Once upon a time, on the top floor of the old Hilton Hotel in Malate, Manila, waiters served lunch (or sometimes a very late breakfast) to a group of four gentlemen whom they referred to as the “knights of the round table.”

They were not knights and it was not a round table, but you get the gist. Neither were they your ordinary hotel or dine-in guests. Two of them were bankers, one was the general manager of the Manila International Airport, and the fourth was the commissioner of the Bureau of Immigration.

When word spread that the Manila Hotel was about to be sold by its owner, the government of the Republic of the Philippines, a group of businessmen from another country in Southeast Asia made known its intentions to join the race to acquire the hotel. In the nick of time, they were stopped in their tracks by one of those knights, aka Emilio Yap, who was appalled by the idea that a piece of Manila’s cultural and social history could so readily fall into alien hands.

But Don Emilio was not taking chances. He went to court to seal the deal: The Manila Hotel for the Philippines and Filipinos. And he won – he and the city of Manila and the people of the Philippines. The same Don Emilio who had always seated himself at a spot that afforded him an unimpeded view of the Manila Hotel. The same Don Emilio who, as legend goes, made it a point every night to visit the hotel before his bedtime to make sure that it was in good shape tonight and ready for tomorrow’s guests and visitors.

There’s another story about Don Emilio that only a few know about. A group of ladies were raising funds to start a foundation for firemen injured in the line of duty and firemen who were about to retire from their dangerous line of work. So the ladies paid a visit to Don Emilio. They were not halfway in the middle of their spiel when Don Emilio pulled out his checkbook and without words or a preamble signed a big check for the firemen.

A man of few words whose actions spoke the language of philanthropy loud and clear.