Marcos’ aide hangs on to familiar umbrella

STA. CRUZ, Ilocos Sur—The “umbrella man” of the Marcoses still has the umbrella in his house in San Juan town. And it is the umbrella he just might bring to his grave.

“It was heavy, really heavy,” says former San Juan Mayor Benjamin Sarmiento of the precious umbrella that shielded either the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos or his wife, Imelda, from the heat or rain.

Sarmiento, now 62, had used ordinary umbrellas in his task as one of the former close-in aides of the Marcoses, but on important moments, he had been seen holding this particular huge umbrella.

“I had it made to order,” he says. “Even President Marcos didn’t know it that that umbrella can kill an elephant.”

He says Marcos was unaware that he had this umbrella fitted with a 30-mm gun.

“It is a powerful gun, but it’s more meant to startle the [attacker] so I can whisk the Marcoses away to safety,” he says.

Extremely loyal to the Marcoses, Sarmiento was with the family even before Marcos rose to power.

Because of poverty, the young Sarmiento went to Metro Manila and got a job as a plumber assistant with the National Waterworks and Sewerage Authority.

He says he was part of a team who checked on a leak in the plumbing system in Marcos’ house in San Juan in Metro Manila.

“A leak was found in the house of then Representative Marcos … I talked to people [in the household staff]. A janitor there was making P8 while I was making only P6,” he says.

“I applied as a helper and was accepted immediately because, maybe, I am an Ilocano,” he says.

He had been with the family since, rising to become a valet and, finally, the “umbrella man.”

He doesn’t mind that the moniker stuck, even while he served three terms as mayor of San Juan.

Sarmiento says the life of a Marcos bodyguard was dangerous then. “There were seven [assassination] attempts against President Marcos after he declared martial law [in 1972],” he says.