Assumption 4-4 High School Class of 1977 EDITORIAL PAGE

Susan Sanares-Tan graduated from Assumption High School in 1977 and college in 1981. She served as class 4-4 president during our freshman and sophomore years in high school. She received a masters degree in 1998 from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

She is Editor-in-Chief of the Assumption Class of 1977 Webpage. She is also Publisher and Editor of the Assumpta Newsletter.

Please support our outreach efforts to keep the AC community informed. The Assumpta Newsletter is afree publication and therefore contributions would be welcomed to defray the costs of postage and stationery. Average contributions are $10 per year. Please mail your contributions to:
Liza Hocson-Manzano, 43 Sunny Slope, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688, USA.
We thank you very much for your support.

I hope you get a chance to read my article on Architect Daniel H. Burnham, Filipinas Magazine,"Cultural Currents: Architect Daniel H. Burnham -- Concrete Influence," pp. 58-60, August 1998. For all his contributions to Philippine architecture, we only remember him for the famous Burnham Park in Baguio City.

My apologies. For copyright reasons, I am unable to publish the full article here.

We really don't think of them at all--mere passageways that are closed at the end of the day and opened early in the morning. We have walked right through them while chatting in line and run through them to carth up with friends. We have stepped in quietly through them on our way to prayer in the chapel. And, we have flown right through them while trying to make a class or meet a deadline. These doors have been closed in our faces. They have been banged with our fists, or leaned on for suport. They have been cursed for being locked and ignored for being open. They have let many people in and just as many people out.

Doors have been open for us and by us--necessary portals to other places. They have defined passages from here to there--from then to now. So many of us have used them and still do. We build them but leave them mostly ajar. Some people say not to leave doors wide open while others say not to leave them always closed. Some have secured them with dead bolts and heftly locks. Others have softened them with drapery or beads or elevated them to art with wrought iron and wood carving. But the doors that have been most difficult to define are the figurative kinds that leave our minds open or closed. So many of us have come to this place and left with different ideas and goals.

But at some point, we've all converged as maniacs, monsters and scholars--as idealists and saints as well--to pass through these Assumption doors.
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Assumpta Newsletter, 1998

When then Lady Di became engaged to Prince Charles, my heart sank. Oh, I knew it was totally impossible to be in her shoes. They literally wouldn't have fit. But I wanted so much to become a princess. It didn't matter that I was not one of the most beautiful, highborn, eligible maidens in the land. It seemed as if any young lady had a shot at becoming a princess as long as Prince Charles had not made up his aging and fickle mind. But by 1981, when the fairy tale wedding of the century took place, I had placed my hopes and dreams of being a princess in the person of Lady Diana Spencer. It couldn't have happened to a better person anyway. She seemed so sincere and unaffected. And, she had married for love. "Whatever love means," so replied her fiancé.

In the course of my own unsteady life, I glanced every so often at the state of affairs of Diana, from the pages of Newsweek and Time, never once flitting through those murderous tabloids. But one didn't have to read the tabloids to see the human frailties of a saddened princess. She came forward with her own confessions to the media as well. Out of it all though, she came through, as do many of us, from the uncertainties and circumstances of life. In a strange reversal of roles, Princess Diana had sought to become, one of us. My husband said he would never understand my fascination with the royals. Yet that evening, when he heard the sad news of Diana's accident on the television, he did not have the heart to wake me. And only then, the next morning when he did break the news, did I realize how much of the fairy tale I had spun. Princesses do die and fairy tale heroines are not eternal. "Happily ever after" is only make-believe.

There is a palpable grief throughout most of the world because of the death of this princess. With her dies the better part of those who dream. I am only one year older than Princess Diana, as are perhaps a great number of other women. But each one can identify with her. It is true of every young girl who was ever read a bedtime story, and who grew up to become a mother as well. We pass on our hopes and aspirations in the little tales of wonder. Thank you Diana for showing us what a true princess really is.
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Assumpta Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 4, October 1997