CLEMENTE and Albin Maltini Laoyan. PHOTO REPRODUCTION COURTESTY OF LAOYAN FAMILY
BENGUET – To this generation of Filipinos, Clemente Laoyan I and his wife, Esposa Albin Maltini, would be perceived as an obscure Ibaloy couple.
To the Benguet State University (BSU) in La Trinidad town in Benguet province, however, the couple was the very reason this mainly agriculture school now exists.
During BSU’s 98th Foundation Day celebration on June 25, the university honored Laoyan and his family with a posthumous award for donating in 1903 some 50 hectares of their pasture land and ranch so these could serve as the town’s first experimental farming school area. Laoyan served as the first “presidente” of La Trinidad at the time.
“My great great grandfather did that on the condition that young people would be educated in an agriculture school, and we are glad that that was how it turned out to be,” said Ursula Daoey, one of Laoyan’s descendants.
James Wright, an education superintendent of the American colonial government, had asked the Laoyan patriarch to allow the government to build a school in the donated lot, said Elizabeth Pucay-Bagcal, 87, Laoyan’s oldest living grandchild.
Speaking at the awarding ceremony, Bagcal said her grandfather’s dream of providing education for young people in their community is now serving thousands of students from various parts of the Cordillera region.
“[My grandparents] must be smiling from above,” she said.
The heirs accepted two trophies on behalf of the Laoyan couple, who were honored for their pioneering support and assistance in the development of BSU’s beginnings as a farm school until it became a university.
BSU president Ben Ladilad said the farm school took many names as it grew. It started as the La Trinidad Farm School (LTFS), then renamed the Trinidad Farm School (TAS), the Mountain National Agricultural College (MNAC), the Mountain Agricultural College (MAC) and the Mountain State Agricultural College (MSAC) until it was granted university status, he said.
The annals of Laoyan and his descendants were compiled like a memorial or a family album in a 2002 coffee table book “Clemente Laoyan I, His Life, His Family,” which described the clan patriarch as a “strong personality and the sole authority in the Laoyan home.”
Laoyan was born in 1870 during the Spanish colonial period in Pico, La Trinidad. His father was Balbalang from Bahong, La Trinidad, and his mother was Calpia from Guisad village in neighboring Baguio City.
“Following the wishes of his parents, youthful Clemente at 16 married Albin Maltini at 14 from Tabangaoen, where the farm school buildings now stand,” according to the book.
The couple had 20 children.
“Of Albin’s 20 pregnancies, seven were miscarriages while one was a set of twins who, however, had to be separated as was the preferred custom then,” the book said.
The book said Laoyan had a penchant for cleanliness and each of his children was handed a particular task at home, in the fields, or out in the pasture land.
“Nonetheless, behind this stern facade was a generous and caring soul,” it said. “Because of his love for education and his awareness of its value, Clemente Laoyan I was most charitable in apportioning sizable parts of his properties as sites for schools and churches. He wanted to ensure that his children and relatives would have the opportunity of education—be it in the secular academic world or in Christian faith.”
Laoyan died on Nov. 5, 1947 at the age of 77. His wife died in 1924.