My pre-Christmas week started Wednesday last week, the 18th, when I attended a quiet but significant gathering at Ayala Center to launch Erlinda Kintanar-Alburo’s book on the life and works of the late radioman and writer Greg M. Mercado, in “Romancing with Words.” As an invited guest speaker, I was able to pre-read the book.
Greg started as a freelance scriptwriter in English for Cebu’s premier post World War II radio station, kzRC, later dyRC, from 1947, when I, as the station’s first woman radio broadcaster (“announcer” as we were then called) anchored and produced his radio dramas. I was amazed at his way with words and characterizations, as in his “Home is Where the Heart Is” and “There’s No Place Like Home,” among many others. By 1972, when the station was briefly shut down with the imposition of martial law in the country, Greg was already program director of the station.
When I read “Romancing with Words”, I realized how little I knew of his life outside of his writing. I was to know more about him from his wife Saturnina “Nina” Regner Mercado, a registered nurse whom I consulted about my then ailing father, and his son Roberto, whom I met on one of my trips to the States and who later became a friend, our mutual interest being in his writer-father. And even more so in Erlinda’s “Romancing with Words” about his life, writings, and patriotic activities and involvements in his brief life of 48 years.
These I mentioned, among others, in my talk during the book launching at Cebu’s Ayala Center. I hope you get to know more of what “Romancing with Words” reveals of an outstanding, laid-back, friend and colleague I was privileged to know and work with.
The launching program included opening remarks by Cebu Daily News fellow columnist Jobers Bersales and a presentation by author Erlinda Alburo. Readings from Mercado’s short stories “The Awakening” and “Rajah Tupas” as well as his fiction and essays were given by columnists of the Cebu Daily News and The Freeman, and his essays by Consular Agent in Cebu John Domingo. The response was delivered by Mercado’s son Greg Diaz. I told him he was a spitting image of his grandfather.
The launching program was emceed by Marlinda Angbetic Tan, The Freeman lifestyle editor, and CDN’s lifestyle editor-at-large Jude Bacalso, whom I finally met personally, and whom I complimented on his interesting features.
More memories of another longtime colleague in radio station dyRC came to mind when I met Tita Orcullo Villlareal in church after Mass who reminded me of her late husand Emilio “Mil” Villareal, whose birthday was last Saturday, the 21st. Pianist and composer Mil was our dyRC musical director until the station’s brief shutdown when martial law was declared in 1972. God rest the souls of Emilio Villareal, Greg Mercado, and Roberto Mercado, Greg’s son, who passed away only shortly before the launching of Greg’s “Romancing with Words” Wednesday last week, as well as former neighbor, Rafael ”Ralph” Ferreros, who also passed away last October.
Speaking of Ralph, his son Joel and wife Grace invited me to their Christmas party last Tuesday, Christmas Eve, at their beautiful new hillside home in Busay. Last year, they had also invited me to their Christmas party here in Banawa, next to my place before their gracious old Ferreros house and lot next door was eventually sold to a new owner. Their new house is on a spacious hillside lot with a beautiful view of the night-lit city below, and their neighbors’ house lights farther up the hill on the other side
They have been just about a month settling down in the new house, so packed boxes are still piled up awaiting placement, including beautiful paintings not yet put up, as well as other gracious old heirloom mahogany furniture and decorative pieces. But already the place has the gracious air of the old residence here in Banawa.
A dozen of us were seated at two beautifully set and decorated tables on the second of three floors of the house with a view of the open kitchen set off by a low railing at one end, and the door of a private room at the other end. Ralph would have occupied that room with son Junjo but he passed away before they moved in, so Junjo occupies it alone. Around the table were the Ferreroses, Joel, Grace and their son Pepeton; Tina busily active working bachelor girl; Jerry, his wife and their children, as well as one of two Ferreros brothers living and working out of the country. Another Ferreros sister and her family residing in Manila could not make it due to some earlier commitments.
Food was traditional Filipino Christmas fare, including ham, embotido and fruit salad, among others, with red wine and pomegranate juice on the side. Conversation was quietly warm and family friendly, including Joel and Jerry’s remembered buddying around with my sons, now already settled out of the country themselves.
And now, this Bystander turns to Pope Francis’ Christmas message as most timely this season when, towards the tail end of a disturbingly tumultuous and disastrous year, we turn in grateful tension-releasing celebration, which he characterizes as: “Christmas celebrations (are) often full of sound. It would be good for us to make room for silence, to hear the voice of Love,” as on that Christmas morn a couple of centuries ago. And that “This Christmas, may we be consistent in living the Gospel, welcoming Jesus into the center of our lives.” Our pre-Christmas “Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem. May we let ourselves be drawn by the light of God made man.”
And for now, until next year, January 2014, may God grant a blessed and especially fruitful New Year to us, one and all!