Aida Rivera-Ford, Davao writer, educator; 99

DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Aida Rivera-Ford, an educator, literary artist, fictionist, playwright and Datu Bago awardee, passed away on Sunday at the age of 99.

Rivera-Ford, born in Jolo, Sulu, on Jan. 22, 1926, founded the Ford Academy of the Arts, the first Fine Arts school in Mindanao. She graduated cum laude from Silliman University with a degree in Bachelor of Arts, major in English.

She was also the cofounder and first editor of Sands and Coral, the literary publication and magazine of Silliman University. Asia’s oldest literary journal and considered a trailblazer in Philippine literature.

Rivera-Ford received numerous awards and recognitions in the field of literature, including the Philippine Government Parangal for Writers of the Post War Years; Gawad CCP awardee for Essay in English in 1991; Outstanding Sillimanian Award for Literature and Creative Writing in 1993.

Author

She was also a national fellow for fiction by the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center, also in 1993. She was conferred with the Datu Bago award for Culture and the Arts in 1982 and was a recipient of the Fr. Theodore Daigler Award for Mindanao Culture and Arts of the Ateneo de Davao University.

Rivera-Ford has also published various books, including essay and short story collections namely: “Now and at the Hour and Other Stories” in 1958 and “Born in the Year 1900 and Other Stories (1997),” including plays of “Heroes in Love: Four Plays” in 2012.

“Oyanguren: The Forgotten Founder of Davao” was her last book, written and published in 2010.

She was one of the few Filipinos included in the Asia-Pacific Who’s Who Volume 4 and also included in the 2000 Intellectuals of the 20th Century published by the Cambridge Biographical Centre.

Rivera-Ford also contributed stories for the Inquirer and Inquirer Mindanao. /cb