Letizia Roxas Constantino, widow of the nationalist historian and journalist Renato Constantino, died on June 27 at the age of 96. A pianist and a writer, she published a series of pamphlets under the title “Issues Without Tears.” These pithy essays were meant to help schoolteachers explain to their students the crucial issues facing the country and the world today.
Throughout their long married life, Letizia was her husband’s intellectual collaborator. She polished his essays and coauthored “The Continuing Past,” the sequel to the Constantino history textbook “A Past Revisited.” After his death in 1999, she began writing an intimate memoir of her own childhood and youth, as a way, she said, of telling her story to her eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. She also recorded her favorite piano pieces, compiling these in several CDs, again for the appreciation mainly of her loved ones.
Letizia and Renato are survived by their children, Renato Jr. (RC) and his wife Dudi Balderrama, and Karina and her husband, Inquirer columnist Randy David. Letizia’s remains have been cremated. The urn bearing her ashes will be in her house on 38 Panay Avenue, Quezon City, during the wake until Friday evening.