happened on May 20 (exactly four years after he delivered his induction speech). Mama, the strong woman and rock bed that she was, held the family together for some 40 years until her death in 2005. Our only brother Ermin Jr. took the cudgels as a young man in his 20s to continue the cause of the Sunday Punch to this day, for nearly 50 years and running. Papa would be proud to see that the Sunday Punch has outlived him too, and it is to the credit of my brother Ermin Jr. and the dedicated staff that the newspaper Papa died for continues to fight for the truth. He is indeed his father’s son.
As for me and my sisters Josie and Frieda, we would sometimes bask in the thought that a journalist’s blood runs in our veins too, as the daughters of Ermin Garcia Sr. The late Max Soliven, who was a dear friend of Papa, would often say this of me when he’d introduce me to his fellow journalists, in the course of my career as a PR practitioner and hotelier. Papa had encouraged me while I was in High School at Blessed Imelda’s Academy, to be a newspaperwoman. And while Papa’s fate made Mama dissuade me from becoming one, she couldn’t stop my brother from pursuing the lofty ideals of the Sunday Punch where Papa left off.
Fifty-one years after the death of Papa, the Sunday Punch continues to breathe his ideals. It would not be too much to ask to heed his plea: “This, ladies and gentlemen of Pangasinan, is your own press. Take it to your bosom, if not with pride, at least with faith and understanding.”
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