John 11:25-26: Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.’
LOURDES Blanco Ragonjan Baraoidan, 95, who traveled between Ilocos Norte and Alaska in the 1990s, died in her ancestral town of Pinili, Ilocos Norte on Jan. 6, her family announced. She was 95.
The only daughter of Igmidio Ragonjan of Bantay, Ilocos Sur and the former Apolonia Blanco of Pinili, Ilocos Norte, Lourdes was born in Pinili on Feb 10, 1930.
She was the widow of Winefredo C. Baraoidan, a municipal development officer in Pinili , which became Ilocos Norte’s 17th municipality on Jan 1, 1920, where warriors walked during the Philippine-American Revolution and during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s.
She was a mother to four children: Nestor (Marietta Rosario-Baraoidan); Lina, (Gertrudo Felimar Torrizo+); Amador +(Cheri Lou Faustino-Baraoidan); and Agnes (Narciso Uddipa); and is survived by 11 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Lourdes is the niece of Honor Blanco Cabie, Opinion Editor of Manila Standard.
Before migrating to Alaska in 1991, she was enjoying a quiet and peaceful life in Pinili, an agricultural town which eventually became Ilocos Norte’s garlic center under the government’s One-Town-One-Product natonal program.
She came back to the Philippines in 2020 for a vacation, but was forced to stay for good because of the restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of her friends and relatives in Pinili describe Lourdes as “everyone’s mother/grandmother who had a soft and generous heart, one that gave freely, without expecting anything in return, to those in need. “
One close relative, speaking anonymously, told Manila Standard, “Whatever blessings she had, she always shared with family and friends. There was always something for everyone every time she sent home a balikbayan box from Alaska.”
Her granddaughter Kimmy, former correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and an independent contractor for a local BPO company, remembers her grandmother: “She genuinely loved and cared for her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
“Though thousands of miles away from most of them, she made sure to regularly write them letters, to give them a call, and to occasionally visit them when circumstances permitted. Even in her advanced age, she was still sharp and witty, able to crack jokes that would fill the house with laughter.
“She was the light that brightened the home, the warmth that made you feel that you’re not alone, the contagious joy that inspired everyone who knew her. “
Service details are being arranged.
