Passages

July and the first half of August brought together classmates, batch mates, alumni, and teachers of UP Cebu High School in a series of wakes.  First , there was the sudden death of Salvador Malto  of Class ‘86, who suffered an aneurism ten days after the class’ 25th anniversary.  Then followed the demise of Dr. Ramon Solano, who was the school physician for a long time and whose five kids (Susie, Raymond, Joey, Hope, and Kim) were all students at UP High.  Then August started with the news of Prof. Carmen F. Bunagan’s passing away due to skin cancer.  Prof. Bunagan taught Literature and Geometry, a very rare combination, from 1977 to 1991 and she was one of our  best teachers.  She served as high school principal from 1984 to 1988.  She will  be remembered as a soft spoken lady who always called the attention of  male students to wear their shirts properly with her classic “…one more button, please!”  The day after Prof. Bunagan’s demise came news of the death of former UP Cebu Dean Socorro Villalobos in Manila  after a lingering illness.

Dean Villalobos made an impact in her administration of UP Cebu from 1990 to 1997.  She served as principal of the UP Integrated School in UP Diliman for a long time and was  uncompromising in the administration of the university’s policies.  After her term, she was requested by then UP Visayas  Chancellor Dr. Francisco Nemenzo to be the dean of UP Cebu. When she first arrived in UP Cebu, she managed to get to know everyone in the campus from the faculty to the staff both administrative and non-teaching, students, and even the alumni.  She delegated her administrative functions by defining the role of the associate dean who would take charge of academic matters while the dean concentrates on administrative matters.  It was also during her administrative stint that the practice of having visiting or exchange professors from UP Diliman was started.  She had a motherly approach when dealing with students but she could also be firm when it came  to rules and policies.  On top of being a good administrator,  she was  popularly known as a very good Math teacher who influenced many of her students to pursue and excel in Math-related careers. Some of these students went on to occupy   high positions in government and private corporations both national and international.  She was not a Ph. D. holder (an issue which her detractors raised  but failed to mar her administration) but she wrote several books on Mathematics which have been used as textbooks and references.  She used her connections with the government and private agencies to help develop the college.  She understood the sentiment, the behavior and the way of doing things of  constituents of UP Cebu and made the Diliman campus know the real UP Cebu.  Thank you, Dean Villalobos.

Though I have opted for early retirement, I still go to the UP Cebu campus three times a week to manage the UP Press Bookstore Cebu branch which is located in Rm. 141 in the Arts and Sciences Building,   specifically in the ground floor at the lobby beside the guard counter.  Established in February 2007 with a Memo of Agreement between the UP Alumni Association Cebu Foundation Inc. and UP Cebu College, the bookstore serves as an outlet of the UP Press in Diliman and is the only outlet outside Manila.  It was  dormant for two years when I went on sabbatical leave in 2009-2010 and when I went on sick leave for one semester and eventually retired in the second semester of 2010-2011.

The foundation  has not given it up and I volunteered to continue its supervision since no one was  interested in  the job.  The bookstore is  not so big but it is cozy after it was  tiled, repainted and refurbished.  It also provides other services for students and teachers like photocopying.  The alumni association intends to make the bookstore an outlet of books about Cebu considering that Cebu is a tourist destination.  Business hours of the bookstore are Monday-Wednesday-Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.   For inquiries, contact 0917-3295201 or email [email protected], or call Social Science Division tel no. 233-4708.

If you have books on Cebu for distribution or know anybody who has reading materials on Cebu, we would appreciate it if you contact us.