A fitting memento for a golden milestone
A fitting memento for a golden milestone
By Mila Astorga-Garcia
UP Prep Class ‘65 Celebrates its 50th Anniversary
An event that brings good things to one’s life always matters, and takes on a significant meaning when it hits the golden anniversary mark. It is a milestone worth celebrating and even documenting in a book.
THE GOLDEN COMMEMORATIVE BOOK
And so, when the University of the Philippines Preparatory School Class ‘65 recently commemorated its 50th year since graduation, it was treated as a special milestone. Celebratory activities which included a mass, school and museum visits, a grand reunion dinner, and a trip to two resorts were held between end of January and early February. Significantly, a commemorative book was produced as a labor of love, to pay tribute to the high school that had prepared the graduates for the challenges of further studies, careers, and diverse life choices. It was also a way of honoring the 50 years of friendships, a special bond that has become stronger through the years, giving real meaning to the term BFF, or best friends forever.
I am proud to be a member of this class, to be one of the UP Prep ‘65 graduates. UP Prep was a unique school that was designed to provide an experimental college-preparatory curriculum to elementary school graduates. It was created by the UP Board of Regents approved by UP President Vidal A. Tan and implemented in 1954, to “open a first class high school in Manila …that championed the cause of a pilot curriculum appropriate for teenagers with the aptitudes and intellectual talents required by university studies,” determined only after these applicants passed a battery of exams.
UP Prep ‘65 graduates with two of their teachers, Aurora Alarcon Lianko and Leticia Cortes (center),
during the grand reunion dinner in Manila.
The school proved to be a tough learning environment, exacting from us students the kind of discipline and diligence that would enable us to tackle the well-balanced curriculum that stressed English, a broad training in science and mathematics, integrative arts and the humanities, and an emphasis on nationalism and internationalism.
Education was not confined to the lectures of topnotch teachers in the third floor classrooms of the Rizal Hall, UP Campus on Padre Faura. There were educational tours to various parts of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, where we learned in the field, and even conducted experiments on site, in real time. Book contributor Rory Asperilla Santiago aptly describes such tours as “gold mines of learning, laughter, memories, sweetly scented escapades, and friendships deepened by close quarters and the sharing of new experiences.”
Amazingly, we have nurtured such friendships through the years, as we have continued to travel and discover new things together during our various reunion tours in different cities in Europe, North and South America, and Asia.
GOLDEN celebrants at the Tanauan, Batangas resort of Class President Ericson Marquez (right) and wife Nini (top right). (2 PHOTOS: RUDY TAN AND FRANKLIN MANGONON)
Wilma Guerrero Rodriguez succinctly describes the kind of camaraderie we have developed in a chapter introduction, “The Making of Forever Friends.”: “In our case, we speak of camaraderie not only in terms of a once-a-year get together to celebrate a class milestone. It is our addicting friendship that finds us reason to reunite at the slightest excuse–to celebrate each other’s birthday, to fete a balikbayan classmate, to be the ninong or ninang of a child’s wedding, to celebrate a child becoming a parent, and even to attend the baptism and children’s parties of a grandchild… It was not all parties, reunions, and travels, though. We raised funds for our scholars as well as classmates and their families faced with extraordinary expenses. We stormed the gates of heaven and jointly prayed for those with health issues. We gave moral support to those with personal problems.”
Our book then was produced as a lasting memento to honor our school and our friendship, titled Tours and Detours: Lessons Learned Off Road and On. The title was coined by our editor Felice Prudente Sta. Maria, to reflect on our life journeys.
This artfully illustrated (by artist Zeny Kagawan Manlapig) hard-covered book with its solid body of work, has been fittingly compiled and conveniently declared to be still a work in progress, to keep its pages open for further submissions from classmates who, for one reason or another, were not able to include their own stories in time for the reunion. Thus, the editorial/production committee (with editor Prudente and producer Girlie Esguerra de Leon at the helm) had made the sensitive and smart decision to keep the well-organized publication in a three-ring binder, instead of a permanently sewn-up volume.
Jojo Sabalvaro-Tan signs newly published books, Passport to Creativity and Blue Moon. Donates proceeds to Prep ’65
Remarkably, over 60 out of 120 classmates contributed toward its making. It is a product of a collective effort of classmates in different parts of the world. It includes vignettes about our school life in UP Prep, our several reunions and tours, and the stories of our personal journeys after our graduation. What is so endearing in this collection is it pays tribute to our school, teachers, and classmates, our advocacies, and the things and causes we hold dear. It is a treasure trove of literature so diverse in style and content, reflecting each one’s uniqueness and the different lives we have chosen to live. It also includes tributes to classmates long gone.
I was honored to have been asked to do the introduction to part three of the book consisting of the biographies, titled, “Our Common Legacy, Our Diverse Paths.” I wrote, in part, to emphasize the different pathways we traversed after high school graduation, equipped with the common legacy we shared — our UP Prep education: “Remember, we went to university as bright-eyed dreamers and goal setters, hoping to complete the studies that would equip us to pursue our careers, when Bob Dylan was crooning, The Times, They are A’changin, to reflect on the reality of our world then.We were now actually part of a bigger, more complex, tumultuous world. There was the Vietnam War and the rising protest movement against it; and closer to home, there were the student protests against rising tuition fees, the workers’ strike for decent wages in the cities, and the peasants’ fight for land in the countryside. Many of us chose to stay the course and went on to pursue distinguished careers as professionals, government bureaucrats, businesspersons or homemakers, while attending to our various passions and significant advocacies. Some of us made detours, leaving our studies and careers to join the movement for change and to put an end to martial law, which we believed was curtailing the freedoms we cherished. We saw ourselves or our family members forced to live dangerous lives in the process, some of us surviving those difficult times without bitterness to write and share our stories, but some others sadly losing loved ones, yet honoring their memory and the courage of their convictions. I want to say that the UP Prep experience fortified us in some way, with the wisdom and determination to boldly cope with the hurdles, big and small, along the paths we have chosen.”
UP Prep ’65 GOLDEN celebrants at the welcome dinner reception hosted by Ruth Ramos Flores and husband Ric. (PHOTO: F. MANGONON)
As to the lasting significance of this book, I wrote these parting thoughts: “More than just an album of memories, it is a legacy we want to share with our children and our grandkids, our nephews and nieces and their children’s children, so that they would understand that even in this crazy world, friendships like ours indeed exist. Also, to let them know that a school like ours, indeed once existed – a school we believe was more interesting and “magical” to us than Hogwarts School. (Challenge: What do we do when they ask where was the magic? Our response: In our UP Prep ‘65 minds and hearts.)
“We will proudly tell them that although we were all schooled in the UP Prep tradition of scholarly excellence, there was nothing the same in the way we have lived our lives. For equipped with the educational and life skill tools UP Prep bestowed on our young lives, we have dared to bravely traverse various paths that were choices of our own; and having been imbued with the open education that UP Prep had instilled in us — that values freedom of choice, among other things — we have not only tolerated or accepted the diversity of our life’s choices, but we have even appreciated, celebrated and learned to embrace it.”
After the Ayala Museum tour (PHOTO: F. MANGONON)
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