Gird Life with the Truth: A Filipino Father Life's Episodes

By Juan C. Nabong Jr.

Take this journey with Dad, Learn how he inspired others to inculcate family and social values and ideals and his influence upon them by his life, deeds, and writings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 21, 2008
• ISBN: 9781426940040

Juan C. Nabong Jr.

I was born in Manila, Philippines, on June 8, 1935. World War II broke out when I was in Grade I at the Manuguit Elementary School, Tondo, Manila (now Jose Abad Santos Avenue). During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines and of Manila where there was no schools, work and lack of food, we were lucky we evacuated to Novaliches, Bulacan, on invitation of Dad’s kumpadre (godbrother), Rev. Clemente Zuniga, Sr. where decent rice and corn, fresh vegetables, meat, fish, chicken, carabao’s (animal used in planting in the fields) milk, fresh air, cool breeze and potable water from a deep well. General Douglas MacArthur had promised to return. He did return with his American Liberation Forces, landing on the shores of Leyte, then liberating Manila from the Japanese Imperial Army. After the war I enrolled at the Lakan-Dula Elementary School, and after I was interviewed, I was accelerated to Grade 4, Section 1. When I was in Grade 6, I was chosen to participate in a Dr. Jose P. Rizal (the Philippines National Hero) Oratorical Contest. My teacher-coach explained Rizal’s “The Song of the Traveller” (“Canto de Viajero” when title translated in Spanish) while teaching me the rudiments of good oration...I won First Prize! What an incredible, jubilant moment to a twelve-year old! After graduating from law and passing the bar, I practiced my profession, served the Academe, the Executive, Judicial and City Government. I have performed my service in Manila and Mindanao. A full scholarship in the Academy of American and International Law, Southwestern Legal Foundation. In the Summer of ‘82, brought me to Dallas, Texas.

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Copyright 2008 JUAN C. NABONG JR.

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ISBN: 978-1-4251-0605-8

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Contents

EARLY MOORINGS TO DIVERSE CHOICES

THE CHRISTIAN YOUTH IN CHURCH, SCHOOL AND SOCIETY

A NATIONALIST

PATH

RADIO TALKS

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FOR EXCELLENCE

THE CHERISHED DREAM-UNIVERSITY STATUS

APOSTLE OF ECUMENISM

RESOURCES

HE LIVED BY THESE

RADIO TALKS

LETTERS AND MESSAGES

BIOGRAPHY OF JUAN NABONG Y TOLENTINO

CURRICULUM VITAE

I

EARLY MOORINGS TO DIVERSE CHOICES

Not many knew, perhaps only our family did, and his doctors, that father lived since 1938 with one weakened lung, which had collapsed and faintly recovered.

Driving the bulky, heavy, Nash Sedans (his favorite car) as a young energetic practitioner of law, one day Dad vomited blood from lungs, a lung collapsed, and that lung never fully recovered. At that precise moment, as never before, he prayed so hard for healing, recommitting himself to Jesus Christ, trusting with faith and praying for God’s power of salvation and mighty cure! But emphysema would burden his breathing in later life. It started when, as a young thin teen, he rowed bancas (wooden river boats) loaded with rice, vegetables, sugar, fish, meat, and other local commodities to deliver the stuff to factories and workers along the Pampanga river shore. Father was too thin to row bancas on that mighty river. His lungs and heart weakened.

After his doctor prescribed complete rest and medicines, Dad hired a driver, Madrid Oberio, and since then, although the bulky Nash was still his favorite, he never laid hands on the wheel of a car. For facility, he allowed Mang Madrid to bring his family to live in a room on the ground floor near the garage of our home.

In his practice of law, starting in 1923, and dwelling on corporate law, mining and transportation laws, civil and criminal laws, constitutional law, special proceedings (probate of wills), and general consulting, war damage claims, contract drafting and documentation, father, with his bursting Escolta-Manila based Nabong & Sese law firm (later on, nabong, Pascual, Karganilla, Severino, Inventor, nabong & nacu) had clients and retainers (and pro bono service to poor and needful litigants) all over the Philippines. Justice Crisolito Pascual became Justice of the Philippines Court of Appeals and an outstanding lay leader of the Methodist Church. Atty. Pablo Inventor became a Regional Trial Court Judge of Caloocan City. Clients, among others, were The Methodist Church of the Philippines and local congregations, The Salvation army (Phil. Command) for titling of lands and buildings, The American Bible Society, The Southern Baptist Convention, The Church of the nazarene, Presbyterian Mission, new Fundamental Missions, and other american denominations and churches established in the islands.

