Grace Poe goes back to her ‘roots’
ILOILO CITY, Philippines—Could the biological mother of Sen. Grace Poe, a possible presidential contender, be a former student of a Church-run school in Iloilo?
Sofia Mijares, a former helper in the Poe household, said Senator Poe’s vaunted biological father, Edgardo Militar, had told her “the woman was a student of De Paul College,” a Catholic school run by the Congregation of the Mission that closed down in 2010 due to financial problems.
The college was located a few hundred meters from Jaro Cathedral in Iloilo City, where a newly born Poe was reportedly abandoned in the baptismal font where Militar was said to have found her in 1968.
The identity of Poe’s biological parents has drawn attention to the senator’s citizenship and eligibility to run for the presidency after questions were initially raised about her residency in the Philippines by a rival political camp,
Mijares, 81, who worked for the Poe household in Manila, said the now deceased Militar had told her he was Poe’s father.
“We were friends (who) placed bets on the (numbers game) ‘Daily Double,’” said the helper who relayed the information to the senator when they met at Days Hotel in Iloilo City on Friday morning.
Poe told reporters that two people had already confirmed that Militar, who signed her foundling certificate, was her biological father, though accounts regarding her lineage were conflicting.
The senator cited the account of her former nanny Sayong Militar, Edgardo’s sister-in-law, who said that Militar signed the certificate only because he was helping them process the document.
DNA test
Poe said being abandoned as a baby was something she had learned to accept, but that she still wanted to know the identity of her real parents, and was in fact mulling an offer by Militar’s children to submit themselves to a DNA test to help determine if they have the same father.
The senator said her efforts to confirm the identity of her biological parents were part of the fight for the equal rights and opportunities of foundlings like her.
“I will not back off from a challenge because I have nothing to fear. I don’t have control over my life if I was born in that situation,” Poe said. “It’s more difficult if the issue is about character, which means you have done something wrong in government,” she added.
Poe, who visited Jaro Cathedral in a brief stopover and spoke to the parish priest, described the visit as being “emotional” for her.
“It’s going back to your roots and I’d say it’s the closest to my roots that I’d ever come,” she told reporters.
According to several sources in this city, Poe was adopted not just once, but thrice.
One source claimed that when Sayong Militar found Poe in a church in Iloilo in 1968, she realized she could not keep the baby, and gave her to landowner Tessie Ledesma Valencia in Silay City, Negros Occidental province.
Enamored with baby
Valencia, who was unmarried, decided to give Grace to movie star couple Susan Roces and Fernando Poe Jr. who instantly found themselves enamored with the baby.
The story was confirmed by Gerry Ledesma, the president of the Philippine Reef and Rainforest Conservation Foundation Inc., who described Militar as his nanny, and Valencia as his aunt.
Militar, he said, would have wanted to keep the foundling, but she already had five children of her own, who grew up to be successful and now live in the United States and Canada.
Militar decided to pass on the baby to Valencia, who owned sugarcane farmlands in Silay and was a close friend of Susan Roces, a member of the Locsin clan in Negros Occidental.
Roces was born Jesusa Purificacion Sonora in Bacolod City on July 28, 1941, to Dr. Jesus Tonggoy Sonora and his wife, Purificacion Levy, and studied at La Consolacion College in Bacolod.
Roces, in an interview with the Inquirer during the 2013 Senate campaign of her daughter, said Valencia used to bring Poe whenever she visited, and told her that she could not adopt the baby because she was single.
Just married
Would she be interested in adopting the girl instead, Valencia reportedly asked Roces.
Roces said she did not readily embrace the idea, as she and actor Fernando Poe Jr. had just gotten married. The couple wed on Dec. 25, 1968, at the Santuario de San Jose in Greenhills, Mandaluyong City.
But her husband fell in love with the infant, Roces said.
“Grace took her first steps in my husband’s company and her first word was papa,” the actress recalled.
“It was God’s will that she came into our lives; she adored her father like anything,” Roces said. “Grace was God’s gift to us,” she added.
Ledesma said Valencia, “Tita Tessie” to the young Grace Poe, passed away about five years ago.
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