SAILING across the 8,200 miles of the moody Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Manila in a cramped, converted cattle ship would probably be nobody’s idea of a pleasure trip. But come they did, the 600 American public school teachers, dubbed the Thomasites, after the christened name of the vessel that bore them on their journey.
Motivated by the lure of higher pay and the call of adventure, those brave young men and women readily embraced the perils and hardship of the assignments handed to them that sweltering August of 1901.
A lot were scattered to even the most remote and hostile regions of the still war-torn archipelago. Many expecting at least rudimentary classrooms found none at all and had to begin teaching their classes under the shade of trees like the ancient Greek philosophers.
Those who did find the beaten and worn down husks of school structures at times found them even less conducive than teaching in the open, reporting attics inhabited by bats, centipedes and spiders, which would, at times fall, on their own and their students heads or desks, while classes were conducted.
Ingenuity had to often be resorted to like using bamboo shafts for bats and balls made of hemp covered by cloth to teach students the sport of baseball. They were not always welcomed. One amused teacher reported that the local parish priest and an entourage came over to exorcise him and his classroom. Others assigned in regions notorious for bandits wore holstered side arms to and from school reminiscent of the Wild, Wild West.
One such pioneering soul was Horatio C. Smith, my husband’s great-grandfather, assigned to Isabella in Northern Luzon. Horatio, born in May of 1878 and hailing from Alamo California, had a degree in engineering and was the first of his family to graduate from college.
He settled down in the quiet town of Echague, where he met and married a Filipina of mixed Portuguese and Yogad ancestry, Pilar Pereira. He trained a number of Filipino teachers whom he distributed and supervised throughout his assigned area.
In December 1918, under the provisions of the American compulsory education act, Horatio finally established the first sizable school in the area, the Echague Farm School. Consisting of a four-room academic building and a home-economics structure, it started with 10 teachers and could accommodate 100 pupils from fifth to seventh grade, studying elementary agriculture.
Before long, enrollment grew to 300 students, requiring the hiring of more teachers and a farm manager. By 1925, the campus expanded to include a modest library building, a granary, a poultry and swine building garden houses and even a nursery. Today, a sprawling educational institute, the Isabella State University stands in place of the little farm-school campus, proudly owing its origin to Professor Smith.
Despite his efforts, he was not always appreciated and narrowly escaped a plot to murder him, as his would be assassins mistook some other poor soul to be him. The hostility has been attributed to the lack of personnel the United States government had to assign to his area, forcing him to wear the hat of the local tax collector, as well, who are universally often not well loved to start with.
Horatio and his wife Pilar had four children: Ruth, William, Ernest and Elizabeth. Unfortunately, he was widowed early on, and his eldest daughter, at the young age of 13, had to take care of her young siblings.
He, eventually, moved to Manila with his children. Ruth and William, after marrying, stayed on in Manila and had families of their own, while Ernest and Elizabeth moved to the US and much is known of them.
Horatio would visit and stay lengthily with Ruth, her married name being Warne, and her family in Paco. Her children remember him as a kind man who would readily help those in need and who would always encourage them to finish their studies.
Unfortunately, the war caused Ruth’s eldest daughter, Virgie, to stop her studies in piano, but she clearly recalls to this day her grandfather’s advise. She remembers other anecdotes: He could not stand bagoong and would complain loudly when he could smell it being cooked in their home during one of his extended visits, preferring to have his petchay sautéed with bacon instead. That he was always very careful about sterilizing everything he used, such as utensils, not wanting to contaminate any of his loved ones with tuberculosis.
His long lingering tuberculosis took its toll, providing much suffering and caused him to be confined first at the Quezon Institute, then San Juan de Dios, and, finally, at the Emmanuel Cooperative Hospital in Tondo, where he died of complications on February 24, 1943, while the nation was under the oppression of the Japanese empire.
Virgie, being the eldest among the Warnes, remembers that her family members all lined up to say their good-byes at his deathbed. She also relates that he had strongly expressed his desire to be buried under the US flag, therefore, the Warne’s kept his ashes in their home and finally buried the urn in the Thomasite plot at the North Cemetery, wrapped in the American flag in 1957.
Earlier memories of family life have been lost with the demise of his children, but we know that he certainly passed on his technical prowess to his descendants, his second child being William A.P. Smith, an institution in the local film industry.
But that is another story.
— Co-Written with Richard Roxas Smith