MEDIUM RARE
She was the agenda setter of the group, after all she was one of the three Marias in President Cory Aquino’s media office. Those six years as Assistant Secretary gave her access to people in government who were not afraid to share their opinions with journalists who had too many unanswered questions.
As an aside, I should add that Dee was also adept at keeping out red-hot personalities who would, in her mind, cause embarrassing rather than enlightening moments. It was what the job called for. Any president’s press office is also his or her p.r. agent.
When Cory and Deedee stepped down from their Palace chores, Dee became fulltime (if such was the term) unelected chairman of what eventually came to be known as our Tuesday Bulong Pulungan media forum at Sofitel hotel. It was a job no one would’ve wanted, but Deedee took it on like a duck to water. It was second nature to her, like tracking birthdays, anniversaries, and special events such as touring President Benigno S. Aquino III’s office and dragging him out of there to party with us days before Christmas Day. Such was her talent, combining the soft side of politics with the feminine side of herself, a people person, a mother who was rarely seen without her daughter Sandee or a grandmother given to reporting on the accomplishments of grandson Disney at the drop of a hat.
Professionally, I will always associate Deedee with her Manila Bulletin cronies of long ago – Letty J. Magsanoc, Domini Torrevillas, Ethel Timbol – whether conducting a consumerist column or contributing articles to Panorama Sunday magazine. Later, minus the team and being its sole survivor, as a lifestyle columnist she wrote about civic women and their projects, award-giving bodies and the achievers they honored; whatever the subject, she began each piece with “Angel thoughts.”
I imagined Deedee’s spirit sailing upward toward the brightest full moon of the year last Sept. 29, a fitting tableau for someone who professed only one true love throughout her entire life, her Sonny Siytangco who had built her a love nest in Tagaytay overlooking the lake, who planted jasmine and roses in their garden for her sheer pleasure, that of sniffing their perfume.