Congratulations to Mr. Fisherman

One fine August California day, the 7th, Lito V caught the biggest fish in San Pablo Bay at Bay Front Park. His catch was a 45", 38 lbs. "STRIPED BASS' .

As an avid fisherman, he has all what it takes to catch such a fish: aside from his determination, his hi-tech gear also helped: live Bull Head bait with a Stren High Impact test line of 20 lbs. A leather attached of Maxima triple X 25 lbs. gtest line and 4oz. weight sinker. His Baguio muscles took 45 minutes to reel it in shore from 5:30pm to 6:15pm.

A brother's tribute

My brother Joedax By Ramon Dacawi

Sun Star, Saturday, August 13, 2011

ELDEST of five siblings of an unlettered Ifugao gardener at the Pacdal Forest Nursery, my brother Joe was laid to rest last week-end. He lies beside my elder brother Danilo and Danilo’s daughter Janet, on a choice plot by the first gate, behind where a mausoleum is being built in the overcrowded patchwork of graves that is the city cemetery. Manuel, our youngest, was buried in Hungduan, Ifugao.

Given his lack of material acquisitiveness, Joe’s purchase of that tiny piece of real estate many years back was a curiosity. Understandably now, he had kept me from his original purpose for the rectangular patch. I learned why on the first night of the wake, when the family gathered to firm up details of the funeral.

“Your brother had reserved that area for you,” his widow, Manang Corazon, told me gently. “He thought you’d go ahead of him.” In fact, she added, he had also earlier yielded another portion so another family could bury its dead.

Hearing this, city councilor Peter Fianza erased my doubts about my brother’s original intention. He said Joe had worried about my incessant gulping and puffing, years after family physician, Dr. Julie Cabato diagnosed me as a sugar magnate without a hacienda.

Notwithstanding his reputation for bluntness, my brother knew his warning me of the medical do’s and don’ts would just trigger another argument between siblings that we had tacitly learned not to inflict on each other.

Revelation on the pre-need gift sank in quite gently. It turned into a soulful experience, into which slowly entered humor that was equally soothing, far from morbid. Eyes welling, I smiled. Into my mind flashed that line from novelist Richard Paul Evans: “Those with softest hearts sometimes build the hardest shells.”

“That’s correct,” agreed assistant city accountant Almaya Addawe, she with the eagle’s eye against discrepancies in expense liquidation reports, as Joe was a stickler for truth about employees’ work and travel time, leaves, personnel selection and promotion. “Look at the long line of wreaths at this wake,” she said, equating the flowers to the respect a martinet earned.

So Accounting wasn’t that surprised when Joe returned his unused per diems from a group travel. It inspired his companions to follow suit and declare their own rightful period of travel and expense.

E-mailing his condolences, former fellow city worker Lou Pasetes, now of Chicago, wrote what many city hall officials and employees thought of Joe: “I knew him to be one who frankly speaks his mind no matter who it was directed to.”

As personnel officer with uncompromising adherence to civil service rules, Joe was not exactly the most popular figure at city hall, his friend and confidant, former city councilor Edilberto Tenefrancia. “He’s Mr. Clean,” agreed Rhey Bautista, Joe’s mentor and guide at the University of Baguio. Campus leadership contemporary Swanny Dicang remembers how Joe, on a YMCA work camp, “tried to level a whole mountainside for a community”.

Sorry, but Joe’s work ethic and ethics are meant for the west, I told a job seeker who asked me to lobby for him before the personnel officer. ”Your friend must apply on his own, as hiring is based on merits, based on the objective formula for rating applicants,” Joe told us and that was it.

We had our differences. For years, he’d walk to and from work, something I swore way back in high school to transcend. Often, I’d pass him by aboard a taxi, reining in the urge to offer him a lift or fare. He was task-oriented as I’m now and then a petty country club manager. I finished college in five years, stalled by the parliament of the streets and recovery from alcohol-induced jaundice. He did it in over a decade also marked by student activism that UB nurtured, and his early work in print and broadcast media. I inherited his shoeshine box and then rented out ponies at the Wright Park when he and boyhood buddy Willie Cacdac elevated themselves as caddies at the Baguio Country Club. He played football and competed in sipa in the Inter-scholastics while I watched and covered sports events.

Joe, Willie, Manny Salenga and George Jularbal lost their jobs at radio station DZHB of RMN-IBC when martial rule was declared. Still, Joe’s story on the declaration made the headline of the Baguio Midland Courier which military authorities curiously forgot to shut down earlier like the other media outfits.

He worried how Willie would take the lull and the order for them to report periodically to military authorities for their campus activism and bias for covering our own student rallies. Willie laughed when I told him, saying he worried more how Joe would take it.

Somehow, things eventually normalized and Joe was back at the MidlandCourier and as correspondent of the Philippine Daily Express. “I remember Joe quite well as I’d receive his dispatches,” recalled Rolly Fernandez, then the Express national news editor, now the Northern Luzon bureau chief of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In 1980, Joe yielded me his news editor post at the Courier, with the blessings of Steve Hamada, who succeeded his dad Sinai as editor-in-chief. It was misery finding company. People would ask Steve how he was related to the venerable Sinai, the Igorot lawyer, short story writer and founder of the Courier. Now and then, people also would ask if I was, in any way, related to Joe.

“Tell them Sinai is the father of Steve Hamada while Joe is the brother of Ramon, not the other way around,” I told Steve. “Talaga ka met a,” he replied, smiling almost ear-to-ear.

