BAGUIO CITY -- SPECIAL “888” weddings and a memorial for a man with an odd Olympic record welcomed Aug. 8, 2008, in the summer capital on Friday.
One of the oldest Baguio universities celebrated its 60th anniversary on Friday, recalling its founder who had been credited as the only Filipino to visit the most number of Olympic Games.
The late Fernando “Tatay” Bautista Sr. founded the University of Baguio in 1948, but Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr., his grandson, said he grew up hearing tales about the elder Bautista’s exploits in the Olympics since the 1960 Games in Rome.
Shortly before he died in 2002, Bautista said attending the Games had become an obsession and a personal obligation.
A thanksgiving Mass held in his honor, and which was attended by his children, made no mention of his Olympic connections.
But four UB mass communications students unveiled an audio-visual documentation of “Tatay,” highlighting his Olympic Games participation.
Sofia Degawen, UB mass communications division chair, said Cindy Paat, Marilyn Basali, Divina Dagwasi and Jayraida Ebi poured through archives and visited “Tatay’s” surviving childhood friends here and in Tondo, Manila, to draw up a fresh chronicle of the UB founder.
They cited a UB memoir of the late Bautista that refers to his trip to Barcelona during the 25th Olympics at the age of 84.
Bautista only missed the 1976 Games in Montreal because he heeded a Malacañang fiscal conservation campaign.
“At [the age of] 92, Tatay attended the Sydney Olympics, but he was initially denied a visa. Puffing himself up, he told the Australian Embassy officials, ‘I’m healthier than all of you.’ It turned out his health was the question [raised about his Sydney trip],” the mayor said.
Catholic Churches also hosted seven weddings on Friday, scheduled for Baguio couples, who believed that the date was magical.
The Baguio Cathedral hosted the weddings of the couples Soriano and Esteves; Gonzales and Molitas; and Pamatmat and Villar.
Other Catholic churches hosted the weddings of the couples Baguilat and Estigoy; Francisco and Robielos; and Abella and Cas.
Employees of the Baguio Catholic Parish House said they could have accommodated eight weddings had there been time because local church rules have discouraged servicing marriages after dusk.
“But the church does not condone folk tales about 888. We are simply providing what the couples wish,” the parish said in an official statement.
The officiating priest who wed Richard Gonzales and Beverly Molitas made no reference to the date either. But he talked about infinity, the mystical translation for the figureeight, when he preached about why Jesus multiplied loaves of bread to feed a hoard of people.
