Losing Mayor Betty Verzola

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi

The greatest acts are done without audience, plaque or ceremony.

That line is from novelist Richard Paul Evans. He’s the dad who wrote  and self-published the best-selling “The Christmas Box” trilogy originally intended as a yule gift for his kids.  With this attribution,  no need for the quotation marks that might dilute the substance of such truism.

The quote came back last Saturday morning, after Dhobie de Guzman, news anchor of ABS-CBN, dropped an earth-shaker he read from his cell, one of those  top-of-the line gadgets  I don’t know how to buy or use.

(We were  at Luisa’s Café, operated by Chongloy (a. k. a.  Roland Wong). It’s  along Session Rd., Baguio’s short, inclined main street, lined up by commercial buildings now modernizing and changing the urban landscape. Luisa’s may soon take the role of Dainty, the more popular café across the road that will soon serve its last coffee glass. It’s  being closed and remodeled by the new owner, perhaps for another MacDonald’s branch.

(Dainty in the good old days was then described by the venerable Gov. Ben Palispis of Benguet as “The University of Life”. If you want to know the latest news or learn something, go to Dainty, the governor used to say.)

The news from Dhobie came just before I could hop from Luisa’s to Dainty (later renamed Session Delights and now Streamline, after the popular cake the heirs of Ng Ah Chin, the operator for decades, want to patent in his memory).

Dhobie scanned his cell screen and said, “Manong, Mayor (Betty) Verzola of Luna, Apayao is dead.  Car accident, in Pagudpud (Ilocos Norte).”

Print media reports later said Mayor Verzola’s partry were on their way home when their  official vehicle, a Mitsubishi Montero, hit a calf that was crossing the highway in the dead of night. 

Her party came from Baguio where she shared her experiences in local governance in a seminar for local government unit officials, including those elected in the May polls. Mayor Verzola was the instrument in the development of Luna,  a 22-barangay town that includes the famous or infamous Marag Valley that she once described as “ paradise lost and paradise regained”.

The valley was lost in the war years back, waged by government troops against New People’s Army rebels.After the war, Mayor Verzola guided us there, visiting journalists serving as judges in the regional schools press conference hosted by her town.

We saw the charred remains of wooden houses burned and destroyed by the war. They  had been rebuilt with concrete materials. Cement posts were juxtaposed beside charred  wooden ones the villagers found reason to preserve, even if it meant narrowing down the original floor areas.

We were led to the Marag River, the cleanest water body I ever saw. It bore  no  evidence of the war.Villagers told us it offered, by boat, the fastest ride  to Pamplona, Cagayan. At the elementary school, kids greeted us with a dance presentation, as if not one of them was ever scarred by the war.

Still, the mayor and the villagers told us each and every  family either lost a member or had a kin injured  in the war. 

Their coping they  expressed through the inscriptions on the  triangular base of the flagpole holding high the colors of this republic  that the school kids and teachers raise every morning.

Inscribed on one  one side of the triangle was the community’s  tribute to the soldiers of the republic who died in the performance of their duty - to defend the duly constituted government.  The inscription on the second side honored the rebels who also offered the ultimate sacrifice fighting for a just and humane society. The third side of the triangle likewise memorialized the civilians who were killed in the crossfire.

Back in the poblacion, Mayor Verzola’s attention was drawn to the footsteps of the town hall. There, an Aeta mother with two kids in tow was trying to sell her bunch of  black-and-white colored woven bamboo baskets of different sizes. 

It was late in the afternoon and the mayor was worried the mother and kids  would not make it home in the hills before nightfall.

As she did many times over in previous occasions, the mayor asked  for the total price of what remained of the woman’s  baskets. Mayor Verzola was used to taking in whatever were left of goods her constituents would bring to sell in the poblacion, especially if the vendors came from remote areas.

 The mother came up with a reasonable amount that encouraged me as much as the mayor’s intentions did.

I offered to split the goods and the payment with Her Honor and she gratefully accepted.

Back home, my daughter Beng wondered what to do with the baskets. I’m sure she’d be reading this piece and understand who Mayor Verzola was and is, even if she never had the honor of personally meeting Her Honor.

It’s true – some of Mayor Verzola’s greatest acts of good governance  were done without audience, plaque or ceremony. (e-mail:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)