DLSU honors Ninoy and Cory

For the second year in a row, De La Salle University paid tribute to the late Senator Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, Jr. with a tight program of iamninoy activities at the Taft campus on the week of his birthday. This time, the La Sallian community also honored beloved President Corazon (Cory) Aquino, who passed away last Aug. 1. 

The commemorative activities, built around the theme of sacrifice and heroism, began with the offering of Holy Mass in honor of Ninoy and Cory at the Pearl of Great Price chapel on Nov. 24.

Victoria Elisa (Viel) Aquino Dee, third daughter of Ninoy and Cory Aquino, highlighted the main program at the Yuchengco lobby with a personal account of her father’s transformation following his martial law imprisonment.

Last year, President Cory herself keynoted the main program during Ninoy’s 76th birthday. Br. Armin Luistro FSC, president of DLSU-Manila, recalled the occasion with gratitude and pride as this turned out to be one of her last public appearances. He urged the youth to continue to dream of great things for the nation—particularly now that their minds are still long on hope and short on frustration—and to draw inspiration from the heroism of Filipinos like Ninoy and Cory Aquino.

Viel thanked DLSU and the iamninoy guests for keeping the memory of Ninoy Aquino alive, adding that while his martyrdom has turned him into a larger-than-life hero, he can be better appreciated in the context of a full life that was inevitably imperfect.   

“The Dad we knew in the 60s and early 70s, with his imperfections, would never have been voted as the “World’s Best Dad”, she remarked.  “At the height of his political career, which coincided with the period spanning my birth and my growing-up years, my dad was hardly ever there.  A typical week day at home would begin with my brilliant charmer of a father entertaining guests early in the morning.  The rest of the day, we’d be in school, while he’d be busy delivering a speech here, attending a meeting there, standing as godfather to the son of an important constituent, or else poring over piles of documents in preparation for the next bill he would co-sponsor or for the next exposé he would deliver.   We’d be lucky to see him the following morning, when the cycle would begin all over again.”

On September 23, 1972, with the declaration of martial law, Senator Aquino was arrested—along with President Marcos’ other political opponents, critics and activists jailed—and would spend the next seven years in prison.

“I was 11 years old then and didn’t know what was going on, other than the disruption of our family routine and the prospect that I might see my father even less often,” Viel explained. “Surprisingly, what happened was quite the opposite.  Every Wednesday afternoon, Ballsy, Pinky, Noy and I would even skip two class periods, so we could visit Dad at Fort Bonifacio...We looked forward to weekends, especially Sundays, when we could spend much of the day with him…We somehow felt more like a family while Dad was in prison, and this was the strange reality that baby Kris woke up to.”

During this period, Viel, her mother and her siblings “learned to speak in codes and to smuggle out Dad’s letters and articles written on onion skin paper and rolled up in candy wrapper.” When his clever attempts to communicate with the underground opposition and the foreign press were uncovered by the martial law regime, Ninoy was secretly placed in solitary confinement Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija early in 1973.

“That, in my opinion, was the biggest turning point in Dad’s life,” Viel said. When his family finally got to see him at Laur, they were shocked to see his condition. “I could hardly recognize his unshaven face, and he was so thin that he had to hold on to his pants to keep them from falling,” she recalled. “For the first time, I saw my father crying.  In his solitude, however, he rediscovered God and the value of family.  Not knowing if he would ever see us again, he made a pact with Mom that we would pray the rosary as a family—he in his cell and we at home or wherever we were—at eight every evening.”

After his Laur ordeal, Ninoy became a better human being—and father. “During my graduation from Grade 7 in 1975, he showed up by surprise to personally pin my medal after negotiating with the authorities that he be allowed to attend the ceremony,” Viel recounted. “Dad had so much time on his hands that he would sometimes go overboard in helping me with my homework.  In one instance, he practically wrote my third year high school paper on Rizal, complete with footnotes and very heavy analysis and I had to tell him that there was no way that his output would pass for my work.” 

“We drew even closer as a family when my father was forced into exile in Boston after his heart surgery,” she continued. “When he was not giving lectures at Harvard or MIT or entertaining guests, Dad would do what dads normally do: wash the car, bathe the dogs, rake the leaves, shop for groceries and take out the garbage.  He also indulged our silly wishes every now and then.  Ballsy and I were huge Celtics fans, and fortuitously Boston won the NBA championship two out of the three years we lived there. After Larry Bird and company won one of the trophies on the road, we pleaded with Dad to drive us to the airport to join the welcoming crowd—and he did!”

Just when it seemed like the Aquinos had found normalcy, Ninoy decided to return to Manila on August 21, 1983. His assassination at the airport defined the destiny of his family and changed the course of Philippine history.

“With Dad’s sacrifice, one consolation I imagined was that at least our family could now get out of politics,” Viel concluded wistfully. “That was really wild imagination since I couldn’t have been more wrong.  But I have hope that maybe my children’s children still have a shot at living ordinary lives.”

The day’s celebration was capped by the opening of the photo exhibit on Ninoy Aquino with Viel and Br. Bernie Oca, FSC, vice chancellor for La Sallian missions and external relations, cutting the ceremonial ribbon.