By Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr.
My mother, Erlinda Alcantara-Reyes was born on July 7, 1926.
She would mention in her joking, lighter moments that she was born in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe, whose two paths could not have been more different. These two women represented peaks in their respective vocations and their popularity reflected the evolving world and aspirations of that time. They were the beau ideal of a generation of Filipino postwar women, who would change women’s roles radically from that of their mothers.
As the daughter of eye, ear, nose, throat specialist, Dr. Vivencio Alcantara of Capiz, Iloilo, and Professor Esther Tempongko of Manila, Erlinda had aspired to become a doctor following in her father’s steps one day.
Even though she had consistently been an academic achiever and an early high school graduate at the Philippine Women’s University in Manila, she had also met the love of her life, a De La Salle college student named Virgilio Reyes at a young age, 14 years old. They married when she was 15.
The war years and the onerous Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945 saw her enrolled as a pre-medical student at the University of the Philippines.
In her high school annual of 1941 at the PWU, she had envisioned in an essay of a post-graduation trip to the United States on way to university. Instead, the young couple with two babes in arms had sought refuge on the Reyes family farm in Tuy, Batangas.
She would learn to cope with nosy neighbors who would come into their kitchen to examine the day’s cooked fare as well as occasional voyeurs who would peep up the bamboo floors at village dances (and get poked at by maidens carrying cardboard fans). She learned how to wear slacks in the kitchen to avoid such prying eyes and was described as “not a sport”.
Her worst ordeal was in February to March 1945, when, even from the distance of Batangas, the scarlet skies betrayed the fact that Manila was burning, since the Americans and Japanese had made her native city the locus of a horrific and existential battle.
Manila, which had been known as the Pearl of the Orient in prewar days, was a total ruin and adjudged the worst destroyed urban battleground in Asia. Her grandparents, Felipe and Leocadia Tempongko, and her father had passed away not soon after the Battle of Manila, not least because of the ordeal they had been through. Their home in Paco had also been devastated with all property and memorabilia destroyed.
Fortunately, her mother and two sisters had survived this trial and had sought shelter with relatives in the northern part of Manila which had been less affected. The much dreamed of Republic of the Philippines was finally inaugurated in 1946 amidst the ruins of a nearly obliterated city.
Like many other Filipino family, they set about rebuilding a life of normalcy close to what they had known before the war. Her husband would find a job as a newsman, while she herself tended to the family which had grown to three by 1946. With the arrival of the third child, she decided to abandon her first ambition of becoming a doctor. Instead, she concentrated on raising their brood, which by 1952 had grown to five, with two additional boys.
She finished a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English (cum laude) in 1948. To a female classmate who condescendingly pitied her because she couldn’t join their sorority because of her marital status, she replied that “not to worry, she belonged to a very exclusive fraternity of two!”
Her best friends included those who (like her) married early, such as Professor Emerenciana Yuvienco-Arcellana, publisher Gilda Macaraig-Echauz, and pharmacist Leticia Canso, who all pursued successful professional lives while raising families. One of her pen-friends before the war was the later Justice Carolina Grino-Aquino, who was surprised to learn that Erlinda Alcantara had married so early, right after her first semester in college.
Hence, it was not surprising that such foreign examples as Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe might have been their images of glamor, from a distance. They might also have easily chosen such accomplished Filipino women as lawyer Pacita de los Reyes-Philips, dancer Rosalinda Orosa-Goquingco, and social worker Estefania Aldaba-Lim. This was the age when Filipino women, who had earned the right to vote in 1937, broke glass ceilings in such professions as law, politics, and medicine.
Women were instrumental in setting up such educational institutions as the Instituto de Mujeres, Centro Escolar (University), and the Philippine Women’s University. Women writers Paz Marquez-Benitez and Gloria Manalang pioneered in the new medium of communication, English.
An avid reader, Erlinda devoured the latest copies of ladies’ magazines (e.g. McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan) bought from newsstands on Avenida Rizal, subscribed to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and borrowed the latest books from the American Embassy USIS library.
One of her favorite culture heroes was the American poet Sylvia Plath, whose balancing act between raising a family and a career in literature (being married as well to Ted Hughes, later poet laureate of England) ended in her tragic suicide at age 30. She could never comprehend the reason for such a woeful and fateful choice.
Women’s place was in the home but also in the House and the Senate. Female bar top-notchers and political leaders made their presence felt in Congress. The Philippines would later be known as having elected two women presidents, Corazon C. Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The Philippines did not have such prominent feminist leaders as Gloria Steinem or Simone de Beauvoir but feminism a la Philippine was to make its mark in our country and the world.
My mother’s chosen field was in Speech and Communication, so it was fitting that, once her youngest had entered high school, she became an instructor and later professor and chairperson at the University of the Philippines Department of Speech and Drama/Theater Arts. Her colleagues included such luminaries as Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, Behn Cervantes, Nestor Torre, Alex Cortez, Anton Juan, Leticia Tison, Ramona Flores, and Consuelo Fonacier.
Generations of UP students would learn the basics of effective public speaking and communication from such dedicated teachers. Theater would enliven campus life and focus on relevant social issues.
With social media, fake news, and populism still far off in the horizon, it was emphasized that truth, honesty, and ethics still underpinned communication.
Approaching a century since the advent of Queen Elizabeth, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, and my mother, it’s timely to ask what possible lessons from them we could possibly bring to bear on the challenges of our present millennium.