A tribute to a favorite teacher

Before teachers’ month ends, I would like to pay tribute to my favorite teacher in high school. She probably doesn’t remember me, just one of thousands of students she had taught, but I will never forget her.

Her name now is Sr. Cecelia Wood, but when she came to our school one bright day many years ago, her name was Sr. Stephen Marie. Maryknoll sisters had to adopt names of saints with the prefix Mary or the suffix Marie.

Sr. Stephen Marie was a 26-year-old nun straight from the “motherhouse” in Ossining, New York, when she came to our school, St. James Academy in Malabon. It was her first assignment.

She was very beautiful, and we all had a crush on her. Tall and slim, in her white habit and black peaked cowl and rimless spectacles, we thought she looked like Ingrid Bergman in the movie “Bells of St. Mary’s” where Bergman played a nun.

She became my favorite teacher because she lent me books from the school library when she found out I liked to read. (She taught literature.)

Then she suggested that I write for the school publication and I wrote my very first short story, a horror story because I was reading Edgar Allan Poe. I put all the clichés in horror stories there—a black cat crossing the path of the character, church bells tolling 13, dogs howling and bats flying, the character walking under a ladder—and him being drawn inexorably into a church cemetery, just like the cemetery at the back of the church beside our school in Malabon.

The next day, he was found dead there, his face twisted in terror. Nobody knew what he saw or how he died.

Apparently, my classmates liked the story. Encouraged, I wrote another dark story, how the bat originated.

It was a beautiful but vain woman who made a pact with the devil so that her beauty would not fade. When the time to pay up came, her ears became bat ears, her teeth became fangs, her beautiful fingernails became claws, and her flimsy gown became bat wings. She was so ashamed of her looks that she hid during the day and came out only at night.

My classmates liked that story, too, but Sister Stephen didn’t. She urged me to write about another subject. That was the height of the Hukbalahap uprising, and so I wrote about a farmer the Huks tried to convince to join them, but he just wanted to be left alone to work his farm. Finally, the Huks shot him.

I submitted the story to the Philippines Free Press. Meanwhile, at Sister Stephen’s suggestion, I had enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas. My father wanted me to take an architecture course at the Mapua Institute of Technology, but Sister Stephen suggested that I pursue a course in journalism at the UST. I followed her advice. I am glad I did.  I don’t think I would have been as happy as an architect.

So UST it was, and during my freshman year there, I walked from an apartment on Lepanto to the university. On each day that the Free Press came out, I would pick up a copy of the magazine from a newsstand and look inside to see if my story was there. When I didn’t see it, I would return the magazine and walk to school, feeling sad and disappointed.

Then one day, I opened the Free Press and my short story was there. My heart leaped up and I immediately bought the copy and continued my way to school.

When I entered the room for Paz Latorena’s short story class, there was a sudden burst of clapping and cheering. I was surprised, but Miss Latorena explained: “Yes, we have seen it. Congratulations.”

A day later, I received a short note from Sister Stephen. “Congratulations,” it said, “write more.” I did. After graduation, I was hired by the Manila Chronicle for its Sunday magazine This Week, along with some of my barkada at UST.  For that, I have to thank Sister Stephen.

I lost contact with Sister Stephen after I graduated. I learned later that she was transferred as principal to the Maryknoll Academy in Lucena, Quezon. Then she returned to the United States and entered medical school and became a doctor in 1974.

She returned to the Philippines in 1977 to teach at a Jesuit-run medical school in Davao City. When she heard of a disabled young man living alone in a shack, Sister Stephen, now already Sr. Cecelia Wood, paid him a visit. He had fallen from a coconut tree and was paralyzed from the waist down.

That was a fateful visit. She sent the young man to a hospital for a month, but when his condition did not improve, she asked the Jesuits if they could rent a house so she could take care of him and two other disabled youths. One month later, she was taking care of 20 disabled children; three months later, they were 35.

That was the start of the Our Lady of Victory Training Center (OLVTC) in Davao. In 1981, Sister Cecelia and two other Maryknoll nuns, Sr. Maria del Rey (also one of my favorite teachers in Geometry) and Sr. John Irene Mahoney decided to open the OLVTC in a rented house.

The OLVTC, through the efforts of Sister Cecelia, her Maryknoll sisters, and a Filipino board of trustees, and with donations from philanthropists, now has three sites in Davao taking care of thousands of disabled children in Davao and neighboring areas, teaching them occupations that can support them outside. The doctors and staff of the training center are all former students of Sister Cecelia.

I would not have known all of this had not a friend, Monina Allarey Mercado, texted me that there is a coffee-table book on Sister Cecelia, now 90 years old, and that I should get a copy considering “how fondly I remember her.”

I came home one night and found the book waiting for me. I immediately leafed through it, and there Sister Stephen was, 90 years old but still beautiful.