‘Run for road safety’ held by Estella’s friends along ‘killer highway’

FRIENDS and family of the late journalist and professor Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan marked the 40th day of her death by holding a run on the same highway where her life was cut short.

Estella was killed on the evening of May 13 when a speeding bus rammed into the taxi she was riding on along Commonwealth Avenue. She was on her way to meet with friends at the UP-Ayala Land Technohub.

On Tuesday morning, the small group of University of the Philippines students, faculty and kin was led by her husband, Roland, and activist priest Fr. Robert Reyes.

As they made their way from the UP College of Mass Communications building, to the University Avenue, and to the site of the accident along Commonwealth Avenue, the group carried a tarpaulin banner emblazoned with Estella’s photo.

As the banner announced, the procession was meant to highlight appeals to obtain justice for her death, and to urge the public to observe road safety.

“We’ve been together for the past 30 years. Now I’m trying to cope by the day. But it helps when I see so many people miss her. I hope something meaningful will come out of this unfortunate accident,” Roland said.

Resting place

Meanwhile, Estella-Simbulan was finally brought to her resting place, her urn in the company of renowned Filipino patriots, three letters from those closest to her and a necklace.

Amid soft sobs and muted murmurs inside the San Agustin Church’s crypt in Intramuros, Roland quietly placed her urn into the niche along with a letter he had written her and his necklace which they bought during a vacation in Puerto Galera in 2004.

Her favorite niece, Helene and nephew Gino, also left behind their own letters, minutes after their uncle finished carrying out his farewell rituals, including reading to the guests the letter he wrote, which was published in the Inquirer.

Roland told relatives, friends, colleagues and students who have come to bid her a final goodbye, that his wife, Chit, loved writing long letters.

“She has been a writer of letters. In fact, whenever she was, she used to write very long letters to me and to our relatives,” said Roland a few moments before the crypt was sealed with a granite tombstone.

The marker, which bore her photo, described Estella-Simbulan as “a journalist, editor, teacher, committed to the truth and to the empowerment of the oppressed.”

Hers was just a couple of niches away from Juan Luna’s, a prominent Filipino painter, sculptor and a political activist of the Philippine Revolution.

Elsewhere was the final resting place of Filipino statesman, poet and novelist Pedro Paterno.

In an interview with reporters following the burial rites Tuesday, Roland said his wife had told him she wanted to be interred at the San Agustin Columbary, then called “De Profundis Hall,” when they went for a visit last December.

The columbary was where the friars used to recite the psalm for their fellow brothers and benefactors of the community as they left the refectory.

“We were already searching for a place where we can be laid to rest [and] she loved it here,” Roland disclosed.  “This is a very old and historic place,” he said when asked why the columbary appealed to her wife.

But during their visit six months ago, there were only available slots at the crypt’s annex.  It just happened that relatives of the previous occupant of her wife’s niche marked No. 60 had migrated and donated it back to the church, said Roland.