Melson and Co., Inc., Gumaus Goldfields, Inc. and several mining and transportation firms and several corporations and business houses were clients.

One criminal case involved the prosecution for rape of a deaf-mute student. The trial turned sensational as media caught up with the event. Father was the private prosecutor who prepared the case for the prosecution, handled the trial. The defense had engaged the services of a young popular lawyer, a politician, bright and a crowd drawer, and who, later on, would become the President of the Republic of the Philippines-His Excellency, Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Father had developed, by mid thirties, a meditative regimen which he daily performed in our house: he would wake up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning when almost all of us, except Mother, were still asleep; and with his Bible, a note pad, a book to read after the Bible, and a fountain pen, he would sit on his chair with table nearby, beside the window fronting our small garden, later lavished by the rays of the morning sun.

He would read from the Bible, meditate on it, jot down notes, wrote his thoughts, and meditate more. He would pray silently. Write more.

He would then read the other book, then, if the morning papers were delivered, he would read them. After an hour or so, it is time for breakfast after the morning bath and toilet.

By this time, the maid supervised by mother would have prepared the customary family breakfast of sinangag (fried rice) or pan de sal (a crispy, little salty, oven or stove-baked muffin-sized bread, staple bread of the Filipinos) and butter, fried eggs and tuyo (small native salted fish) or meat like longoniza (pork/beef hotdog), tocino (sweetened/ salted/cured slabs of pork in red coloring) with banana or papaya; coffee or native chocolate. Then, he would talk to Saling (Dad called Mom this), a kiss on her cheek, and father would go to work. And Rosalinda Solitario Cruz Nabong, a deaconess graduate of Harris Memorial Training School (now College) turned housewife and fulltime mother to seven children (eight all in all, one died at childbirth) would be happy the whole day.

Father, whom we his children called Abay", is guide, a companion, one who leads, in the Pampango dialect. To his brothers and sisters, he is Boteng, and to relatives, kith and kin, Ka Boteng. But to us, his children, Abay, affectionately is our Dad.

Dad was converted to Christianity in 1921 when he was in the third year of law school. In a brief Biography he prepared in 1963, he essayed, as part of it, his conversion and commitment to seek first the Kingdom of God. I reproduce his very words.

"It was while attorney Nabong was third year in the law school that he was converted to the Protestant faith while taking a summer vacation in Calumpit. A minister of the Methodist Church, the Rev. F. J. Rojars, came to their home and told young Nabong point blank that he (the minister) was sent by God to bring him to Jesus Christ. Nabong inquired as to how could be presume to have been sent by God to him and the minister replied that as a minister, God had called him to bring people to Jesus Christ and that he (Nabong) was one of them.

‘Do you know,’ nabong asked, ‘that I am taking up law and that if I become a lawyer, I shall have to mix with the world and conform to their ways in order to succeed? I shall have to mix with society, and dance, smoke and drink wine to win clients.’

‘You don’t have to do those things,’ the minister said, as ‘Jesus Christ plainly says that if you will seek the Kingdom of God first, all these things (meaning success, and the good things that make life worth living) will be added to you.’

"nabong was deeply impressed by the words of the minister and he told the latter that he was willing to accept the faith and try it for five years and if it worked out as the pastor said, he will then stick to it. The minister assured him that God will not fail in His promise, and so the following Sunday, nabong attended the church service at the little bamboo chapel in the next barrio San Miguel, Calumpit and after the minister finished his sermon, and issued the invitation, nabong came to the altar and was admitted to the Methodist Church. The local church folks were amazed as to why a student of law would become a Protestant. It never occurred before in the town of Calumpit.