Joe was diagnosed with cancer a month after he retired from city hall September, 2009. During recent visits to his hospital room, I noticed his humor and gift for repartee coming back. As was done by the late Peppot Ilagan, his friend and co-worker at the defunct Focus weekly, it was Joe’s attempt at lightening the impact of his exit on family and those who knew him.

City hall employees took the drift, with some bursting at the seams when reminded not to be at the wake during office hours, especially if they were in uniform, lest Joe would tell them to file their under-time.

That’s why the funeral had to be on a Saturday.

The Dacawi-Balicdang-Padilla families thank you all who toasted with them my brother Joedax’s life.

Published in the Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on August 13, 2011.

Pastor Rey Cordoviz

In addition to being a shepherd to his flock, Pastor Rey is also a Baguio Mediator, and Barangay Captain, Kagitingan.

Where's Joe in this photo?

"Joedax" from Mayor Domogan's website

City gov’t, media mourn death of pioneer

Monday, 08 August 2011 09:08 | Written by A Refuerzo |

BAGUIO CITY - His colleagues in both the media and the city government best remember him as a principled, virtuous man dedicated to his craft and cause.

Thus indeed is a fitting salute to media and city human resource management pioneer Jose "Joedax" Dacawi, 66, who succumbed to a lingering illness last July 30, almost two years after he retired from the city government as city human management officer. He was laid to rest last Saturday (August 6) at the Baguio Cemetery.

"Joedax... manifested enthusiasm and dynamic energy towards performing his daily tasks that helped in the attainment of the city's goals and objectives," the city council wrote in a resolution passed last Monday to pay tribute to the late public servant.

"His passing away is mourned not only by his family, but by the City of Baguio as well, for his being an inspiration in its quest for continued excellence and competence," the resolution added.

"His presence may not be physically felt but his memories would always remain in our hearts and the thought that in a part of our history is engraved a person by the name of 'Joedax' who was once with us in shaping Baguio City."

A stickler for Civil Service rules, Joedax is known for his stern leadership style in his department but subordinates swear his strictness was never beyond reason.

He championed discipline, hard work and ambition among his employees and goaded them to continually develop themselves. He led by example and was never unfair or abusive.

"It was he who motivated me to go back to school so that I was able to finish my masteral studies even when I was still serving a utility worker (a position equivalent to that of a janitor). Now, I am into my fourth promotion in a supervisory position and in my fourth year of law studies," said Jerry Guevarra, an employee of the city human resource department.

Along the hallways of City Hall, Joedax may have appeared severe ready to pounce on every employee transgressing a Civil Service memorandum circular and scold even fellow department heads for lack of "vision and planning," but outside the government confines, he was all human – compassionate, sweet and doting even.

Jerry said he always personally saw to the needs of his employees during department outings and gatherings ensuring they were all properly fed and entertained.

Dan Ricky Ong, a former subordinate, said the man was kind-hearted recalling how his former boss stood by him during a difficult time in his life.

"When my father suddenly died a few years ago, Sir Joedax was at my side, kept me company even at the morgue of the hospital waiting for the remains of my father to be claimed by the funeral parlor until the wee hours of the morning," Ong related. He said he was sure Joedax did similar if not more mundane favors to his other employees and other people in need.

Joedax entered government service in 1973 as emergency laborer at the city council. He rose from the ranks and became the city human resource management officer, a position held for 36 years until his retirement in 2009.

Before his stint in the government, Joedax was a pioneering media practitioner during the golden age of broadcast and print media in the city. He served as staff member and field reporter of radio DZHB or RMN IBC in the company of fellow media icons Manny Salenga, Willy Cacdac and George Jularbal.

He was staff member of The Mountaineer Weekly Paper, Focus Weekly Magazine, Baguio Midland Courier, correspondent of the Philippine Daily Express and president of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) in 1987.

Media contemporaries and younger colleagues also have their own stories to tell of the media and government service royalty that was Joedax.

Art Tibaldo, Dacawi's fellow civil servant and journalist, said, "Manong Joe is an exemplary man worthy of emulation. He joined his creator leaving behind a legacy of exemplary service and unquestioned integrity."

"He was a no-nonsense worker who does not want to be credited or recognized for his contributions. He discourages city activities to go beyond office hours that deprive workers from spending quality time with their families... Civil Service or not, Manong Joe is my "Dangalang Bayan" awardee," Tibaldo commented in his Facebook account.

Catherine Miras-Agustin, a former employee of the city mayor's office now based overseas also wrote over Facebook: "Tito Joe was one of the best mentors I ever had in Journalism. He was at his best as CHRMO Head at City Hall as he meant well not only during Values Orientation Workshops but as every government employee performed their respective functions without allowing themselves to be politicized. His wealth was his virtues and principle - being righteous, courageous, outspoken and (he is) a real brother."

Joedax was survived by his wife Corazon, a retired teacher from the University of Baguio, sons Joris and Joseph; daughters Jennifer and Joann, daughter-in-law Maritess, grandson Jan-Jan, brother Ramon and sister Elena.

Class 61 in Chicago

Through the kind and prompt courtesy of Rudy L, these are photos taken during the BCHSIAA 6th Triennial Reunion held in Chicago.
Hope we can hear more news and have more photos about the reunion.
A big salute to the class attendees!! Norma Banayat-Calub, Rudy Lambino and Estrella Salcedo-Rodriguez.
Estrella, we hope to hear more about you!!