MY MATERNAL grandmother, Rita Pineda Canlas vda. de Zapata was my first teacher. Before I could learn to read and write she already had me memorizing – by rote – the prayer the Lord taught us, the invocations to the Virgin Mother, and the Rosary, plus the Confiteor.
Contemporaneous with my religious instruction was the caton from my maternal grandaunt, Carmen Pineda Canlas. That’s the Spanish alphabet, spiced with Caramba! Que horror! and the most welcome vamos a comer.
It is to my mother that I owe my love of reading, reading to me just about every material she could find: books, magazines, most especially the Liwayway which issue she never missed. This, even before I went to school.
No, I did not go to kindergarten. Instead, I was salimpusa in the Grade I class of Miss Gloria Roxas, at the time a most fair maiden wooed by the debonair Joe Reyes who later founded Pampanga Times.
I started formal schooling at the barrio San Vicente Elementary School in Sto. Tomas town as, being eight months short of my seventh birthday, I did not merit entry at the Sto. Tomas Central School. I walked two kilometers to school daily, many times bare-footed. My teacher was Miss Maria David, pursued by two suitors, Rene Velasquez and Porciano Canlas, whom she married. Indang Maring is childhood friend of my mom, so I guess that was how I was allowed in as regular grader.
Grade 2, I transferred to Sto. Tomas Central School, about five-minute walk from our home. My teacher was Mrs. Felisa Canlas, mother of once NEDA director- general Dante Canlas.
Grade 3, my TIC – that’s teacher-in-charge – was Miss Estrelita Galang who later boarded at my Apung Mameng’s house. She returned to her native Ilocos Norte after marrying her childhood sweetheart Joe Paz.
Grade 4, my TIC was Miss Rose Intal. It is my music and arts teacher though that I remember with fondness – the most beautiful Miss Maria Galura, ardently wooed and won by a dashing young lawyer from nearby Minalin, Ricardo “Boy” Sagmit Jr., later elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1971.
It was in Grade 5 that I really got started on the writing path, with the direction of Miss Cristina Tayag who drilled into us, with the zeal and discipline of a US Marine sergeant, the English language with theme writing as a regular exercise.
Grade 6 was a breeze with Miss Rosita Canlas. I earned salutatorian honors at graduation, with a silver medal and the princely sum of P50, donated by Barrio Poblacion’s richest man, Mr. Aurelio Batac, Sr.
A totally different ballgame was the Jose Abad Santos High School which has since reverted to its former name Pampanga High School.
In Section 1 of over 20 sections, I was farm boy lost in the big town with my classmates – mostly from the “highly advanced” San Fernando Elementary School – dominating all the subjects, primarily the then novel Mathematics handled by our class adviser Miss Carmelita Perez. Once CDC vice president Teng Gorospe was the valedictorian of that class.
So, I did where I thought I could excel – joined the campus papers The Pampangan with Miss Gervacia Guarin as moderator, and Sinukuan under the guidance of Miss Jasmin Dizon. I can still feel the thrill of seeing my first ever byline under the article “Discipline via the squad system” on how the creme de la crème of the JASHS freshmen maintained the highest standards in the classroom through a conduct reporting system participated in by every student clustered in squads.
On my second year in high school, I transferred to the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary where I was remanded to first year, Infima Class.
Latin instantly became my favourite, the difficulty of conjugation – with verbs, as in amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant, and declension – with nouns, as in rosa, rosae, rosam… for the feminine, and rivus, rive, rivum…for the masculine adding to the appeal of the subject. A philosophy graduate, Dan Basilio was my first Latin professor with Ars Latina. In Media Class, it was then Fr. Miles Pineda with De Bello Gallico; in Suprema Class was Fr. Martiniano Urbano with Cicero; and in Poetry Class, Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto with Ars Poetica and Virgil’s Aeneid.
I did well too in Geometry in second year with Mr. Velasquez, and Trigonometry in Suprema Class (third year) with Mr. Gregorio “Odo” Dayrit, also our Physics professor in our fourth year (Poetry Class). I remember Odo most for two things: he gave me a 98 grade in Physics for being the only one able to solve the problem he gave us for our finals: A single problem with only one equation and with zero as the only given; and he introduced me to Marx and Engels, Lenin and Mao, right on my second year at the seminary.
Generations of seminarians learned their birds-and-bees with the incomparable Mr. Leoncio Lising; their history – Philippine, American, Asian, World – with Mr. Narciso Tantingco; their economics with Mr. “Hammurabi” Amurao.
English, the seminary’s lingua franca, I assimilated through various professors in Composition as well as Literature – Fr. Mart Urbano, Fr. Jun Franco who was also president of Assumption College, Miss Julie Meneses, and Miss Nancy Ladringan, who would later become my first moderator in The Regina of Assumption College.
I learned my balarila and panitikan from Miss Estrelita David who always came to class all-smiles but would leave in tears even before the bell rang, due to our childish pranks. She is now Sister Lita of the Dominicans.
Finishing salutatorian at MGCS but fearful of being expelled from Rhetorics Class, I hastened to San Jose Seminary and Ateneo de Manila.
The lasting impressions I hold of my Jesuit professors there are those of Fathers William Keyes and Vincent Towers, in my English subjects; and Fr. Nick Cruz, in Film Appreciation.
Out of the seminary, to Assumption College. But not out of ex-seminarians for mentors, principally in philosophy: Narciso Garcia in Ethics and Epistemology, and Percival Cuevas in Logic. As well as Mr. Tantingco, again, in Rizal Course.
With English as major, Creative Writing under Mrs. Nicodemus – where coming to class high on grass during the finals, I was laughed out by the whole class when it took me all of five minutes to submit my composition. I got the last laugh though with a grade of 1 for my work – “The Effects of Laziness” – with that title the only thing written aside from my name on a totally blank test paper. And Journalism, with Sol Jay otherwise known as Consolacion Jaime as prof.
With The Regina as the center of my orbit, it was Mrs. June Velez-Belmonte, since emigrated to the US and now Mrs. June Whitmer, that may well have served as the jeweler that polished the raw gem in me as a writer and editor.
“The hand that rocked my journalism cradle,” I inscribed on all my books I brought her in my visits to her home in San Jose, California, befitting of her motherhood I was most blessed with.
On this the month honouring teachers, I remember and honor all those who crafted me to what I am now.
I shall always be grateful, my beloved mentors.
(Updated with additional remembrances on 6 Oct. 2016 from the original published here 4 Oct. 2012. Republished in celebration of National Teachers’ Day, 5 Oct.)
