It is a rare and singular honor to be invited as guest speaker in the commencement exercises of one’s alma mater. And so, when Dr. Elva Onrejas, the principal of Naval Central School, offered me this opportunity some six weeks ago, I accepted without much hesitation.

However, accepting the invitation to speak seemed the easiest part. The more difficult part was the thinking and the writing of my message for this year’s crop of graduates and the other members of the audience.

I had to deal with a flood of memories and emotions while crafting my speech. Yet I knew that I only needed to mention some relevant anecdotes and insights from those childhood years to tell you today.

It was at Naval Central School that I started to nurture my hopes and dreams of a better and brighter future. I did not know then what that future would look like. But a song I learned in the classroom early on, “Que sera, sera,” or “What will be, will be,” provided some optimism that those vague hopes and dreams may yet come true.

Now, in my adult years, when I am in town, and both in times of triumph or despair, I take to come and stroll around the campus, no matter how briefly, to view the old haunts and to remember those simple years. This is part of my reality check and personal ritual, figuratively speaking, to put my two feet on the ground and my head on my shoulders.

Believe it or not, I came to school barefooted for about one-fifth, or one in five, of my elementary school days. Magtiniil lang intawon usahay ko sa pag-eskwela.

My late father, a policeman who raised us seven children in a very Spartan way, would buy me only one or two pairs of slippers every year. And considering that the slippers under my heavy feet would break within a month or two, you can just imagine the repair jobs and efforts to make them last six months or more. Bug-at ang tiil niiing inyong ubos nga tagpamulong nga usa una ka parapamari, para suroy ug ice drop kung Sabado o Domingo, ug para suroy ug pandesal sa kaadlawon. Sanglit magub-an dayon ug tsinelas.

Today, wearing shoes to school by elementary school pupils is a common sight. In my time, you would be heckled and joked at if you did so. If you did not have slippers, it was all right to come to class barefooted. There were also no tricycles or pedicabs then. Children from poor or well off families all had to walk to school.

It is up to you to figure out the economic poverty of the families and of this town during my elementary school years.

Kung itandi karon, simple living gayud kaayo ang kadaghanan sa mga kabataan nga kadungan nako sa elementary kaniadtong 1964 hangtud 1970. Dili mag toothbrush kada adlaw kay dili pa uso. Ug dili pod makaligo kada adlaw kay nihit ang tubig ug layo ang among ba~ay sa gripo nila Mang Balbino Caliao. Dunay usa o duha ra ka gripo ang puwede alugan sa kadam-an sa tibuok Garcia Street, unya luya pod ang awas kung adlaw.

Sanglit uso ang dalikdik sa butkon, liug, likud, ug ubang parte sa lawas sa mga kabataan, labina sa mga lalaki nga paraduwa ug lastiko, hulin, taksi ug serbesa, harup-harup, ug uban pang duwa nga makahugaw sa kamot. Unya wa~ay awas ang gripo didto sa lunch counter. Ang nakapait lang niini kay pagbalik sa klase, manganta ra ba usahay ug “I Have Two Hands.” You can just imagine how the male pupils would sing that song with dirty hands.

Makalubog usahay sa tubig ang paglugod sa baga na nga dalikdik kung maligo sa salug o sa dagat. Joke lang ni ha, pero duna ni’y pagka tinuod.

Before Grade Five or Grade Six when I started to earn from my pandesal and ice drop selling, I did not have the luxury of having a P0.05 allowance to buy a stick of camote cue or other snack items during the morning recess. I was lucky if a friend or classmate from better-off families would give me the stick with the third or fourth cube of camote as a display of kindness and generosity. But this was not often.

In the main, I stuck to the three-meals-a-day and no-snacks discipline until I graduated from the university. Mao na nga niwang ko kaniadto. Today, many of our school children enjoy three-meals and three-snacks every day. Times have really changed. Nakasunod na pod ko sa uso nga sige la ug kaon. Mao na nga makita pod sa lawas.

School work was also simpler during our elementary years. There were not many textbooks compared to the present. The most useful instructions were focused on the 3 R’s - reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. No modern math yet to confuse the pupils - just the basic arithmetical operations. Readings were taken from the few textbooks that many pupils did not complete from cover-to-cover, and that included me before Grade Four. Writing was in the form of draft compositions corrected by the teachers and rewritten in final form in composition notebooks.

The Montessori type of education was not popular then, and we the pupils had to grapple with our lessons and school assignments by ourselves. Karon, puwede na tauran ug ribbon ang Nanay kung ma honor ang anak, kay kadaghanan motabang na man paghimo sa assignment. Pero kaniadto, dili manginlabot ang among mga ginikanan.

