Happy Holidays!

Let us give thanks....

Another November 2013 Photo

Now we know!  This was taken at MOA (no idea where that is) for Ed Buenaflor's birthday. Manuel Ubaldo trying to use straws as chopsticks, Ed Buenaflor a pensive birthday celebrant, an un-id. guest, Joe Andaya with a cheerful T with green logo.

Goodflower's Birthday, November 2013

id'd by Rudy Lambino in Frank's page: 

"left to right: Manuel Ubaldo, Eduardo Buenaflor, Franklin Frigillana, Jose Andaya, Myrna Andaya, Bonifacio Gutierrez. Nice to see my dear HS classmates in a group picture."

November 2013 Photo

Here is a posting on Facebook by Pastor Frank Frigillana.  Not having the context in which this photo was taken, here is a wild, wild guess on what they are up to:

Pastor Frank:  O, ala garood, our photo is being taken.  Attention ah, so smile and look as though it was the last dealbreaker you would make.  Because this, gagayem and kakabsats,  is for posterity.

Dr. Linda Dacanay-Gaffud:  Okay lang Pastor Frank. I hear you good. But since the lighting is directly in my eyes, I will give a prize-winning smile so viewers can focus on that and not on the glare on my anchokoz.

Boni Gutierrez:  Hmmm, di ba, guapo pa rin ako kahin matatanda na tayo?  And this blue shirt makes me look and feel like a doo-wop teenager again.

Joe Andaya:  Hi there folks!  This is me, Joe, with three of my fellow Class 61 mates. You are looking at two pastors in this photo.  Guess who is the second one, after Pastor Frank.  See, I choose my wardrobe well:  I texted them to find out what color they will be wearing, so that I can choose and blend with the rest of them.
The End!!

Cafe by the Ruins

This Cafe is situated right opposite the City Hall, next to the old Arvisu house which is rented by Bayquen Realty.
Here is an entry from Mark Walther's Facebook page.  The Ruins is where the Whitmarsh house stood.
------

From:  Mark Walther facebook page.

 Hubert "Phelps" Whitmarsh was a British reporter for the Outlook magazine who came to the Philippines in 1898. He went to Baguio (where in 1900 he was made the first Governor of Benguet Province) and loved it so much he telegraphed his wife and daughter in Boston "come to God's country". He later opened the Benguet Commercial Co. and several sawmills, he also bankrolled prospectors. He was contractor for the Easter School (1906) and supplied materials for the Rectory (first building on Brent Campus, completed in time for the birth of Rev Robb White's son, Robb White jr. who would later become a famous author) and the main school building (Ogilby Hall). His son Phillip Whitmarsh was the first "foreigner" (British/American) born in Baguio and the first "day" student at Bishop Brent's "Baguio School". The Whitmarsh home was famous in its day for the elaborate formal English style gardens. It was partially destroyed in the carpet bombing of Baguio and Cafe By The Ruins stands where it used to be. The photo (mid 1920s) shows him and his wife and granddaughter.

From:  Alicia D. Carlos- President, Alumni Association.
"I remember Mrs. Whitmarsh, a smallish woman who walked with a limp as she went around the Whitmarsh apartments collecting rents.  I used to pass by the house which had a low fence so you can see the white-painted house with green trim,  and its floral garden clearly from the street."

Farewell, Bert

John Hay, or Camp John Hay as we know it

Linda Grace Cariño

Baguio Stories

Saturday, October 26, 2013

JOHN Hay is actually the name of a person. But to the Baguio native, it is the name of a place, and has been for the last 100 and some years. The place was so named to christen a US Army camp that had its colonial beginnings as precisely that, a camp, from which US forces operated when they were in pursuit of Philippine Republicans who had fled to these here mountains to try and keep the first Philippine Republic alive more than a century ago.

The same place was the subject of a lawsuit set forth by its Ibaloi owner, my great-grandfather Mateo, but that is a long story already detailed in a number of writings, not the least being our country’s own Supreme Court proceedings. And those of the United States.

However, my earliest recollection of John Hay is as a telephone number, 2101, from which you could get connected to the Halfway House, and reach my dad. The visual which accompanies this memory of a phone number is one of my mom in a Jackie Kennedy-ish suit of deep, deep green, with a polka dotted blouse inside, dancing with my father, one fine afternoon. He was in a shirt of the palest green, the kind you didn’t have to tuck in, dark brown pants, and what we all children called “holes-holes” shoes, the rage of the day, those old-fashioned Florsheims. It was a slow dance, and the memory of it is as clear in my mind as the layout of where they danced, the Halfway House.

As you entered the place, to your left were deep red chairs and linoleum tables, lining up a whole wall, from where you could sit and face the dance floor. Across the wall was a slightly elevated platform from which a band played at night. Off from the platform were the bathrooms.

