Most Filipinos have probably never heard of the recent additions to Bantayog ng Mga Bayani’s [Monument of Heroes’] Wall of Remembrance. Except for Nemesio Prudente and Sedfrey Ordoñez. But the Bantayog people did well in their choices. Truly, the new ones deserve to have their names not just carved into cold stone but live on in the fire of living memory.

Prudente is long past due there. Few come more awesomely courageous.

The University of the Philippines wasn’t the most activist campus in Greater Manila before martial law, the Philippine College of Commerce (PCC, now Polytechnic University of the Philippines) was. As president, Prudente encouraged liberal, or indeed radical, thought, in the university, which, as was the case the world over, almost inevitably meant leftist thought. The iconic image of the time, from Berkeley to Sorbonne, from Bonn to Rome, was Che Guevarra with his beret and his battle cry “Venceremos!” But PCC, as indeed the University of the Philippines, would go farther, turning radical chic into revolutionary commitment, with glorious and tragic consequences in equal measure.

Prudente himself devoted a lifetime to it, landing in jail for raising a fist at Marcos, and surviving two assassination attempts afterward for continuing to raise a fist at injustice. I remember the second one well. It was not long after Cory took over. Prudente’s van was ambushed at the “tunnel” underneath an overpass in Sta. Mesa, Manila, as it was turning. The ambushers were positioned on both sides of the “tunnel,” and they let loose an avalanche of fire at the van, even hurling a couple of grenades into it. How Prudente managed to survive it (a couple of companions did not) only heaven can tell.

The ambushers were widely believed to have been elements of the Western Police District, who did what they did in retaliation for Prudente’s activities during martial law which they suspected to have caused the deaths of some of their own. That the ambush was carried out in broad daylight with that degree of organization and impunity testified to official collusion or tolerance.

Prudente got back at his tormentors, just like Jovito Salonga, chairman emeritus of Bantayog, at those who blew up Plaza Miranda, by living to a (reasonably) ripe old age.

I’m glad Sedfrey Ordoñez is there. Others of course might wonder what heroic thing he did to deserve the company of people who risked their lives and shed their blood to reclaim lost freedom for their country. But if heroism is reckoned not just by the quality of one’s death but by the quality of one’s life, then Ordoñez has a perfectly good claim to it. Living to a truly ripe old age, he devoted his long years to public service with such exemplary excellence he showed what a Filipino public servant can and should be. He did what few public servants have been able to do, which is serve with honesty, simplicity and humility.

That is no small thing particularly in this day and age, when public servants serve with crookedness, deviousness and arrogance. He held important positions over the years, but never kept a retinue of security, never had himself escorted through the streets of Metro Manila with motorcycle cops blaring sirens, never enriched himself at the public’s expense. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But with some people it seems, power just seems to sit well.

In this time and place, plain decency is heroic. I’m glad Ordoñez is there, if only as a fitting commentary on the state of public service today, if it may still be called that.

The other additions only activists, current and former, will probably not have heard for the first time. They are Lucio de Guzman, Catalino Blas, Alfredo Jasul, Bayani Lontok, Pastor Mesina, Alex Torres and Nimfa del Rosario. Except for De Guman, who was 38 when he died at the hands of his captors, his mutilated body displayed at the town plaza, all the others were in their early 20s when they died from various causes, none of them natural.

The only name that will probably ring a bell to my generation is Pastor Mesina. He was the University of the Philippines chemistry student who was gunned down by a mathematics professor while he manned the barricades during the “Diliman Commune.” His death became a battle cry for academic freedom and sparked more protest actions in its wake.

All the others were killed while fighting martial law in the hills and elsewhere. It is not only their due to be accorded honor for the ultimate sacrifice they took but it is the nation’s due to be accorded a reminder of something vitally important. That is that the liberation of this country did not begin with the death of Ninoy Aquino, it began with the deaths of countless others before him. Or indeed with the struggle that they waged, quite apart from whether they died or not. Ninoy was not alone, “hindi ka nag-iisa,” not just in the figurative sense, in that the people felt his death as their own. He was not alone in the literal sense, in that others had gone where he went later. They had kept the flame of resistance burning, assuring that when the day came, it would leap into a raging fire. Without their deaths, Ninoy’s own would not have resonated the way it did.

In the past, on the occasions some tribute was thrown their way, they have been acknowledged only as a generic crowd, as those who came before, as those who lit the way. Ah, but they had names and faces, too, they had parents and siblings and lovers, too, they had dreams and ambitions and bright futures, too, that they gave up for this country. The Bantayog people did well to put them there, if only to compel us to ask ourselves: Do we want to see these deaths all over again in the next few years?

Hell hath no fury than visits those who do not gaze at walls of remembrances.