Paul McCartney shared in a documentary, Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years, now showing in cinemas all over the country, that the hit song Help! was written by John Lennon, and was actually autobiographical in inspiration.
I also read that in an interview with Playboy in 1980, Lennon recounted that the “…the whole Beatles thing was just beyond comprehension. I was subconsciously crying out for help….” Away from home, John found brotherhood with the compact bond of The Beatles. The key men behind them also gave the necessary parenting: Sir George Henry Martin, Music mentor who became Beatles’ record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer, and a very inspiring co-musician who would push the young men to write a song within an hour and a little more. His being a school teacher taught them the required discipline.
And of course there was Brian Epstein, the one who discovered them and gave them this somewhat glamrock image by asking them to wear suits, formal shirts, vests and jackets of varied colors, but allowing them to have freedom when it came to hairstyles.
This and more gave this September much nostalgia as the film brought back iconic images.
I love the documentary, and I thank Edo and Annabelle Adriano for reminding me of the first day screening in Dumaguete.
The film successfully gave the much-needed explanation why the men and women immediately before my generation got into this endless Beatlemania.
In our home, the only room without the posters of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr was that of my parents. All my brothers and sisters had much of this British invasion in their lifestyles.
My love for the Beatles started after watching Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 American jukebox musical comedy film directed by Michael Schultz, which also introduced me to the Gibb brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice of The Bee Gees, who acted as The Beatles in that movie.
I love the songs of the Beatles as these gave me dreams souring high like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and John Lennon’s Help gave me this danceable healing as I was a sickly child with frequent bouts of asthma and some kind of “fatigue”-related sickness which often caused me to be always in my bedroom.
The Beatlemania made me forget the sickness, and I would jump into this flash-power magic of my own creative mind. Wake-up to the sunrise singing, “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun….And I say it’s all right!”
The celebration of the Silliman Church centennial this year did not end last August; it is actually running to reach the festive December.
Yes, the Advent season will be part of the long 100th birthday party of this beloved center of the campus life. This September is packed with events from the Christian Education and Nurture Month celebration.
If I am to honor three Christian educators on this page on nostalgia, the trio will include American missionaries Henrietta Glunz, Frances V.V. Rodgers, and Edna Lauby.
Let’s bring the honoring count to five to include equally excellent Filipino workers, Elena Maquizo and Lydia Niguidula.
These five women planted so many seeds of faith. Henrietta Heimbold Glunz was the founder of Silliman’s Christian Endeavour Society – this pioneering 1909 campus organization eventually became the Christian Youth Fellowship.
Frances Van Vechten Rodgers was the first among the missionary children to return to be with the Philippine mission, served Silliman for 40 fruitful years: aside from founding the Home Economics program in 1918 as a ministry for women, she also organized Sunday School classes, and coordinated Vacation Church School in towns around the province.
Edna Hebestreit Lauby was the prime mover of the Kindergarten school of Silliman as she was the director of early childhood education from 1953 to 1959. Edna was known for creatively fun classrooms for children, and her storytelling moments were enduring pictures of linking Bible stories to everyday experience at home, and even what’s inside a movie house — funny and full of life lessons.
Elena G. Maquiso deserves a national artist award for her music ministry promoting the beauty of the Visayan and tribal languages. But that category is non-existent in this “only Christian country in Asia.”
Beyond her lifetime, the hymns she created from the 1950s up to 1980s are very much alive in today’s worship tradition in the Philippine protestant Church.
And there was Lydia N. Niguidula, the Martial Law heroine working with Rev. Harry Pak starting in 1970, she ushered young people to be brave in their faith expressions even with the watchful military officers patrolling the campus.
Together, they transformed the library at the basement of Silliman Church into the historic Catacombs, where the buried freedom of expression of the youth found great avenues through the performing arts ministry every Friday.
Nanay Lydia also became the greatest mentor in creative worship; she was very strict in ensuring excellent flow of the worship from the visual manipulation to the theme-based homiletics.
In reality, there will be no honoring for these five women planters of the seeds of faith as the focus of the celebration was more on the administrative pastors who are mostly men.
My favorite moment of nostalgia in September was the 100th birthday celebration of Dumaguete’s Quezon Park. After 100 years, it’s only now that the people of Dumaguete found much meaning in having this space of honoring on the historic grounds of this capital City.
In all my years of touring visitors around the City, I never found the answer to the question why it’s called Quezon Park when the centerpiece of the landscape is the Rizal monument?
And there was even no marker to explain the name Quezon Park.
I happened to be on the same flight with one of my favorite journalists day before the big even; I introduced myself to him, and asked if he was to give a talk somewhere in Dumaguete, and he gave me a positive answer but with a confused look that I had no knowledge about the event. I just explained to him that I was in Manila the entire week, and was somehow disconnected with what’s going on in our beloved City. So I promised him that I would be there at Quezon Park to listen to him speak.
When we got to Dumaguete, it took a while for the local welcoming team to get to the arrival area, so we were able to continue to talk, and he was too humble to even mention about the big role he was to play on this big event on Sept. 17 at Quezon Park.
The big day came at Quezon Park, where the name of one of my favorite journalists was plastered on the stage backdrop: Manuel L. Quezon III, guest of honor.
The grandson himself of the first Filipino to head the government of the entire Philippines as president of the Commonwealth was the perfect person to join the Dumaguete people on the celebration of the setting up of our very own Quezon Park in 1916.
Knowing that President Manuel L. Quezon became Commonwealth president from 1935 to 1944, we realize that his presidency could not have been the reason why this 100-year-old Park in the heart of Dumagute was named in his honor.
His grandson, our brilliant guest of honor of this historic moment, was here in Dumaguete not only to represent the Quezon family but more importantly to educate all of us with some much-needed history lessons:
Manuel L. Quezon was Resident Commissioner to the U.S. Congress, elected by the Philippine Legislature from 1909 to 1916. It was Quezon who drafted the first of two “Jones Bills.”
With these, he helped secure our independence from the United States. In 1916, it was his voice which contributed to the enactment of the Jones Law, the basic law for Philippine autonomy government, and it was this law which created the first fully-elected Philippine legislature.
A national hero indeed. I salute Dumaguete for honoring this man at the time of his first heroic act in 1916. Giving the honor at that time was with much value and sincerity. Dumaguete honored a living hero who has proven worthy of the salute even beyond 1916.
Last week his grandson, on this 100th year of the Park, shared more of his grandfather’s wisdom during President Quezon’s historic visits to Dumaguete as president and as a World War II hero.
It felt good that we were there to listen to the Statesman’s grandson, who brought back vital images from the very words of his grandfather that he read from the uncovered speeches and historic diaries.
These treasures from the archives could have been so far from our reach but Manolo Quezon III gave all these as a valuable gift of history that will truly inspire the present leadership to finally build a monument of honor: let the soaring of Manuel L. Quezon’s heroism be the centerpiece of this heritage park.
We express our gratitude to the builders of this centennial honoring: the dynamic Mayor Felipe Remollo and the brilliant Tourism Officer Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio. Your gift of leadership is unfolding to make a difference.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
