WHAT is the secret to aging gracefully? Most people take the path of the good life: enjoying travel, seeing the best doctors, undergoing cosmetic changes, staying in expensive hotels and resorts, and dining in the best restaurants. But there is one person who has chosen a better way: giving her time, effort and resources to help alleviate the plight of the poor.
Isabel Cojuangco-Suntay or Doña Isabel as she is fondly referred to in Tarlac province believes in giving back her blessings to the community. She is now 76.
Belonging to the province’s renowned Cojuangco clan, she recalled how this country has been good to her ancestors and to the Cojuangcos as a whole.
“My paternal great grandfather who was Chinese encouraged his children and grandchildren to be grateful to this country and to see ourselves as Filipinos first and foremost. I think this basic influence drove all the Cojuangcos to be patriotic Filipinos. Over the years, we have had a lot of Cojuangcos in public service,” she said.
Suntay said that as long as she could remember, her grandfather Martin Co migrated from the village of Hongjian, Fujian province, China, now popularly called Xiamen.
Martin’s son was Don Jose Cojuangco I, known among the Cojuangco clan as “Ingkong Jose.” He married Antera Estrella and they had three children: Ysidra, Melecio and Trinidad.
Jose I and his wife valued education for their only son Melecio who pursued his education at San Juan de Letran and then at the University of Santo Tomas. Melecio became a teacher, a graduate of the Escuela Normal de Manila. At age 25, he married Tecla Chichioco, a Chinese mestiza from Malolos, Bulacan, who was his sister Ysidra’s close friend.
Melecio and Tecla had four sons: Jose (better known as Pepe)—born in the ancestral bahay na bato (stone house) in front of the Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan; Juan, Antonio and Eduardo. The last three were all born in Paniqui, Tarlac. Pepe was the father of the late President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, mother of the current President Aquino.
Melecio, then age 36, was listed as Assemblyman Melecio Cojuangco in the directory of the first Philippine Assembly. His life was cut short when on March 13, 1909, he suffered a heart attack after an altercation with an American soldier who tried to grab the seats Melecio bought for his two sons Jose and Juan, in the first-class section of the Manila-Dagupan train line at the Tutuban station in Manila.
Eduardo, the youngest of the four Cojuangco brothers, met the beautiful Josephine Murphy, the “Belle of Baguio” at the baptism of the infant Armand of the Fabella clan, owners of the Jose Rizal College, (now University), in Paris, France. After a courtship of seven years, they married at the Ermita, the Cojuangco family’s chapel and mausoleum in Barangay Abogado, Paniqui. It was the first and only wedding solemnized in the Ermita.
Eduardo Sr. and Josephine (popularly known in Tarlac as Doña Nene), had six living children: Eduardo Jr. (“Danding”), Mercedes (Teodoro), Aurora (Lagdameo), Isabel (Suntay), Enrique and Manuel.
Eduardo Sr. died at the age of 49 from a kidney disease. His eldest, Danding was 16 and Isabel only 12 at the time. The Cojuangco clan headed by Doña Ysidra Cojuangco owned the Philippine Bank of Commerce which was the first Filipino-owned private commercial bank. This was where all the good future bankers trained. In spite of offers to buy the bank after her husband died, the widowed Nene chose not to sell and oversaw the workings of the bank as a caretaker for her six children.
Isabel, the fourth child, was born on November 5, 1939. When World War II ended, she, together with her siblings, attended local public schools in Paniqui. When Catholic private schools reopened in Manila, for her elementary education, she attended Saint Paul’s College for a year, the Assumption Convent in Herran for a year and Saint Scholastica’s College. She married at an early age, was widowed early and became a single parent to three children. Despite being a hands-on mother, she pursued a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration course, graduating magna cum laude.
As her children grew up, she redirected her life and now shares her cause-oriented projects with her doctor-daughter and namesake, Dr. Isabel “Isa” Cojuangco-Suntay.
Having experienced the joys and travails of motherhood, Suntay says her heart goes out to mothers who do not have the resources to send their children to school nor to provide food and the daily needs of their children.
It was the realization that many people in Tarlac need help in terms of starting livelihood projects that in 2007, she founded the Tarlac Heritage Foundation, with Isa as the chairman. This foundation has helped poor Tarlaqueños in countless ways.
The “Belenismo” sa Tarlac, the reenactment of the Nativity scene through the making of belens, is a major project the mother-and-daughter tandem started in 2007. Throughout Tarlac, they have inspired the locals, in the spirit of bayanihan, to build belens.
Even at her age, Suntay would accompany Isa in touring visitors until 3 a.m.
“Do you see how joyful Tarlaqueños are in honoring Jesus and making children happy?” she would enthusiastically tell guests and visitors. She would also urge them to partake what the local belen makers offer: rice cakes, balut, arroz caldo and other home-cooked delicacies. Tarlaqueños always acknowledge her presence in these events.
Aside from Belenismo, the Tarlac Heritage Foundation also promotes the planting of organic vegetables, fruit trees, and medicinal herbs for food and medicine in the backyards of Tarlaqueños. Promoted under the Hardin ng Lunas project, Suntay and Isa have also encouraged military camps to transform their idle lands into productive vegetable and herbal plant gardens to provide extra food and income for soldiers. They have hired experts to teach soldiers how to take care of plants and build fishponds to propagate fish for the soldiers.
The foundation also holds medical missions and animal dispersal projects. Recently, a farmer with 12 children was given his own cow.
Last year, when typhoons devastated Tarlac, the hearts of Doña Isabel and Isa melted for Aytas and the poor who were severely affected by the disaster. This was the reason they chose not to hold the belenismo last year as they wanted to concentrate their efforts and resources in helping disaster victims.
The mother-and-daughter tandem went up rugged mountains to distribute food gifts to the poor. Some of the gifts consisted of fish raised by soldiers in fishponds found in military camps.
“Just imagine these fish were raised by soldiers, some of whom graduated from the Philippine Military Academy,” she said. “The food and goodies for children were handed out to families who were very happy to receive these things for Christmas. I wish I could win the lotto so I could provide for all their needs, fix their roads, so children do not walk for hours to attend school.”
“The Aytas who used to own all these ancestral lands have been driven into the mountains and have to contend with the absence of amenities. I hope all these children will finish school and grow up to be productive citizens,” she said.
“Yes, I hope I have all the money in the world to change lives,” she said.
Special to the BusinessMirror