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Doña Maria Peña de Romulo

Doña Maria Peña de Romulo

In his lifetime Lolo earned countless honors and wore many hats. He distinguished himself as a soldier, journalist, educator, author, and diplomat—topping each field and moving on to conquer the next. Much has been written and said about his career, but he was first and foremost a devoted son to his mother, Doña Maria Peña de Romulo.

“There was never any doubt in our home as to the real source of family authority,” he wrote in his 1961 autobiography, I Walked with Heroes. “My mother ruled us with a velvet scepter. Small and soft-spoken, she reigned with the discipline of love. She had been a beauty when she was young, and she carried the authority of beauty until she was very old.”

“After MacArthur returned to the Philippines . . . American soldiers liberated Camiling. Frank Hewlitt, interviewing my mother for the United Press, described her as a small woman, widowed, and ‘with the dignity of a Spanish queen.’”

Two and a half years after Liberation, Lolo and his mother reunited at their ancestral home in Camiling, Tarlac, March 7, 1947.

“One of my favorite childhood memories of her is of the day our house caught on fire. Mother calmly called her six children about her, ushered her brood out of the house as sedately as if we were going to church, and stood us in line in the middle of the street. She counted us quickly, ‘One-two-three-four-five-six,’ warned us not to move, went calmly back into the burning house, and came out carrying boxes containing family documents. Putting these down beside us, she made a brisk recount, ‘One-two-three-four-five-six,’ warned us again not to stir, returned into the house, and came back with more valued possessions. She did this again and again until the fire was out, and each time she counted us in line like an army on parade.”1

Born Maria Cabrera Peña on September 2, 1869, in the neighboring province of Pangasinan, she became known as Tia or Lola Titay to younger generations. For young Carlos, however, with her unwavering strength and love, she was undoubtedly one of life’s greatest heroes.

Doña Maria Peña de Romulo (Lola Titay) died less than a year later, on May 24, 1948. Lolo’s eldest son, Carlos, Jr., takes the arm of his grieving father. In the foreground, wearing a black armband, is Lolo’s brother Henry.

1 Carlos P. Romulo, I Walked with Heroes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), pp. 16 – 17.

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Posted in 1941 - 1950, 1961 - 1970, Writing Excerpts

Virginia Llamas

They married on July 1, 1924, in Pagsanjan. He was twenty-six, and she was nineteen.

I never really knew my grandmother Virginia Serapia Vidal Llamas from Pagsanjan; she died before my first birthday. I’m told, however, that she was the quintessential lady—informed, impeccably dressed, and quietly dignified—who in her own words chose to “glow faintly in her husband’s shadow.” Perfectly at ease in Western dress, she preferred to wear the traditional terno, complete with pañuelo. Well-versed in English and Spanish, she preferred to speak Tagalog.

As the story goes, Lolo fell in love with her when he was assigned to be her escort at the Manila Carnival, an annual pre-Easter Mardis Gras with a series of nine balls presided over by the carnival queen. (Lola Virginia, at age sixteen, was voted that year’s queen.) But Lolo already had another love interest, and was caught in a dilemma. How could he act as her prince consort, and, to make matters  even more unbearable, wear a silly costume?

The news reached her that he was reluctant to be her escort (indeed, at first he downright refused to do it), and she let it be known that she was not  pleased. “I was staring at her,” he wrote in his autobiography. “She was so angry and so much prettier than her pictures that I, usually glib of speech, found myself tongue-tied.”1

From I Walked with Heroes: “‘You , an editor!’” my mother said. ‘You, a university graduate, who has been to the United States! Acting as prince consort to a Miss Philippines!’ Then, suddenly suspicious, she demanded, ‘Did she ask for you?’”2 (On the far left is Eugenio Lopez, Sr. Can you identify the others in this photo?)

After two and a half years of courtship, they married on July 1, 1924, in Pagsanjan, and honeymooned in Baguio. They had four sons: Carlos, Jr., (“Mike”) in 1925; Gregorio Vicente (“Greg”) in 1927; Ricardo Jose (“Dick”) in 1933; and Roberto Rey (“Bobby”) in 1938.

Circumstances of war forced them apart seventeen years later, and they had no contact for more than three years. A stoic woman, she never complained and never showed distress—not under the intense conditions of war; not even during her final days in January 1968 while hospitalized for leukemia.

Virginia Llamas, in 1946 or 1947, with her youngest son, Bobby, in front of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Washington, DC.

“Mommy never complained,” said one of her sons to The Daily Mirror. “When she realized the end was near, she looked hard at each of us, one by one, until her eyes rested on Daddy’s face. There was no fear of dying in that look she gave Daddy. Somehow we felt that she was instead trying to convey to him the message that he must be brave . . . that she knew he would suffer losing her but that he must be strong and bear it.”

She died at the age of 62.

1 I Walked with Heroes, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 167
2 I Walked with Heroes, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 166

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Posted in 1941 - 1950, 1961 - 1970, Miscellany

Mask of Friendship

“Among the lessons learned in my lifetime is the ease with which corruption can enter high places in the mask of friendship. Sometimes the recipient is not aware of the barbed hook under the gift; often, he who gives may not know but be the unwitting agent of a craftier mind.”

~ I Walked with Heroes

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Posted in 1961 - 1970, Quips and Quotes

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