150 Years. 150 Things About the Ateneo. (101−150)

This is the last of a three part series on 150 things about the Ate­neo. It’s dif­fi­cult to exhaust every­thing about the Ate­neo; so this is not an attempt at exhaust­ing every­thing about it, it is an attempt to show­case the beauty, and the his­tory, as well as talk about triv­ial things we prob­a­bly do not know about it. I hope it helps all of us Ate­neans (and even those who aren’t) cel­e­brate our expe­ri­ence and cel­e­brate the great­ness of who we are, what we stand for.

This is what we are about. This is the Ate­neo Way.

GO TO PART 1 (1−50). PART 2 (51−100).

The story of the Ate­neo de Manila will not be com­plete with­out men­tion­ing the other Ate­neo and Jesuit schools around the coun­try (there are nine as of last count includ­ing Ate­neo de Manila):

101. The Ate­neo de Zam­boanga began in 1912 as Escuela Catolica, a parochial school run by Span­ish Jesuits at the old site of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Church, right across the Sunken Gar­den. Fr. Manuel Sauras, S.J. was the first direc­tor. In 1916, the Escuela Catolica became the Ate­neo de Zamboanga.

102. Ate­neo de Cagayan or Xavier Uni­ver­sity in Cagayan de Oro City opened in 1933 with just 17 pupils enrolled in first year high school.

103. At the request of the Most Rev­erend Luis del Rosario S.J., Bishop of Zam­boanga, which then included Davao, the Jesuit Fathers took over St. Peter’s Parochial School and founded the Ate­neo de Davao in 1948.

104. The Ate­neo de Naga Uni­ver­sity is a pri­vate uni­ver­sity in Naga City in the province of Camarines Sur, Philip­pines. It was estab­lished in 1940.

105. Sacred Heart School-Jesuit was built in 1954 along Gen. Max­ilom Ave., Cebu City. The school trans­ferred to a much big­ger cam­pus in Can­du­man, Man­daue City, Cebu in 2007.

106. In 1958, with nine stu­dents as enrollees, Frs. Andrew Joliet, a French Jesuit, and San­ti­ago Leon, a Span­ish Jesuit, act­ing as Founder/Director and Prin­ci­pal respec­tively, opened a parochial school that came to be known as Sta. Maria Catholic School (SMCS). In 2004, the school offi­cially became known as Ate­neo de Iloilo-Sta Maria Catholic School.

107. Founded in 1956 as Kuang Chi School by a group of Jesuits expelled from China, Kuang Chi School opened its doors on June 6 of that year. Kuang Chi School was named after Paul Hsü Kuangchi, Min­is­ter of Rites dur­ing the Ming Dynasty. Xavier School cur­rently bears the name of St. Fran­cis Xavier.

108. In 1939, the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment rec­og­nized and autho­rized the oper­a­tion of Culion Catholic Pri­mary School, run by the Jesuits. It The estab­lish­ment of this first pri­vate edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion in Culion, Palawan, was made pos­si­ble under the aus­pices of the Soci­ety of Jesus (Jesuits). It was exclu­sively for the vic­tims of lep­rosy, until the mid-50’s, with the enact­ment of the Lib­er­al­iza­tion Law for Lep­ers. The demand for higher learn­ing was the clamor of the time; thus, the school was expanded by hav­ing a sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. Con­se­quently, from 1951 to 1955, it was named St. Ignatius High School. In 1962, it was ele­vated to an acad­emy, thus, was renamed St. Ignatius Acad­emy. And later on, with the estab­lish­ment of a Col­lege, it was named St. Ignatius Col­lege, but was changed later to its present name, Loy­ola Col­lege of Culion.

109. Jesuit edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions in the Philip­pines which are no longer exist­ing:

• Ate­neo de San Pablo: San Pablo, Laguna. Founded 1947. Closed 1978.
• Ate­neo de Tugue­garao: Tugue­garao, Cagayan. Founded 1945. Closed 1962.
• Berch­mans Col­lege of Cebu: Cebu City. Founded 1949. Closed 1963.
• Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion School: Oza­miz, Mis­amis Occi­den­tal. Founded 1929. Closed 1939
• Cole­gio de San Ilde­fonso: Cebu City. Founded 1595. Closed 1769
• Uni­ver­si­dad de San Igna­cio: Manila. Founded 1590. Closed 1768

[110–111 are notes from Lam­berto J.V. Tajon­era, G.S. 54, H.S. 58, A.B. 62]

110. 1948–1954: The Age of Inno­cence: “We stand on the hill…”

We started our Ate­neo edu­ca­tion in 1948 as Grade One pupils cor­ralled into two sec­tions, sec­tion A under Mr. Flo­rendo Gar­cia and sec­tion B under Mr. Jesus Villanueva.

