The graduates: Class of Haiyan

“Do not ask from your parents material things if you do not want to hurt them. For what parent would not want to satisfy the request of his child, even if it is difficult to do so? It hurts a parent not to be able to provide what his child wants.” This was the sage lecture to me of the father of a close friend in our hometown of Antipolo when I was of tender age. It’s not an issue for wealthy families – but for families making both ends meet, it is sensible as it is realistic.

How many times have you seen kids looking well-kept, well-dressed, even gadgeted, with parents not affording the same luxury for themselves?

I have seen it recently, again, but during one important day in the lives of teenage sons and daughters of Palo, Leyte, a municipality adjacent to Tacloban City that suffered the same fate under the powerful hands of Yolanda. What I share here this Sunday, I share in good faith and in admiration for the successful struggles of these persons and families. This is especially so for a place like Tacloban, its neighboring municipalities and their people, whose climb back to resurrection the entire country rallied to after the reckoning from the country's worst natural calamity.

The graduation rites at the Saint Paul School of Professional Studies (SPSPS) was one of the most orderly that I had witnessed. I had the chance to observe the ceremonies up close as I was the commencement speaker and seated with school president Erwin Vincent Alcala and the school officers on stage. Those with medals fetched their parents seated on Monobloc chairs at the gymnasium’s side section for parents, and they went up the stage together.

The parents wore their Sunday best, I was told, but they were still humbly dressed. You could see both pride and shyness as they took to the stage, with hands holding what appeared to be their most cherished achievement. Parents were much restrained on stage that even their smiles were guarded. So every display of emotion, such as a kiss on the cheek of the graduate or a pinch of endearment from a parent, would elicit an amused reaction from the graduating class.

They are literally Yolanda’s survivors. Each family and each graduate has their own moving stories to share. I have space to share one of those stories. I must share it so that children can appreciate how blessed they are and why their opportunities in life must not be wasted.

Edmund from Palo graduated cum laude at SPSPS. He applied and qualified for scholarship at SPSPS. In addition to free schooling, the school gave him P500 monthly allowance. But that was hardly enough for transportation costs and school projects. So he would take “sidelines”, from helping his professors draft modules and check test papers to doing housecleaning and gardening for neighbors for extra income.

Yet, what he was doing as a student was light work for Edmund, second of seven siblings, whose sustenance then came from his father’s meager earnings from pedicab driving.

You see, before being told by a friend who knew of Edmund’s intellect to apply for scholarship at SPSPS, Edmund was an out-of-school youth who took on a job as a construction worker – one of the most physically demanding jobs on the street. He also worked as a vendor on the side to augment the family’s income. He needed to give up these jobs to take his chance to become a college scholar, and to support himself all the way to graduation.

If he felt bad for being unable to support his siblings in the meantime, his resolve was made even more steadfast by the fact that no one among them had finished college yet. There was also that lingering thought that surviving Yolanda, huddled in an evacuation center with his family for days, felt like a new lease on life that must be lived well.

He graduated, and boy, how he graduated – with Latin honors. The cum laude honor and other special recognitions he received that graduation night almost concealed his daily battles to survive and make time for the four years of the course.

Graduation is so meaningful in a place fraught with much tragedy. I recall the graduation story of San Jose Central Elementary School in Tacloban, months after the typhoon that destroyed the people’s life investments and took hundreds of precious lives. I remember the pictures of the students attached to their assigned seats beside their graduating classmates who survived. The names of those who died were still called that day to give them the honor of the graduation rites, even as they graduated young from life.

As a commencement speaker in SPSPS, I felt inadequate for this bunch of college graduates from Palo. For what right do I have to teach a group of battle-scarred warriors on how to keep a weapon? How could my personal story hold up in comparison, if I barely scratched the surface of how much they had to endure? How would you teach a group to succeed when they were educated and made wiser by no less than the most horrifying whips of nature? How could my words compare to those of the teachers of the school who made a life-long sacrifice to teach there despite opportunity costs?

I am humbled to receive a medal of recognition from the school. What an honor, but nothing will give me more honor than to share that medal to all the graduates of the school, this special batch, most likely first-year students then when Yolanda hit, all nurtured post-storm. If there will be a common bond among the graduates, let it be one that is based on a mentality of high ambitions, but let it be also based on one that urges the heart not to forget to always look back.