"Pastor Rojars then advised young nabong to go to Manila and attend the services at Central Church in San Luis, Ermita and request to be baptized by the missionary pastor there, Dr. Otto Houser and to attend the Sunday School class taught by Dean Jorge Bocobo, then Dean of the College of Law, University of the Philippines.

"The following Sunday nabong went to see Dr. Houser, pastor of Central Church before the service and asked that he be baptized after the service. Dr. Houser explained that baptisms were done only on the first and third Sundays of the month, and so that Sunday being the second, nabong could not be baptized and suggested that he come the following Sunday and he would baptize him. nabong insisted on being baptized, otherwise he would quit the church for being refused

when he wanted to be baptized. Dr. Houser agreed. At the close of the service, he made an announcement that follows:

‘Dear Brethren, I ask your indulgence to stay for a while as there is a young man here who insists on being baptized, otherwise, he may leave the church for refusing to take him in. I will therefore baptize him. Will that young man please come to the altar now?’

"Nabong with wings on his feet he knew not why, went to the altar to be baptized. When the pastor laid his hands on his head, Nabong felt as if a wave of life giving warmth went to his whole body and when he rose up, he felt as if his feet were stepping on air. Everything looked new to him. The grass was greener, the air purer, the people lovelier and the sky seemed to be so near that he felt he could touch it just by jumping. There was warmness in his heart, which up to this day is still there no matter what the vicissitudes of life are.

After his conversion and baptism, Nabong attended Central Church but after a few months transferred his membership to Knox Memorial Church at the corner of Rizal Avenue and Lope de Vega because it was nearer to their house in Sampaloc. It was there where he got married to Rosalina S. Cruz, a graduate deaconess of Harris Memorial School. He met her when she was assigned in his hometown in Calumpit, Bulacan. Both of them became active members of Knox Memorial Church and their seven children were all baptized there.

In the early years of his conversion, but throughout his life, Dad reiterated, refreshed and renewed his avowal of Jesus Christ. I have three of his surrender in his own handwriting.

APRIL 23,1922

So help me God! From this time forth I am yours to use and to command.

MAY11, 1923 MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY

"They say that a College Training without a Bible means little; while a Bible Training without a College means all things. Having gone through an intensive College Training and having gone thru the Bible once and will still go thru day by day, I have come to a mature, firm and determined conclusion that all the days of my earthly life will be used in Magnifying the Father and serving the Son of Man.

Witness my name in this Book of Life which I pray God to give me up there above thru Christ, my Savior, Amen.

AUGUST 11, 1928

This day I surrendered my life, profession and all, to my Lord Jesus Christ.

War came to Manila just as when Dad was nearing the apex of his private practice of law. Just as when his lay leadership in the Methodist Church (Central Conference, Philippine Annual Conference and other Conferences), membership in boards of corporations, speaking engagements, and involvement in various civic and social activities, were on the upswing, energized by a good jumpstart.

In the morning of December 7, 1941, a Sunday, Japanese planes attacked, bombed and strafed planes and propelled torpedoes to the carriers docked at, and planes on hangars at Pearl Harbor, nearly crushing America’s Pacific Fleet without let-up. The astounded but awakened Americans gathered up a gallant, valiant fight but the devastation and distress were incalculable as Americans lives had been terribly lost in an hour. Pearl was an inferno! Awoke, and raring, Uncle Sam prepared for the biggest war of the century roaring Avenge Pearl Harbor!

On that infamous day, Japanese planes swooped to the Philippines (Baguio, Pampanga, with Clark Air Base, Fort Stotsenberg, Nichols Air Field) as targets.

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Although a darkening restless situation between America and Japan loomed as harbinger of war, these air and sea attacks, planned by the Japanese Imperial Navy were sudden to Americans.

Manila was declared an open city and Japanese armed forces entered the city with no resistance. Resistance, nonetheless, would spew later with organized guerilla forces (local insurgents) in different regions and areas in the Islands. But in the meantime, Filipino soldiers were dying in the infamous Bataan Death March. A cousin who was in the march was determined missing, never to be found again.

During the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines (1941 to 1945), Father simply had no active cases to try in courts, limiting