For the next six years of our lives we would wear khaki pants, white shirts with the “Lux in Domino” patch sewn on our left breast pock­ets. In our hip pock­ets were two impor­tant items: our rosary beads and 25 cen­tavos which took care of our hot dog sand­wich and Coke, or Clic­quot Club dur­ing recess time. In Octo­ber, our school uni­form included the com­pul­sory Octo­ber medal.

In our inno­cence, we believed the Padre Faura ruins were the coolest play­ground for our fan­tasies. We fought with John Wayne in Iwo Jima before he was shot and killed. We were cow­boys chas­ing and being chased by Cochise and a horde of Apaches. We helped Errol Flynn rout Black­beard and his pirates. It wasn’t the ruins. It was our imagination.

We believed that Acme Super­mar­ket was cre­ated for our comic-reading plea­sure and bub­ble gum-chewing delight, for free. We would dash to Acme dur­ing recess, speed-read the lat­est Cap­tain Mar­vel and Super­man comics, pocket a Toot­sie Roll or Dou­ble Bub­ble gum when the sales­clerk wasn’t look­ing and then dash back to school and brag about our loot. Some would swap a Toot­sie Roll for 5 sigays and 10 teks and 5 bal­imb­ing mar­bles. Some would sim­ply sell a Roll for 5 centavos.

We believed that our school­mates who felt Father Max­imo David’s “yan­tok Min­doro” on their butts were the real tough guys in the Ate­neo. As a badge of honor, these “toughies” would walk around mas­sag­ing their butts even long after the pain had gone.

We believed that Luis “Moro” Lorenzo was the best bas­ket­ball player in the world as we watched him take prac­tice shots in the sawali-walled gym. We would look in awe as Poch Estella, Oli Orbeta, Rusty Cacho and Chole Gas­ton scrimmaged.

We believed every­thing taught us in reli­gion class and pitied our Chi­nese class­mates who would never go to heaven because we thought they were not Catholic.

111. In those days, life was sim­ple. We saw life as either black or white, mor­tal sin or sanc­ti­fy­ing grace, good or bad, angel or devil. Our eye­sight was a per­fect 20/20, and sharp. We believed our eye­sight would never dim with age because we would be for­ever young.

We were also sure that the 1953–54 Blue Eagles of Tiny Lit­eral, Bay Balles­teros and Frankie Rabat would win the NCAA cham­pi­onship and beat the San Beda Red Lions of Caloy Loyzaga and Loreto Car­bon­nel. And our guys won — because our nightly prayers and weekly masses did it. Our basic belief: Ate­neo had to win or God did not love us.

Black and white. We never saw the other tones, the sub­tle shades of gray. After all, we were young, and young meant pure of heart. We were uncom­pro­mis­ing. We were res­olute. And by golly, we were more zeal­ous than Saul of Tar­sus. We were vir­tu­ous and inno­cent, euphemisms for naïve and inex­pe­ri­enced. So what. That was our right.

We pos­sessed a moral cer­tainty and smug­ness still unblem­ished, untouched and untried by the sor­rows and ugli­ness of the real world. We were above it all. We were stand­ing on the hill. We were the last grade school grad­u­at­ing class in the Padre Faura cam­pus in 1954, and we were ready to go down, nay, to gal­lop and romp down the hill like Hopa­long Cas­sidy and the Lone Ranger to com­bat the chal­lenges and unknowns of our high school years. And we did.

1958. It was the year we grad­u­ated from high school. That made us the last high school grad­u­ates of the Ateneo’s first cen­tury. Those four years of our lives opened our eyes to God’s most exquis­itely inspired cre­ation, girls our age. Our eyes opened wider in won­der­ment when we were told by our Stu­dent Coun­selors that we were going through a phase called puberty.

We were like Adam and Eve when they dis­cov­ered — first the apple, then each other, then the plea­sur­able knowl­edge of each other and finally, the neces­sity for the fig leaves. Like Adam and Eve, we never knew what puberty was. We just felt it. And many of us acted on it with alacrity and pleasure.

