Tiffany is his only vice
TODAY’s reluctant hero and even more reluctant heartthrob is “sooo” straight his only sister Alia pouted: “My brother is soo boring.” His mother, the former Alice Ballesteros cannot recall any time when her first born, Gregorio II (after his paternal grandfather) played truant. “He was so quiet,” she says.
If there was any hint that someday, Gregorio Honasan II, plain Greg at home, would play a crucial role as The Gringo in the dramatic overthrow of the 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos, his mother says now: “Gregorio has always been someone you can depend on. He even used to babysit his sister while my husband and I went out for dinner.”
The man Gringo was born on March 14, 1948 (he turned 38 last Friday) in Baguio City, the first in a row of five boys and one girl to the late Col. Romeo Honasan and Alice Ballesteros, both of Bulan, Sorsogon. Home for the Honasans was the Philippine Military Academy. “My husband was the tactical officer and he brought me there right after we got married.” Little Greg’s feeding timed with the cadets’ drop-and-roll exercises, marches and fancy drills.
The Honasans moved on wherever Romeo’s assignment would take him. When Greg was three or four, his father was named commander of the Presidential Guards Battalion which was tasked to secure then president Ramon Magsaysay and his family. Home was an unfinished one-story bungalow at the Malacanang Park, while Greg went to San Beda for kindergarten.
Mother Alice recalls one incident. “We had a boy who was assigned to fetch Greg from school. That day, this boy went some place and Greg got tired waiting, he went home to Malacanang all alone.”
At six years old, the Honasans flew to Taipeh where Romeo was posted as military attache. Back in the homefront, the Honasans went to Laguna, then Albay where Greg became so attached to a priest he wanted to become one himself.
“I never knew he wanted to become a priest until last night,” his mother Alice says after she overheard Greg saying so during an interview by another reporter.
Military drills were routine among the Honasan boys. “Study hours were playful, but at the same time strict and rigid. Each of the boys had a study table where they kept their things. There was curfew. We even had war exercises. My husband would put off all the lights and the boys were instructed to familiarize their way around.” She did not participate in these. She was, and always will be, the Honasan boys’ “mess officer”.
Greg did not reap honors in school. “He was always in the top ten, though, but not extraordinarily bright.” When Greg was in high school at Don Bosco, Romeo told Alice he wanted one of his sons to join the military. Romeo belonged to PMA Class ‘43.
“My husband couldn’t wait for the younger boys. It was natural that Greg would be his choice. It must have been the military man’s ego, they always want someone among their sons to follow their footsteps.”
But Greg was not inclined to the military. Instead, from Don Bosco, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines for an engineering degree with his father thinking all along his son was only biding his time until the results of the PMA entrance exam was released. Greg deliberately missed the test.
“Greg’s father was in a hurry. He told me ‘I have to knock some sense into my son’s head.’ Father and son went out for a ride one day and by the time they got back, Greg said he will take the exams.” Col. Romeo Honasan’s first born topped the PMA entrance exams that year.
Greg’s father was elated, Alice was not. “I drove to Baguio almost every weekend, bringing food for his classmates. I was worried. Greg would hug me, and I could see he was unhappy.” Alice would be crying herself, but as a rule, “never in front of my son”.
Greg and Romeo had a deal. Alice says: “My husband told him to stay at the academy for only one year. After that, Greg can decide whether to continue.” When Greg finished his first year, the couple reminded him of the deal. Greg’s reply, as told by his mother: “Over my dead body.” He was home in the academy.
Cadet Honasan was the president in his class organization for four straight years. He was also a member of the debating council, skin-diving club, silent drill platoon, boxing corps squad, wrestling corps squad, gymnastics corps club. He won best debater in 1969-70, and 1970-71 in the inter-company debates. But he had not quite forgotten the priesthood. In his second year, Greg was the secretary of the acolyte club.
Written in the PMA annual, The Sword, 1971, the year he graduated: “Gringo — comfortably warm and constantly dynamic; enough determination and perserverance in achieving his goals, coupled with characteristic humility and compassion for the less fortunate have tempered all his actuations this far. These traits which have endeared him to both his equals and subordinates, will remain hallmarks of every endeavor he undertakes.”
Greg graduated from the PMA as Baron or First Captain, meaning the regimental commander. He also had the highest rating in leadership.
That year, he also volunteered his only sister to be their “company muse”. Petted at home as “Baba”, Alia was only’ seven.
“My husband used to tease me about how proud I was on Greg’s graduation. He said, why are you fanning yourself, is Baguio that hot? Actually, he was the one who was beside himself with happiness but he passed it on me. Of course, I was very proud of Greg. I did not have a hard time looking for him through the rows of cadets because he was in front.”
