Just received the news that another friend from college has passed away. Ed Labitag was my classmate and fraternity brother. The list is getting longer. Jut a few months ago, it was Salvador “Buddy” Carlota, former dean of the college of law in the University of the Philippines and authority on administrative law. He was also a talented musician who played the piano and the guitar. Almost immediately afterwards, it was Josue “Sonny” Villa, the Philippine ambassador to China. Earlier another ambassador to China Jose Santiago “Chito” Sta Romana passed in Hainan Island: he was taken by Covid. Years back Frankie Llaguno, writer and colleague in the Banana Club like Buddy, died from a chronic disease.
Sonny Villa was a childhood friend. He was the conductor of our church choir. He introduced us to Handel and Mozart when I was in high school. We lost touch when he joined the diplomatic service. He took several of my workshops in massage and Tai chi chuan after his retirement. He suffered the symptoms of Alzheimer’s for several years; our group could not see him because of it. He had a difficult time as ambassador because he was forced to defend the policies and actions of President Ferdinand Marcos. He was the scion of a prominent family of talented musicians and journalists.
Chito Sta Romana was a journalist and bureau head of an international news syndicate in Beijing. He was one of the young Filipinos who were exiled in China after Marcos declared martial law in 1972. In the 1960s we met as activists during the First Quarter Storm. The next time we saw each other was in 1983 when he was a journalist in China and I was studying contemporary wu-shu in Chengdu. I also met Eric Baculinao and Jaime FlorCruz, two other Filipino journalists in China.
It was Frankie Llaguno who, to me, represented the sage of our college years. He was always perceptive and level-headed. He was of course always engaged but nothing seemed to excite him. He had a wry sense of humor and always came up with the punch line.
Editor (his real name) Nacpil was my high school classmate.
He was the orator of the school. When we were first year, he won the gold medal and I won the silver. On our senior year, he won an American Field Service scholarship to study in Michigan. After his graduation at Lyceum University with a degree in economics, he became a businessman. He passed away from a mysterious illness.
Eddie Labitag was the one I spent the most time with. We were classmates in law school. We did our homework together. For a couple of months in 1987 we stayed in the same faculty house in the university. We attended the same celebration of the February Revolution. We made pilgrimages to Mount Banahaw . We drove around Luzon a couple of times with my brother Flor and his friend Alfred: once up north to the Ilocos and the Ifugao and down to Baguio; another time it was down south to Bulan in Camarines Sur. Both trips took 4 days each. Just before he died, he wrote to me that he was stricken with pneumonia and was being treated with antibiotics. I wondered if it was a strain of Covid.
Ed Maranan and I saw each other many times in London and New York and the Philippines through poetry readings, Tai chi chuan seminars and lengthy dinner talks overlooking the Thames in Barnes. He wrote about me for his column in the Philippine Star. He included my essay in the food anthology he and his daughter Ellen edited, “A Taste of Home:Expats and Food Memories” (Anvil Publications). Novelist F. Sionil Jose I had known since the early 1960s via the College Editors Guild conferences and seminars.
There were others in the family, immediate and extended: my devoted brother Flor Navarro, my colleagues Vic Tirol, Frankie Jose, Ed Maranan, Nelson Navarro (there’s a tribute in my website blog), Wawell Osorio, Herson Alvarez (another Covid fatality).
A real loss to the Taoist community in the Netherlands was Annette Derksen, a Universal Healing Tao who was born in the Year of the Dragon along with Chongmi Muller and me. She was one of the instructors who was tested by me in 1989 in Big Indian, Catskill, New York. At the millennium, she invited me to teach in Amsterdam. The seminars were attended by the most wonderful students one could imagine; they took me to the best restaurants in town and the Red Light District. One of them – Elske Wooster – gave me a tour of the museums. There was of course Wang Ting Jun, master of Xing Shen Zhuang Fa and Wu style Tai chi chuan, whose Taoyin form has been a constant companion for years now after I learned it from David Verdesi (in Istanbul and Chiangmai) , Ana Vladimirova (in Rome) and Gonca Denizmen (in Huangshan).
Last but not least, the incomparable John F. Chiuten and Lao Kim, my masters in Dragon Tiger Fujian Temple Kungfu, of whom I have written in my book “Of Fire and Water: Alchemy and Transformation” (Tambuli Media: 2023). And then there was Gin Soon Chu, the disciple of GM Yang Sau-Chaung and in his own right a pioneer of a sophisticated system of Tai chi chuan. He put his unique stamp on a Tai chi chuan system. Because of him, I can never look at Tai chi chuan the same way again.
At 83, I look back on these people who have gone their way and think of the times we spent with one another. There were moments of adventure and discovery, sometimes glory and achievement. There were also moments of trials and challenges … and failures.
These people were so much an integral part of my life. I learned so much from them, but I did not realize it fully earlier. Only later, when they passed, did I see what they did for me quietly and unobtrusively. If I had the chance to pay them tribute, I would have acknowledged my great debt to them.
Here are photos of our reunions and fellowships.
Both Ed and Frankie have passed away.
Johnny Chiuten and Rene in 1969.