But there were inevitable times when we had to ask answers for assignments from our parents. In Grade Two, our teacher, Mrs. Benedicta L. Macariola, gave our class an assignment to ask from our parents or old folks oral information about the history of Naval. I asked my parents about it, and they said they did not know. Perhaps many other parents also did not know, because only two or three classmates had submitted the assignment, and they were all descendants of Padre Inocentes Manco Garcia, the founder of our town.

That was probably the first unfulfilled and most frustrating assignment in my childhood, because that failure would bother me for years.

During the post-Marcos years in the late 1980s, I conducted research on the history of Naval and its immediate geography. This was part of the campaign for the provincehood of Biliran, which became a reality in 1992. In 1990, I submitted the manuscript of the updated history of Naval to Kinaadman, the academic journal of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City. It was accepted for publication with laudatory comments by the editor, Father Miguel Bernad, S.J., who is a respected priest-historian. The article came out in a journal issue for 1992.

After I received the extra prints, one of the first things I did was mail a copy to Mrs. Macariola. In my letter, I told her I was submitting an unfulfilled school assignment that dated back to around 1965, or 25 years earlier. This gesture is part of my continuing intention to attend to unfulfilled assignments in the past, no matter how long it would take to complete them.

Today, I am expanding from Mrs. Macariola’s assignment by establishing a research data-base for information on the history and culture not only of our town, but also of our province and of the Leyte-Samar Region. Some of my writings, which could now be accessed in the Internet, or clipped from old newspapers, are being used by students at all levels - from elementary to college or university levels. They are also referred to by older native Navalians and Biliranons in other parts of the country and around the world.

Of course, this task worthy of a Pilosopo Tasyo would not make me rich. Indeed, it is a drain on my personal time and resources. And, therefore, you might ask: Why should he do that? And for what purpose?

In response, let me say, I ventured into the preservation and promotion of our local history and culture because I find meaning in this largely neglected task, and which very few have the interest, the patience, and the stamina to sustain to its farthest limits.

Also, I did not want our young generation of Navalians and Biliranons to be as confused and rootless as I was when, during my childhood and adolescence, I groped for a sense of meaning and self-identity in our own little world. I want our young people to possess a sense of native pride, to hold on to something useful at the psychic level, and to feel a sense of identity with our socio-cultural milieu, despite the relative obscurity of our town and province.

I am certain that, partly due to my extension work as a local historian and community journalist, many young Navalians and Biliranons now have a better sense of themselves and of their local identity than when I was at their age.

The task of citizenship-formation and nation-building is something that we should never leave alone to our politicians and statesmen. This is a task that non-politicians and ordinary people should contribute to on a daily basis, both by the sheer force of acting like good and responsible residents, and by exercising individual and collective vigilance, so that our officials and politicians could be held in check in the conduct of their public functions and responsibilities. You can take this as a piece of advice from concerned academician and Navalian who shall not run for political office. I repeat: I shall not run for political office.

To the teachers and school administrators, you are at the threshold of improving the Department of Education’s Makabayan curriculum by using local materials and sources in the process of molding your pupils to become better citizens and nationalistic lovers of our country in the future. Since it was the Division of Biliran that was tasked by the DepEd in the region to develop the Makabayan lesson plans, it is a challenge for you to also serve as the best implementors of your own prescriptions. I wish you much luck in your endeavors.

In our increasingly complicated learning environment, where the teachers are no longer the sole authority and repository of knowledge, it is necessary to put greater focus on improving the pupils’ skills in the 3 R’s and their knowledge of country and heritage than at any time in the past. Build up a good literacy foundation for the pupils and instill in them the proper values and attitudes, and they would be able to fill in the details later on.

To the parents, do not pamper your sons and daughters too much. In this age of household helps and electronic and technological amenities, it is not yet too late to teach your children the basic household tasks such as simple cooking, simple stitching of torn clothes, sweeping with brooms, hand-washing clothes, or even putting kerosene or lighting up the lamp during brownouts. Daghan na ang nawala sa ila. Kadaghanan dili na kahibawo mamari, mangawil, mangahoy, manmayabas sa Kalawanan-an, ug uban pa.

In short, do not make them over-dependent on househelps and modern technology. Teach them some of the valuable traditional survival skills that had also made you better persons.

To all of us, let us hope for better days ahead, and better prospects for our country, our province, our town, and our people. Even if hope is all that we’ve got, let us cling to it and never despair.

Thank you and good afternoon.