Husband remembers journalist killed in car crash

MANILA, Philippines — His voice tender and affectionate, University of the Philippines Prof. Roland Simbulan had a rapt audience who listened to how he and “ma’am Chit” met more than three decades ago.

Theirs was not “love at first sight” but the U.P. professor, in a tender and steady voice, recalled how he and Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan became inseparable after being seatmates in class.

“How could you not fall in love with such a woman?” he constantly asked the audience, mostly faculty at the U.P. College of Mass Communication, and the young faces of students his wife mentored.

Students and U.P. faculty paid tribute to the veteran journalist and professor on Monday night at the Arlington Memorial Chapels, three days after Estella-Simbulan died in a car crash on Friday.

Her remains were cremated Tuesday morning and the urn containing her ashes will be brought to the CMC auditorium Wednesday morning for a final, “open-mike” tribute.

On Monday night, the students – some still in school, some already holding jobs – came in droves to remember the 53-year-old professor they all called “Ma’am Chit” or “Ma’am Simbulan” during her stint at U.P.

Professor Simbulan recalled that he met Chit through the Philippine Collegian, the official newspaper of students of the UP.

Sparks did not fly when they first met, Simbulan said.

“We didn’t pay much attention to each other. It was when we ended up in the same class the following sem that we came to know each other,” he said, drawing sighs from the audience.

Sitting together at the back of their Modern Political Theory class in 1976, Roland recalled: “From the first day that we sat together, we have never parted.”

Simbulan remembered his wife as a very gentle, soft-spoken and unassuming. Yet the woman who became a professor of journalism always had an “inner strength.”

“Her compassion for the victim is almost a natural compassion,” he said, adding that Estella-Simbulan had a strong sense of ethics in her work.

Estella-Simbulan had carried over this sense of ethics and professionalism to her classes, as teary-eyed students remembered how she gently pointed out errors and gave encouragement to those in need.

“She’d gently point out the things I did wrong and prodded me with the right words at the right time… Thank you ma’am. It makes me sad that the next batch of students will not have a Chit Simbulan,” said Pau Pamatmat, a 2010 graduate.

Pamatmat even “submitted” a feature story two years long overdue to her professor, saying through her tears, “I owe you this paper, I know I seldom pass my papers on time.”

Other UP graduates called on the missing bus driver, Daniel Espinosa, to give himself up and face the charges lodged against him.

“I’m praying, like everyone else whose life she’s touched, that the bus driver finally surface and face the consequences.  We hope her demise will become a catalyst for more reforms in traffic law enforcement and perhaps heavier penalties for violators,” said Mark Meruenas, one of the students advised by Estella-Simbulan on their theses.

Erika Gallego, a CMC graduate and now a law student, called on Malacañang and the Metro Manila Development Authority to give priority to traffic rules and regulations.

“It seems that until her death, ma’am Chit still managed to forward a cause long overdue,” she said.

Other professors, like Prof. Crysta Rara, remembered Estella-Simbulan as a peacemaker who always tried to be diplomatic and yet maintained her independent mind.

Rara was one of the late journalist’s close friends at the UP College of Mass Communications Journalism Department, and together, the two would eat lunch together or go for walks at the Academic Oval.

Rara recalled how she tried to convince Estella-Simbulan to go vegetarian, but the latter declined. “Nobody could dictate her,” she said.

Another faculty member, Dr. Georgina Encanto, said her “next-door neighbor” in the department was feisty, full of life and dedicated to teaching.

“She was always submitting her grades on time, she was very dutiful in her teaching. Once she had commented upon seeing the pile of students’ papers, ‘I really should lessen the writing assignments,’” Encanto said.

Recently, Encanto invited Estella-Simbulan to join her in a rally against a controversial TV host. But her colleague declined with this text message: “No Georgie, I’m still checking papers!”

Even as she juggled the role of mentor, journalist and wife, her husband said Estella-Simbulan was a very reliable and dependable spouse whom he had been with for nearly 30 years.

“I still don’t know how I will get used to not seeing her after 30 years of being together. I will really miss her. How could you not love this woman?” Roland asked one last time.