‘Recuerdos de Anding Roces’

LAST MONDAY at around 3 p.m., I received a text message from Felice Sta. Maria that read, “Anding Roces is being cremated at the moment. He passed away just before sunrise.”

Before I could whisper a prayer, my mind raced back to our last conversation in his wonderful Dasmariñas Village home. As I walked into his famous front doors of Philippine hardwood, carved by Paete artisans with scenes from Philippine folklore, based on drawings by his friend National Artist Carlos V. “Botong” Francisco, he welcomed me to sit, saying he had been busy composing and working out haikus earlier. Like a child with a new toy, he wanted to share the best of the lot that morning. It went like this: “You only have to die/to know death is a lie.” His thin lips then curled into his trademark smile as his eyes grew smaller and twinkled behind his glasses.

Alejandro R. Roces (1924-2011) was “Anding” who was often confused with his younger painter-writer brother Alfredo “Ding” Roces. He had worn many hats in a long and eventful life that peaked when he served as education secretary in the Cabinet of President Diosdado Macapagal, and again when he was one of the visible figures of dissent during the darkness of the Marcos years. He wrote as he spoke, filling column space with anecdotes from his life and stories drawn from his wide reading and research. He wrote newspaper columns for the old Manila Chronicle and Manila Times and, until June last year, he maintained a column, “Roses and Thorns,” in the Philippine Star.

I knew him and sought him out once for his book “Fiesta” (1980), knowing he also wrote fiction, collected under the naughty title “Of Cocks and Kites” (1959) that contained his most anthologized story, “My brother’s peculiar chicken,” which some people confused with Manuel Arguilla’s “How my brother Leon brought home a wife.” Best known for his stories on cockfighting, he admitted that he had never gambled on this sport, much less entered a cockpit. How did he write those stories? That is another story.

While I trace our first meeting to the mid-1980s when I began writing on Philippine history, Anding would tell all who cared to listen that we had actually met earlier. If fairy tales began with “Once upon a time,” this Anding Roces story was prefaced with “Noong naka-corto ka pa” (When you were still in short pants) and told of how my mother pointed me out on a playground and said, “My son wants to become a writer when he grows up.” Like all mothers she wished I would take on a more lucrative career like medicine, but Anding assured her that it would be all right. He never failed to remind me of that fateful day, declaring with pride, “I took one look at you and knew that would come true.”

Anding Roces had a reputation as a “walking encyclopedia” and we delighted in exchanging obscure, totally useless information. In his later years, each time we met he would always ask me about pre-war Filipino haircuts that were then known as the “Alfonsino corto” and the “Madawaska.” My generation had not heard of these because like all males who had to undergo military training in college, we were terrified of the “3 x 5” (not the index card but a close cut which measured the width of three barber fingers from the ear and five fingers on the back of the head). We were warned against a really short style called “white sidewall” or yet another, the “Aguinaldo cut” that needs no explanation because we all know how the First President of the Philippines looked like. The Alfonsino is really old and based on the profile of the Spanish King Alfonso XIII as it appeared in silver coins. My father’s barber tried to explain the Madawaska to me, but for want of an image I cannot describe how it looks.

As MTRCB chair, Anding Roces often shocked the unwary by introducing himself as the ex-husband of then sexy star Rosanna Roces. Speaking of porn, he often recounted how, at some provincial event, the future National Artist for Dance Lucrecia Urtula was proudly introduced as the “pornographer [choreographer] of the Bayanihan.”

Roces made his mark as education secretary by emphasizing the importance of Philippine history in the life of the nation. During his term he recovered Rizal manuscripts stolen by a National Library employee in 1961 and held for ransom (the full story is in my book “Rizal Without the Overcoat”). He was instrumental in advising then President Macapagal to move our Independence Day from July 4 to June 12. Roces knew his place and gave due credit to Emilio Aguinaldo, without whom we would not have June 12, and Macapagal, without whom we would still be celebrating on July 4 today. Roces needs no drumbeaters, unlike another individual whose memory is being vainly revived as—would you believe it?—“Father of Independence Day!”

When I was asked to help in organizing forthcoming state visits during the tail-end of the Arroyo administration, I sometimes had to act as tour guide for visiting dignitaries. President Arroyo would remind me that in her father’s time it was Anding Roces who played the part.

I remember Anding for his smile, his stories, and his belief that I would someday amount to something. All young writers need encouragement—a curt dismissive word or a frown could nip a dream in the bud. I cannot thank him enough for his kind words at the right time that made a dream bloom into reality.

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