The 2024 Heritage Builders truly reflected the 123rd Founders Day theme of Silliman University: Today’s Treasures, Tomorrow’s Traditions: Celebrating Silliman’s Gifts.
Inspired by the 50th birthday of the Luce Auditorium, the country’s Cultural Center in the South, the theme celebrated the God-given talents which have built legacies of excellence.
All of these working legacies became the most cherished traditions in our beloved campus by the sea.
The Luce golden year is also the inspiration in the selection of the 2024 Heritage Builders.
Every Sillimanian, thousands of them scattered all over the globe, knows that God created each of us with gifts and talents that are unique only to ourselves.
Sillimanians believe that these God-given gifts are not for us to store or use selfishly. We are always guided by the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. Talents are for us to share with others, and in sharing with others, the sense of fulfillment is always marked by a joyful heart.
Among the Heritage Builder honorees this year were these American missionaries from the Philippine Presbyterian Mission, Rev. Dallas Mansfield Walters and his wife Ann M. Buck. Both graduated from Jamestown College in North Dakota.
Dallas and Anne met in Jamestown and got married. Before coming to Silliman, the couple served the Iloilo mission for three years.
Reverend Walters, an alumnus of McCormick Seminary in Chicago in 1920, arrived in Dumaguete in 1923 with his wife Anne.
In the first decade of the Silliman Institute, Dr. Walter & Rebecca McIntire founded the programs for culture and arts development, and expected “perfection” in English language standards among its students.
When the Walters arrived in campus, they both served as English professors, also teaching History and Literature. Both were known for their excellent mentorship in speech improvement and public speaking.
Their best tool to ensure good practice in the English language was the series of school plays they directed.
Anne founded the first Dramatic Club of Silliman with 19 original members.
There were only two requirements to be a member of the Drama Club: proficiency in the English language, and participation in the plays the Walters directed for high school students.
The Club members were trained by the Walters not only in performance but also in stage direction, costume design, and in light and sound. They were in- demand for presentations in musical programs, literary and dramatic performances.
At the 1931 Founders Day, Anne directed Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, the title echoeing her down-to-earth character who only wanted to celebrate the Filipino talents in theater.
The honor of the first Silliman production that went on tour was the full run of Shakespeare’s longest play, Hamlet, by the Dramatic Club, directed by Anne Walters.
They had campus rehearsals from 1931, and went on tour in 1932. Hamlet was presented in Cebu, and went back two times more by popular demand. Before the summer school ended, Hamlet went on tour again in Bacolod and Iloilo.
Other 1932 productions of the Dramatic Club included the classic verse play, The Minuet, which captured the innate nobility of character in certain French aristocrats.
They also presented Whither Goest Thou and Pandora. With the presence of the Walters, Silliman was described as being “knee-deep in dramatics all year.”
The Walters served Silliman until 1933 when they had to return to America with their four children who were all born in the Philippines: Maggie, Patricia, Sylvia, and Jackson Kent.
In the US, Anne pursued her love for theater. She wrote her first professional play, Head-Ax of Ingfell, which was produced towards the end of 1933. Other plays by Anne Walters included The Day After Tomorrow; Proud Heritage, – a play on North Dakota; Last Night’s Paper; and Me, – inspired by her autobiography, I Remember, I Remember.
Rev. Dallas Mansfield Walters died on March 15, 1988, and his wife Anne May Buck Walters, America’s award-winning playwright and theater director died on Aug, 4, 1990.
As we celebrate the performing arts legacy of the Walters, we also remember those who have had a great part in the history of the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium.
Other Heritage Builders for 2024 who had served at Luce Auditorium: Evelyn Rose Romano Aldecoa who directed Fiddler on the Roof, Sound of Music, Man of La Mancha, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and other plays; Christopher O. Aranas who was technical staff; dance artist and choreographer Liwayway Serion Arabe; Azucena “Mommy Girlie” E. Barrera; Ephraim N. Bejar who was a community theater pioneer and director of sarsuelas; Esther Ferido-Camino who was a children’s choir director and church music minister; Silliman Orchestra founder Zacarias Laviña; high school theater director Serafin B. Perez; and Dumaguete singing champion Estarlito C. Zerna.
All deserving of a standing ovation but the Parable of the Talents had the words of the Lord Jesus that would perfectly salute each one of them: “… Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of Thy Lord.”
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