This one’s for the movies... but what a scary experience for my family

    Monday, December 2, 2019.  Our house in the village of Calaitan lies alongside the road that connects the city of Bayugan to some towns of Surigao del Sur due east traversing through a lumber-rich mountainous forest. It is a proposed national highway but during the mid 80s, it was still a private road owned and maintained by the logging company that operated in the area. During this time, I was teaching at the state university in Marawi and my two brothers were working as radio broadcasters in Davao City. Only my younger sisters, a nephew and a niece were in the house with my parents.

     Let me quote what I have written earlier titled ‘Mother’s Day Musings:’ “In those days, no public transport reached our place. But the mobility problem of the farmer residents was somehow eased by the generosity of the company drivers who gave rides to people they pass by hiking on the side of the road or waiting at some designated areas. On many instances you can see a comical but scary sight of dozens of people sitting on top of logs or on top of mounds of gravel of trucks racing at breakneck speed along the unpaved winding road risking lives and limbs. Seat belts were unheard of in our village.”

     One day, an Army sergeant passed by hiking. He was accompanied by a civilian paramilitary man which also served as his close-in security aide.  About one kilometer away from our house, the duo was ambushed by a band of communist rebels. Though they were wounded they were able to return fire and radioed their base in Bayugan for re-enforcement.  The base assured them that re enforcement is coming shortly. A helicopter gunship was also dispatched from the 4th ID headquarters in Cagayan de Oro toward our place.

     On the opposite side of the road fronting our house was a water canal that became so deep at the passing of time due to erosion caused by the constant flow of water in a sloping terrain towards the river below.  At that time the canal was already around 7 feet deep covered with vegetation on the sides. Without the knowledge of my parents and our neighbors, dozens of communist rebels were hiding there that day. They were part of the larger group that ambushed the sergeant an hour earlier.

     When the army soldiers arrived, the rebels engaged them to a firefight right in front of our house. My family dove into the foxhole under our house. That foxhole was dug by my father solely for protection in the event something like this happens. When the helicopter gunship arrived, the rebels scattered and retreated to higher grounds toward the banana plantation and the wooded wilderness beyond where they were methodically and surgically cut down by the helicopter’s automatic fire.

     After the gunbattle, my father checked everyone and thankfully no one was harmed. But our family dog was missing. I forgot the name of that dog now. Perhaps my nephew, Inggo, can help me jog my memory.

     After three days, you could smell the stench of rotting and decaying human flesh from the direction of the banana plantation and beyond. Then they saw our dog weakly coming up from the direction of the river. He looked so emaciated, shivering and was dripping wet.

     Looking back through those tumultuous years, I cannot help but be amazed at times at how my family suffered and survived. I lost a brother, almost lost my mother and a sister. I even almost lost my two other brothers. Each of these episodes have their own story, some are yet to be written.                                      

                                    

A Robbery That Happened In Bohol

     Tiya Leoning was my father’s elder sister. In her younger days, she studied at the Rafael Palma College in Tagbilaran, Bohol. Years later, when the school attained university status, it was renamed the University of Bohol which is still existing until this day. During weekends and other non-school days, Tiya Leoning would stay at her first cousin’s home in Calunasan in the town of Calape to help the family tend their their sari-sari store at the ground floor of their two-storey house which is the largest in the village. Her cousin, Isidoro and his wife, Felomina, had two college-age daughters Demy and Winnie who were  at  home  that time. A third daughter, Lily was in Cebu studying Medicine.

    On the evening of March 29, 1963, after a busy day, the family retired in their respective bedrooms in the upper floor after closing the doors and windows and extinguishing off all the available lights. Not long after, Isidoro heard a noise somewhere in the house. He called on Filomena who was in the adjoining room and requested her to light up the gas lamp nearby to check what’s happening. As soon as the light brightened the room, she realized that she was facing a gun pointed at her by an unknown man. The man asked Filomena for her money. Filomina gave the man her cash box with ten pesos inside. When the man saw that the cash box only contained  ten pesos, he got mad, pointed the gun closer and even pulled her blouse violently. Then the man entered the adjoining room where Isidoro was standing with hands raised and shot him. He also shot Filomina but missed. He then pushed Felomina out of the room.

    Another  man outside demanded that the door be opened. The intruder inside ordered Filomena to open the door and came in the second man with a revover and a flashlight. There was a third man outside acting as a look-out who would fire his gun every now and then to scare away any neighbor that might come to the family’s aid.

    Filomena and the rest of the house occupants: her two daughters, Tiya Leoning, her niece named Anastacia and a 10-year old nephew Cesario were all herded in the living room while the two men ransacked all the rooms, drawers and cupboards, looking for money and other valuables. After a while, the look-out outside shouted to his companions, “Let’s go, na, Bai, I am running low on ‘seeds’ (meaning, ‘bullets’).”

    After the men left, they checked on each other and thanked God that nothing happened to them physically except for Filomena who was sustaining a head wound caused by the butt of the gun inflicted on her by the first intruder. But Isidoro was not there among them. So they searched the whole house. In one corner, was a mound of  clean laundry while the basket which used to contain them  was overturned nearby. The daughters began to pick up the laundry. That’s when they discovered that those laundry were used by the killers to hide the body of Isidoro sprawled on the floor, bloody and dead. 

    A few days later, the robbers were nabbed by the authorities in the nearby town of Ubay. The police identified them through the physical descriptions provided by Filomena. They were thrown in jail and the protracted legal battle began.

     Isidoro has a cousin in Cebu who is a lawyer. He was the only lawyer of the family at that time. He finished law in the University of the Philippines a few years earlier and passed the bar exam the previous year. The task of assisting the government lawyers prosecute the case fell on his shoulders.

    On July 26 of that year, the Court of First Instance of Bohol, Branch 1 convicted the three robbers. They were meted the harshest penalty: death by electric chair.  Fourteen years later, on October 18, 1977, the Supreme Court of the Philippines en banc affirmed the decision of the lower court.

    The family lawyer who helped prosecute the case gradually rose to prominence. Eventually, he would become the 20^th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. On June 30, 2004, he officiated the swearing in of President Gloria Arroyo after Erap Estrada was ousted by the People’s Power, Part 2. After his retirement, he was appointed by Arroyo as the Philippines’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations. His name is Hilario Gelbolingo Davide Jr.

 

A pose with the 20th Chief Justice when I visited him at his residence in Cebu in 2016 with cousin Estrella Herbolingo Melgazo from Australia

Courtesy call on Governor Hilario Davide III at his office in Cebu Provincial Capitol. Beside me is Atty. Orvi Ortega, provincial legal officer. At the governor's left side is Jessie Melgazo, my childhood friend and neighbor.