If you walked straight on from the door, you got to the bar, from where I was allowed to buy chocolates, always, always, blue crunch. They came in a six-pack, looking strange in a size different from how they were if you bought them in town. The wall behind the bar was at an angle perpendicular to the wall behind the band platform. And the bar faced out onto the rest of the place, the restaurant part. Perpendicular to the bar, facing the side from where you entered, were a row of slot machines my father was rather inordinately fond of. Many a time, he let my brother Matt do the pulling; it seems the latter was lucky at the slots.

And outside the restaurant was this patio from which you could see out onto the famous John Hay green and likewise watch players tee off. One thing about that green. It always looked really smooth, so smooth that for all of my operative childhood, I thought that at the Nineteenth Tee, another John Hay spot, they had somehow magically made it (the green) come inside.

The Nineteenth Tee was, for me, the only place to get a now-difficult-to-find goodie, onion rings, which I could eat just tons of. That and the base ice cream, which came in a creamy blob on a cone with a flat bottom. And the steakhouse which opened off from the Nineteenth Tee snack place always smelt like really good beef a-cooking.

There are, of course, other well-remembered snapshots: of Mile-Hi atop a small hill, of the Officers’ Club, of cottages and buildings whose architecture and green and white paint stamped “Americana” on the whole place. More specifically, there was American military base stamped on it. As someone told me once, John Hay was a “Little America.” Where there was this little chapel that had a 12:00 noon Sunday mass. Dad used to drive my mother, my sibs, and me there, leave, then fetch us at 1:00 p.m.

My pictures of John Hay come in such snatches and snapshots, each snatch and shot a reminder of another time and lifetime. My parents slow-dancing at the Halfway House, my brother, a fat little boy with chubby hands at the slots, blue crunch chocolate in that funny size, ice-cream on a flat-bottomed cone. The big picture is always of a golf green so well-maintained, giant trees everywhere, and American colonial architecture pervading. And the feeling of a being in a spotless, pristinely neat place.

John Hay has a place in my heart because it was one of a number of well-loved childhood playgrounds. It is also a special place because as Baguio lost its feeling of space due to a population explosion in the 80s and onwards, John Hay remained a haven of space, along with the country club. Where the air stayed magical, where the sky stayed in sight, where the landscape stayed blessedly not littered by the continual sight of shanties and houses continually being built overnight.

I have been taken to task by some people who think that my sentiments are elitist. They say I am wrong to hold on to a pristine, American picture of John Hay; they would have “low-cost housing” on its green hills. So much land, they say, should be there for people to be able to build on, for the homeless, the poor, the needy. I maintain that it should stay a haven of space unmarred by the sight on it of hordes and hordes of people and houses. Some of us need our space.

I also sometimes keep company with a population that wails at the wind and howls at the moon over the way John Hay now looks. The old cottages are gone, sold to buyers who wanted to reassemble snapshots of the past into the present. The Halfway House, methinks, was the first to go, to give way to a “clubhouse,” the current status symbol which the middle class affects the minute it can afford to. Gone, too, are the Nineteenth Tee and Mile-Hi, haunts of my youth. Up have come Townhouse Models 1, 2, and whatnot, all mimicking the newer, suburban versions of the American dream.

While these versions are pretty in a generic way, they look new to me, like a place for wannabes, who, for the life of them, will never understand the likes of me. Who was friends with every tree on the old course. Who wined, dined, and danced away at the Halfway House and the Officers’ Club to those tacky bands. Who partied in the cottages, kicked back, went barefoot on the wooden floors. Who took walks through the forest trails under the rain that washed the green and the air. Who stopped when the signs said to do so. Who stole books from the base library.

Luckily, such snapshots of John Hay exist within the albums of history and within the hearts of the old Baguio community. Certainly, the John Hay of old was a throwback to the yoke of American colonialism in the country. But just as certainly, it was for the Baguio community a haven of space and a repository of the wealth of memories that define us.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Of John Hay, Baguio continues to have many pictures, old, older, new, newer. To the one of the well-loved old place, these are my thousand words.

Published in the Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on October 26, 2013.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/opinion/2013/10/26/carino-thousand-words-310659

May 2 - 3, 2014

Guessing Game No. 30: Let's identify these old timers of Baguio!

Please click on the image to enlarge photo.

Baguio's original inhabitants

Baguio council pushes common reference material on city

Sunday, September 22, 2013

IN ITS brief profile of Baguio, a website says the original inhabitants of this so-called Hill Station are "the Igorots, Kankana-eys and Ibalois."

Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, counts this city's barangays at 129 and places its elevation at 4,760 feet and then at 5,200 feet above sea level.

Such disinformation and conflicting data would be corrected soon, at least by the city’s tourist guides who would be duly accredited, should the City Council adopt an ordinance providing a common reference material on facts and figures about the country's Summer Capital.

