PAGBABAGO
Maring Feria and Rustica Carpio, who recently passed away, were two remarkable nonagenarians with a legacy that is difficult to match. Remembering them means bringing back memories of the 50’s up to the dangerous times of the 70’s.
Maring, patriot, and social action advocate, died at 93. She had told me earlier when I mentioned that I go to my doctor for regular consultations that she hadn’t been to a hospital or doctor’s clinic for a long time. Thus at 80 plus at that time, she was not taking any medication.
Rusty passed away on Feb. 1, I was shocked to learn about it as I had just posted on Facebook a picture of the two of us taken during a book launch at National Artist Frankie Sionil Jose’s bookshop in 2012. UP sociology professor and my former dorm mate Belen Tan Gatue Medina replied to the post saying Rusty is her first cousin. A few hours later, she texted again saying that Rusty had just passed on at 91.
Maring and I had been together in several development advocacies. I had known her since the Martial Law days when we marched at the “parliament of the streets.” She and her sister Teresa Nieva were the first ones I saw on day one at EDSA. We were members of the Concerned Women of the Philippines led by founder, Nini Quezon Avancena, together with Teresa, Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma, Charo Roxas-Moran, Bing Escoda Roxas, Sally Boncan, Lita Jose, Aleg Francisco, Cely M. Aquino, Thelma Arceo, Evelyn Kilayko, among others. We would later meet again as members of the Meralco Foundation and the Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma Foundation boards.
That Maring was a gutsy patriot with a heart for the poor, had been shared in several narratives – her having donned a nun’s habit and smoking a cigarette while assisting Charito Planas’ attempted escape to exile, and helping several other anti-Martial law luminaries including the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Raul Manglapus from being arbitrarily detained. She would later become the latter’s chief of staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Instead of gifts, her Christmas card would state that her gift to us had been sent to needy communities. She shared the same devotion to the causes that her bosom friend, Sister Christine Tan had embraced. The latter, a fellow member of the Constitutional Commission who had a firm stance against authoritarian rule was the first Filipino head of the Province of the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS) as well as the Association of the Major Religious Superiors of Women in the Philippines. Sr. Christine spent many months of some 26 years living with residents of an impoverished community in the Malate area.
Maring will be missed especially by her friends from NASSA (National Secretariat for Social Action) and her buddies in ballroom dancing.
My friendship with Rusty (her students call her Ma'am Tikang), dates back as early as the mid-fifties when we were both in stage plays. At that time, what they describe as the “legitimate theatre) were plays written by Shakespeare orby Filipino playwrights like Severino Montano, Wilfrido Guererro and Alberto Florentino who also handled direction. We both acted in a play, Rigodon, an award winning play written and directed by Tony Bayot. We re-connected later when we discovered we had followed a similar course – communication, in graduate school.
An award-winning movie actress (she starred in the lead role of Brillante Mendoza’s “Lola” which won the Best Actress award during the 33rd Gawad Urian in 2010 and competed in several film festivals), Rusty is best remembered for her “mature” roles. Earlier however, she had played ingenue parts like Leonor Rivera and Lady Macbeth. A well-loved teacher, she was author, director, playwright, scholar, literary critic, Dean of the College of Communication at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), and lecturer in communication at the Far Eastern University and the University of Sto. Tomas. She was also a board member of MTRCB and a TOFIL (The Outstanding Filipino) awardee for arts and literature in 2008.
Farewell Maring and Rusty until we meet again.
My email, [email protected]