A patriarch’s dream, a grandson’s mission

By Rex Catubig

 

IT’S symbolic that the remnant of the Oriental Hotel’s facade is now overgrown with weeds and shrubbery and boarded up with galvanized sheets. As if to hide from public scrutiny, the bygone life it harbors.

What stories does it keep that fortify its walls? Do the ancient dreams still throb with life, and whispered wishes resound within?

The family might find it wise to unravel its largely unknown heritage and share it with the city it calls home. For by leaving everything to the mercy of uncaring winds– it risks the fate of being forgotten and swept away by the windshear of history.

 

SW Lee’s foray into diverse business ventures was phenomenal: he recognized early on the potential of Bangus industry and built his house in the middle of his fish farm; he was an institution in trucking and sand and gravel hauling; and yet, he was also a trailblazer in the processed meat industry, the Ambrosia Foods being his trademark brand as pioneer maker of Virginia ham this side of the culinary world.

Yet amid all these, his most ambitious plan was to see his three children work together and establish the family enterprise that would showcase their exemplary academic credentials.

The eldest, Lucy, graduated with a medical degree from UST and the Boston University Medical School. Then she joined the Harvard Medical School as an instructor in Anesthesiology.

Lily, the second child, was Summa Cum Laude in BS Pharmacy and BS Chemistry in UP and UST respectively, a Board topnotcher, and earned her Masters degree and PHD in Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota and Boston University.

Alex, the youngest and only boy, after graduating with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of the Philippines, went on to take up and graduated with Business Administration at Harvard U and Structural Engineering at University of Michigan. He earned his Masters degree in Engineering at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Playing all these aces in his mind, he envisioned Engr Alex to build the flagship edifice; Dr Lucy to administer and manage the organization; and Pharmacist and Biochemist, Lily to oversee the pharmaceutical inventory.

Yet even the most astute entrepreneur could falter in his patriarchal vision, as each of the three scions expected to uphold the family ideal, decided to pursue their own dreams  in the States.

That shattered SW Lee’s grandiose dream for an SW Lee business consortium. He resigned himself to the reality that he and wife Maria P would be empty nesters the rest of their lives.

But in a dramatic twist, Engr Alex eventually returned home with his wife and family in tow. In the end, he couldn’t shake off being his father’s son and they worked together in tandem.

In all these, Maria Perreras Lee was the silent partner, who as a trusted wife, knew by heart  the whys and wherefores of the now vast estate and was the guardian of the voluminous property and business files.

The paper trail leads us to the present state of affairs of the family. With the demise of the legendary couple, and the passing on of the eldest, Dr Lucy, the family legacy rolls over to the surviving children. But in the uncertain denouement, it teeters dangerously on unstable ground.

Lily, though still lucid, is already 99 years old. And though younger, Alex adamantly asserts his familial right at 77 years of age.  Sadly, both are civilly at loggerheads over unfinished family business.

The challenge that now confronts the grandson, Sylvester, who has taken upon himself the quixotic mission to perpetuate the family heritage, is how to overcome conflicting family sentiments and win over the family in undertaking the task to preserve and revitalize the legacy of SW Lee and Maria P Lee as pillars of the community.

The wealth and property that the couple Lee accumulated over the years, if regarded only for its financial value by the heirs, will be gone with the wind.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his greatest fortune—the illustrious family name that bespeaks a legacy worth a patriarch’s dream?

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments