The gathering, of course, was not planned at all. We all notified each other and arrived in front of the Florentina Hotel of Dumaguete within five minutes of everyone.
In the company were Nonoy del Prado the hotel owner, Edo and Annabelle Adriano, Jose Manuel “Dong” Villegas, Alexander Bautista Bayot France, and myself. I had met Alex France a full 48 hours ago, Dong not at all, Annabelle and Edo last year via text by a mutual friend Krip Yuson, and Nonoy, the kind of person you thought you met before but not quite sure. Alex had never met any of them.
Alex, a Filipino martial arts master and teacher had moved to nearby Sibulan three years ago. A Caviteno by origin, he had lived in the States almost all his life and had come to retire with no apparent link to the area.
I came to see about an appointment in Silliman University for the next month, January. I, too, am a student and advocate of the Filipino martial arts.
Come to find out, Nonoy had taken some form of martial arts in his youth, was very interested in taking it up again, along with his son Ramon, who had taken the “stick” fighting arts before but stopped because of Dengue fever, and had been looking for a way to get back into it. Right then and there, Father and son verbally enrolled themselves in a private class with Alex.
I told the group of how about 15 to 20 years ago, I missed a bid on a certain invaluable family item on e-Bay, a then new bidding auction online, because of my incompetence with computers. And I paid a heavy price that only I bore for that shortcoming ever since.
It never really left my mind. The item was a Filipino flag dated 1899 with the words “Penaranda” handwritten on it, an obvious item identifier by whoever retrieved the flag.
My heart jumped. My grandfather Florentino Penaranda (also my father’s name and my middle name) had fought the U.S. fiercely for Philippine Independence at the turn of the 20th century, and was arguably the last officer of Aguinaldo’s Regular Army to surrender, a year and a half after Aguinaldo himself, after Lukban, after Mojica, and after Malvar.
But alas, not knowing how to bid on e-Bay, I could not procure his flag, a symbol of his legacy. I, however, wrote the seller and e-Bay people to tell whoever had bought the flag that I am the grandson of Penaranda, and that my family would be forever grateful if the buyer would contact me. But I had no response.
As mentioned, I am a student and advocate of the Filipino martial arts. I am also an educator in the U.S.
When one of my fellow educators found out about my going to Dumaguete, he suggested that I contact his friend Alexander Bautista Bayot France. The name rang a bell.
The previous year that I was in Dumaguete when I met Edo and Annabelle, I had walked along the Boulevard one Sunday morning, and while I was eating at the Bethel Hotel for some Filipino food, I spied a group of stick-fighters practicing by the tall trees along the Boulevard. I approached them and the instructor talked to me. He said that his name was Leonardo de la Luna, and that he knew one Alexander Bautista Bayot France; and misunderstanding Leonardo, I thought he said that Alexander was in France. He gave me his card.
When Alex picked me up from the Dumaguete airport, and we were having a late lunch, he said he knew Leonardo quite well, and that he also wanted to talk about another topic.
It was then that he broached a question to me that caught me off-guard. “What do you know about the Penaranda family?” he asked. I said I knew about our private family history, and my Lolo’s role in the fight for independence.
I thought he was interested in a business proposal of some sort. He said, “I know about your Lolo.” How? “I believe I have your grandfather’s flag. I was the one who outbid everybody to get his flag on e-Bay”.
I was floored. A mountain was lifted off my long-burdened heart. “I put all my months’ salary (without telling my wife, of course) to make sure that I outbid all those white war memorabilia collectors,” he said.
He also said that serendipity had it so that a long time friend who owed him a long time debt of a thousand dollars had, out of the blue, paid him within a week of this purchase.
I said that one of my missions here is to put up a plaque in typhoon ravaged Baybay Municipal Building where my Lolo brought his people to surrender, June 19, the day after his 25th birthday, and made his final and gallant speech as the last hold-out of that gruesome war.
A friend of mine, Joe Robles, another Fil-Am now retired in Baybay, will help me, I told Alex. “I know Joe quite well,” he said. “When you and your family get that plaque built, it will be my honor to give that flag to your family. For then, at long last, it has found its true home.”
By the time we meandered our separate ways home past midnight, we felt like old friends. We probably were. That is, our souls were like flitting butterflies hovering around our destinies before we ever physically met.
But it took Dumaguete to introduce all of us to each other, and to discover our past lives.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