By graduation time, Greg was already known as Gringo. How he got this name comes in several versions. This one is by his sister,
Baba: “He is like Clint Eastwood, in that film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He just sits there, and bang!” Gringo’s version: “My upperclassmen found me cute they named me after that character in an Italian spaghetti comics.” Alice Honasan thinks Gringo sounds like Gregorio.
Second Lieutenant Greg was assigned to Jolo and Alice was frantic. The Moro National Liberation Front was waging its secessionist war and horror stories were going around how fierce the fighting was in Mindanao. “I told Greg I’ll talk to some top brass for his reassignment. Greg was mad. He told me, Mama, if you will do that, I’ll never talk to you again,” Alice did not.
“Greg was very much like his father. Once, I was already in labor pain and he left me saying, Mama, this doesn’t mean I love you less, but you are only one and I have a thousand men out there to attend to. Greg, I have no doubt, is like my husband.”
The first family tragedy struck the Honasans in 1976 with the brutal death at 19 of their youngest son Mel. He was a student at San Sebastian College when he joined a fraternity. Mel died from injuries suffered during his initiation rites into the fraternity, his frail body pulped by 17 men driven to test his will. Mel’s four brothers were so affected, their quick reaction was revenge. “Minister Enrile had Gringo disarmed,” recalls Alice. A defense reporter remembers otherwise: “Gringo took it in stride and with compassion. He told us then that his brother knew what he was doing. He was not betrayed.”
As a wife of a top military man Alice recalls she never got special treatment. She would find out that being mother to another military man would not merit her any privileges.
“Greg and I were together once and we entered a camp. He was in civilian clothes. The camp guards stopped us to inquire where we were going. But this Greg never told this guard he was Captain Honasan. Instead, like an ordinary civilian, he sat there explaining. When I asked him, why don’t you introduce yourself as an officer? And he look at me, ‘Oh, Ma’.”
They had one “big” fight, though. One day, Greg brought home a snake. “Imagine having a snake for a pet? I was mad. If there’s any animal I hate most, it’s a snake. I told Greg I’m going to kill it and I was serious.” Greg took out the python named Tiffany.
Greg doesn’t smoke or drink. “His only vices are skydiving, motorcycling, guns, karate and that python,” so says his only sister. Except for Alice, everybody in the Honasan household, skyjump, thanks to Gringo’s tutelage and training.
The Honasans were in Indonesia when word about Greg wounded in Mindanao reached them. Alice rushed home.
Greg’s girlfriend who was then working in Canada also rushed home. “You know this Greg, he ordered two graduation rings, one for me and one for his future wife,” says Alice. Greg’s wife, Jane Umali, is a med-tech from Laguna.
It was from Greg’s wife that Alice first noted something wrong that Saturday afternoon of Feb. 22. She was about to leave when Greg’s wife and three children arrived. Greg had built his home at the back of the Honasan compound in Quezon City, but since some years back, moved his family to Aguinaldo. “She asked me to stay with her, and so I did.” By night, friends had joined them. Ferdinand Marcos was on TV. “I almost died when Marcos said “Enrile and Ramos are not as guilty as Honasan”.
“I looked at Greg’s sons (ages 11, 9, 5). They were sleeping, they didn’t even know what was happening. I had this thought his sons may wake up fatherless.” Greg’s wife cried, and Alice scolded her. “Never ever cry for your husband. He is a soldier. I never cried when Greg’s father went on operations.” She gave her a lecture on how a military man’s wife must behave.
For security reasons, the Honasan mother, sister, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren moved out to another house that night. (Also for security reasons, we are not publishing pictures of the Honasan family).
“I am really proud of what he did, but in my heart, I didn’t want him to do it. But Greg thinks he did the right thing. It was needed at that moment and he succeeded,” Alice says. Alice did vote for Cory Aquino in the last election.
Alice’s only regret is that her husband Romeo never lived to see the day of the “changing of the guards”.
“If he were alive, he’d be the first to offer his services to Minister Enrile and General Ramos.” Col. Honasan died in 1983.
The late colonel, says his wife, died without seeing the AFP restored to its rightful place as esteemed institution of our society. “He and Greg spent hours in close discussions, know it was something about the Armed Forces. My husband cared deeply for the profession. He was unhappy with the corruption, going on. He was also Greg’s best friend, adviser, confidante.”
Greg’s father has been described by a contemporary as “a man who was very serious about soldiering. On the job he was all for service to people and country. He could have been a bore the way he was so upright about his job but he was one of the most humorous men I have ever known.”
Greg could only have inherited his quick wit and easy humor from his father.
“But definitely, he isn’t as good looking as his father,” said another associate of the late Col. Honasan. “Every woman who ever met him had a crush on him. But he never looked at another woman. It was always Alice for him. There was never anyone else.”
Col. Romeo Honasan’s death, Alice thought, crippled Greg. “Greg turned to his father’s friends for guidance but I knew no one can take his father’s place.”