Our first two years in high school were spent in today’s Col­lege cam­pus where we had a clear view of Katipunan Avenue, the Pink House, Eagle’s Nest and St. Joseph’s Hall. No build­ings obstructed our view then. In our junior year, we trans­ferred to the high school cam­pus over­look­ing Marik­ina Val­ley and the rooftops of bawdy houses in Calumpang.

In our first and sec­ond years, we learned our Latin declen­sions and con­ju­ga­tions as we chanted the mantra of “a ae ae am a, ae arum is as is” and then strug­gled through Caesar’s Gal­lic bat­tles. In junior and senior years, we went on to Cicero and even now, we still remem­ber “Quo usque tan­dem abutere Catilina pati­en­tia nos­tra…” The more advanced guys in hon­ors class were into Virgil’s “Arma virumque cano Tro­jae…” We hated this dead lan­guage then, but Latin in later years helped us in log­i­cal think­ing and expanded our Eng­lish vocabulary.

113. As a part of our mem­ory trove of those days, this is what our par­ents spent for our 4^th year in high school (1958):

Annual tuition – P 300.00
Lab­o­ra­tory Fees – 40.00
Diploma Fee – 10.00
Text­book Rental – 25.00
Activ­i­ties Fee – 40.00
Blue Book – 15.00
Locker Fee – 5.00
Total expenses for the year – P 435.00

Our chil­dren will be cry­ing over their latte when they com­pare 435-pesos with 100,000 pesos for our grandchildren’s high school edu­ca­tion, with no Latin.

We were between two worlds – the world of grade school child-like inno­cence where swip­ing a wad of bub­ble gum from Acme Super­mar­ket was the acme of adven­ture, and the world of high school “sophis­ti­ca­tion” and exper­i­men­ta­tion — girls, smok­ing, drink­ing, first dance, first kiss, fake side­burns, low-waist pants, blue movies, live shows.

114. For teach­ers and men­tors, we had Mr. Dimasan­gal and his mem­o­rable “Que mas, bal­a­subas?” and laughed at Mr. Alinea’s Tam­polano sto­ries, and oohed at Mr. Pagsanghan’s dra­matic read­ing of Father de la Costa’s “Jew­els of the Pau­per” which every­body had to memorize.

Mr. Ocampo, a.k.a. GRO, implanted in our brains his own jew­els of knowl­edge which many of us still remem­ber, Alzheimer’s or old age notwith­stand­ing. We still remem­ber GRO jew­els like: easy to remem­ber mem­ory aid on the 11 phyla in Biol­ogy class – PP-CC-PN-AAMEC, and M VEM J SUN P for the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem in cor­rect sequence, and his clas­sic Taga­log pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the alpha­bet as in the rhyth­mic “Ka In Na, Ta In Na, Kintin,” and “Ba O, Ta E – bote.”

115. We felt pious and sin­ful at the same time. We always had an unex­plained tin­gle in our bod­ies when­ever we saw pho­tos of Rita Hay­worth, Kim Novak and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe show­ing more skin than clothes. We’d go ape over Rhonda Fleming’s exposed thighs.

At night we enter­tained dozens of excit­ingly impure thoughts until our Catholic con­science made us feel guilty. We knew con­fes­sion was the only way to avoid hell. So with the excep­tion of Grupo58’s sodal­ists and acolytes, 95% of us con­fessed to either Father Eli­azo or Father Pol­lock, and these two Jesuits, in their wis­dom, always saved us from hell with a penance of three Hail Marys, no mat­ter how often we dis­obeyed the sixth commandment.

The bargain-priced penance would never be enjoyed by non-Ateneans of our days, mak­ing Grupo58 a lucky bunch of habit­ual sin­ners indeed. This would go on week after week, a spir­i­tual cycle of Pas­sion, Death and Res­ur­rec­tion, sin and for­give­ness, hell and heaven, impure thoughts and con­fes­sion, the two beloved Jesuits and their penance of three Hail Marys and voila, sal­va­tion. Alleluia.

In the ath­letic world, the 1957–58 Blue Eagles, led by Bobby Lit­taua, Jimmy Pes­tano and Ed Ocampo, steam­rolled all the NCAA teams and made mince­meat of the Mapua Car­di­nals in the final game to nail that year’s NCAA cham­pi­onship. We even believed that our grad­u­a­tion years were Ateneo’s lucky years in bas­ket­ball. First it was 1954, now 1958. Our col­lege grad­u­a­tion year in 1962 was sure to bring us the cham­pi­onship. That, we firmly believed. So, it shall be done.