Thank you, Ms Marquez

MARINA MARQUEZ
1935-2014

Marina Marquez dedicated her life to education, from the time she joined Assumption College in 1960 as an English teacher for Grades 3, 4 and 7.

I met her for the first time in 1968 when I was in Grade 4. She was my very strict but inspiring reading teacher, the first teacher to drive me to do my best.

I recall our last conversation when I had completed high school and was about to leave the San Lorenzo campus in Makati City.

“Ms Marquez!” I hollered. “I hear you are getting married!” I teased her.

“Really?” she replied bemused. “Keep your fingers crossed!” she laughed.

But she never married. Her dedication to education and to the Assumption was unparalleled.

She was appointed principal of the grade school department in 1974, the year when the grade school departments of both the Herran and San Lorenzo campuses were merged in Antipolo City.

She held the position for 10 years. The teachers remembered her as an approachable and friendly administrator, firm and fair. She knew all the students by their first names.

In 1986, Ms Marquez was appointed by then college president Sr. Luz Emmanuel as class adviser and English teacher in the college department in San Lorenzo. She was dean of student affairs from 1991 to 1994.

Although she officially retired in 1996, she continued to teach in college and served as college registrar from 2000 to 2003.

In June 2007, when I attended the canonization of Assumption founder Mother Marie Eugenie in Rome, I looked for her. I was informed she had advanced Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, she had strayed away from her home and was lost for a couple of days until her family finally located her.

I could not come to terms with the thought of the very intelligent Ms Marquez now helpless and no longer in control of her mental faculties. This was the teacher who helped cultivate in her students not only a love of reading and writing but also a general curiosity and interest to learn.

She exhorted us to learn five new words a day. She was the first teacher to instill in me the desire to excel. Under her guidance in Grade 4, I earned the first honor medal that led to other awards.

On Sept. 9, at a Mass for the eternal repose of her soul, as I sat and stared at her beautiful photograph next to her urn on the altar, I was filled with remorse that I was not able to thank her before she became ill.

I would have wanted to tell her that I went on to finish a graduate degree in law, having learned to read the requisite 300 pages of homework, at times overnight. That I learned to distill my written assignments to a mere 300 to 500 words when I did my master’s in public administration. That several of the articles and stories I had written in my creative writing classes were published. And that a family cookbook I coauthored won a National Book Award.

But, most of all, I wanted her to know that I, too, had decided to dedicate my life to education.

(The author, vice president for corporate affairs at Far Eastern University, belongs to the Assumption High School Class of 1975.)