Keeping the fire burning
By Antonio Montalvan II
Inquirer

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HIGH SCHOOL REUNIONS SELDOM ATTRACTED me. Rather ho-hum activities to me. There were times when I chose to be elsewhere. Many such reunions are rather "symptoms of miseducation," Reviving the old rah-rah yells of yesteryears is one such symptom. In an old all-boys school, some high school reunions often include activities that are good only for the netherworld.

I am proud to say that my own high school class does not hold reunions of that kind. Predictability is our only problem. We meet on the same day each year, every Dec. 28 to be exact. I do not recall now how the date was chosen. All I know is it has nothing to do with the feast of the holy innocents.

But this year was extra special. My Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan high school class of 1975 had wanted our 30th year to signify the "spirit kept alive beyond 30." I got a surprise when our classmates decided that instead of having the usual lavish Christmas party, our class would hold a special lunch with special children.

Unknown to me, our class had started a project with an orphanage that's getting little public and civic attention because it is run by a government agency. The Reception and Study Center for Children is under the Department of Social Welfare and Development's Region 10 office.

The RSSC is not your typical, straitjacket orphanage. It is on the lookout specifically for children abandoned by parents, disabled children, and children orphaned by armed conflicts. Each of the 34 little wards at RSSC has a heartbreaking story to tell.

One was left in a garbage dump. Another was left in the mall by her mother. One was left in a church doorstep. Four little tykes have cerebral palsy. A few are autistic. Some are disabled. One little boy is blind. A little baby girl has microcephalus. The only thing they share in common is: their parents do not want them.

But the Christmas party my classmates came up with was not the usual one-shot activity highlighted by gift-giving and picture-taking that amount to nothing but PR hype. My classmates went a step farther. They have actually decided earlier last year that the class should adopt the center and help it meet its financial needs. Thus was born the project "Special Care for Special Children."

The class started by taking care of the monthly salary of a caregiver and nursing assistant. As of this writing, the equivalent of a year's salary for the two has been pledged.

My high school class is also supporting two college students. Four years ago, we organized the Fr. Antonio M. Cuna SJ Memorial Scholarship Foundation, in honor of a favorite Jesuit mentor. But this special children project is something else. This one just simply hit all of us in the gut in that reunion. And for the rest of that day, we were kept in a rather contemplative mood.

The project is the brainchild of two classmates: Ruben "Benjie" Paras, our outgoing class president, manages his family's engineering and construction firm. Serge Firmacion, the project's chairman, is busy with his purified water business. It was our incoming president Lourd Ostique who kept us all in touch by short messaging and e-mail. For many years, she was the curator of Museo de Oro. Rodolfo Waga Jr., author of a law book, UP law professor, and with First Philippine Holdings, updated our Manila group.

In our past projects, it was easy to turn to classmates who had the wherewithal. Invariably, the class would turn to Chito Santos, president of Philippine Phosphates. At other times, it would be Cito Lorenzo, former agriculture secretary. An American classmate, Henry Howard, was already supporting nine poor college students when our class started to adopt its own scholars. This time, Special Care appears to be everyone's concern.

"Society calls me a beggar, an eyesore, and a parasite. But what do you call a society that has reduced me to this state?"

A Brazilian cleric raised this question some years back. The Special Children project all brought us to the core problem of our society. The conversations at the reunion at times turned to the Gloria-Garci tapes. Many are not GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) fans, including myself. But GMA bashing is not the solution. Neither is it the opposition, many of whom were into cheating themselves and equally deserve to be booted out.

Things are going wrong because of a society that has no more place for God. The day we put God in the center of a society that thinks no more of God as it does with a choice in a cafeteria fastfood menu, that will be the day when children will no longer be abandoned by their parents.

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The third volume of Capitol University's MINDAyawan Journal of Culture and Society is out of the press. This volume's special issue on ethnicity has the essays and papers of Dr. Maragtas Amante of the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations, Dr. Fe Rosales Juarez, Dr. Margarita "Tingting" de los Reyes Cojuangco, Dr. Nagasura Madale, and Prof. Geldolin Inte. Single-issue subscriptions are minimally priced at P150.

Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph

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