Councilor Elmer Datuin filed the measure last Monday to rectify errors. He pointed out some information materials on Baguio "are at times inaccurate and may not be the best description for a historical site and thereby resulting to inaccurate information (being shared) to our tourists."

For starters, the truth was and is that the Ibaloys were and are the original inhabitants of Baguio, as correctly depicted in the parade marking the 104th founding anniversary of the city last September 1.

Likewise, the city has 128 barangays, not 129. "Barangay Bagong Lipunan" was dropped from the list as its territorial coverage was the city market.

As city policy, no part of the market can be used for residential purpose, hence the so-called "barangay" established out of it was a misnomer.

Datuin proposed the City Schools Division, the City Tourism Office and the Public Information division of the City Mayor's Office prepare the common reference material, not only on Baguio’s actual elevation, but more focused on background information on the city's historical and heritage sites.

This would mean the City Tourism Office will conduct an orientation for tour guides, managers and operators so they would be able to tell tourists why the city's inclined and short main street is called "Session Road" and what those "keystones" at its upper rotuna stand for.

In the measure's definition of terms, Datuin turned to Wikipedia for guidance in defining historical and heritage sites:

"A historic site is an official location where pieces of political, military or social history have been preserved. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been recognized with the official national historic site status. A historic site is ant building, landscape, site or structure that is of local, regional or national significance."

"A heritage site is a location designated by the governing body of a township, county, province, state or country as important to the cultural heritage of a community. The term usually refers to any non-movable object with a specific location such as any preserved landscape containing important artifacts such as historic gardens, nature preserves, or archeological sites."

Historically, Baguio was where the second world war in the Philippines began and ended, specifically at the Camp John Hay. The former United States military camp was bombed morning of Dec. 8, 1941, signaling the start of the war. Close to four years later, at about noon of Sept. 3, 1945, Gen. Yamashita, the commander of the Japanese Imperial Forces in the Philippines, signed the surrender papers at the High Commissioner’s Residence (now the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence) inside the camp, marking the end of the war.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan had been batting for the celebration of the surrender, saying it would serve as a positive juxtaposition to the country’s annual observance of defeat every April 9, the day when the Allied Forces surrendered in Bataan in 1942.

Kiangan, the old town in Ifugao where Yamashita surrendered to the United States forces on September 2, 1945 before being flown in to Baguio, has included the event among its red-letter days. (Ramon Dacawi)

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/local-news/2013/09/22/baguio-council-pushes-common-reference-material-city-304653

Triennial: Forms

BCHSIAA in San Francisco 14 to 17 August 2014

Our Class 61 rep at the West Coast Chapter SF 2014, Lito Villanueva,  sent us the invitation for the BCHSIAA Triennial in San Francisco. Please see invitation, and schedule below.  The Registration Form, Souvenir Program and Hotel Information are posted separately.  If these do not come out clear, please send me an email rajadamnern1@yahoo.com and I shall forward a pdf set (5 pages) to you. Thanks.)

September 10, 2013

Dearest fellow alumni:

Greetings from the BCHSIAA’s West Coast Chapter! Yes, indeed, less than a year from now, we will rendezvous in San Francisco, one of the most beautiful City in the world. The West Coast Chapter is proud of hosting the 7th triennial reunion in cooperation with the BCHSIAA. To all BCNHS ALUMNI around the world, Come and celebrate our CT-Hi school heritage with your old  friends, and dear classmates. Please reserve the date: August 14 -17, 2014, the 2014 BCHSIAA 7th  TRIENNIAL GRAND REUNION awaits you in San Francisco.

The Executive Organizing Host Committee for the 7th Triennial Grand Reunion had been feverishly working hard of providing a momentous event for all alumni to cherish, and reminisce the glory years of high school. Explore with us during the reunion this most culturally diverse and beautiful city by the bay known worldwide for its unmatched cuisine, rich history, exciting culture and vibrant people. Enclosed registration and souvenir program reservation forms including the schedule of events for your reference. Please mail all completed forms with your checks payable to: Angie Bessenbacher, BCHSIAA West Coast Chapter, P.O. Box 2992, Orangevale, CA 95662.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Thursday 8/14/2014   3:00 PM to 9:00 PM Registration   Glimmer (Function Room)

Friday 8/15/2014 Bus Tours are available at reasonable cost through Hotel concierge Hotel Lobby

8/15/2014 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Registration   Glimmer

8/15/2014 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM Class Welcome/Fellowship Night Reflection III

8/16/2014 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM Registration Glimmer

8/16/2014 10:00 AM to noon General Meeting/Election of Officers Reflection I, II

8/16/2014 6:30 PM 1to :00 AM Dinner/Dance Gala Night  Reflection Ballroom

Sunday 8/17/2014  9:00 AM to 10:00 AM Mass   Reflection I

8/17/2014 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM Picnic (about 1.5 miles from hotel) at Coyote Point Park, San Mateo.

Departures.