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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The Diary

My great-grandfather’s diary, dating from 1895, tells us many things. For one, Carlos P. Romulo was born in Intramuros; not in Camiling. (Though he did grow up in Camiling.) In honor of his birthday, which is today, I took a close look at the pages pertaining to the day he was born—and immediately got stuck.

I’d like to ask for your help in deciphering some of the handwriting and the language. (Keep reading. You can win a prize from Romulo Café!)

En 14 de Enero de 1898 hora de las cuatro menos cuarto de la tarde (Viernes) Salía de su cuidado mi esposa á Dios Gracias con felicidad dando á luz un niño en esta casa la Legaspi Nº 19 (Intramuros) y á los nueve días de nacido le mandé bautizar, fué apadrinado por Don Enrique Llopis y Becerra (abogado) Su bautizo fué el dia

On 14 of January 1898 at 3:45 pm (Friday) my wife, thank God, happily gave birth to a boy in the house Legaspi No. 19 (Intramuros) and nine days after his birth he was baptized, his godfather Don Enrique Llopis y Becerra (lawyer). His baptism was on a










Domingo por la tarde entre 6 y 7 de la tarde de fha. 23 del mismo mes, se le ha puesto por nombre los siguientes; Cárlos, Enrique Gregorio Felix fuimos á la Parroquia de la Sta. Iglesia Catedral con los Sres. Llopis (padrino) Rodriguez y Paredes como (illegible) ambos abogados mi Madre y mi cuñada Paz.

Sunday in the afternoon between 6:00 and 7:00 pm on the 23rd day of the same month. He was named Carlos. Enrique Gregorio Felix, we went to the Parish of Sta. Iglesia Catedral with Mr. Llopis (godfather), Mr. Rodriguez, and Mr. Paredes like __________ both lawyers, my mother, and my sister-in-law Paz.









El Miercoles fha. 23 de Marzo de 1898 hora de las diez de la mañana mandé vacunar á mis dos niños Lourdes y Cárlos la primera de un año y 10 meses de edad el segundo (illegible) de dos meses y 9 dias; el Médico q les vacunó fué el amigo Dón José R. Torres se recientemente licenciado y al cabo de seis dias o siete próximamente empieza con á levantar las cuatro vacunas que les hizo (dos en cada brazo) y todas vivieron

On Wednesday 23 of March 1898 at 10 am I had my two children Lourdes and Carlos vaccinated—the first was one year and 10 months old; the second _________ two months and 9 days old. The doctor who vaccinated them was my friend Don Jose R. Torres, recently licensed. And shortly after, 6 days or 7 days later, the four vaccines (two in each arm) all took effect









sin ninguna fiebre á Dios Gracias ni la (illegible) tanto la mia como el otro. Empezo a estudiar en 1903.

without any fever, thank the Lord_______________.
He started school in 1903.












I have many questions, but mainly I’d like to know if his parents were living in Manila or in Camiling when my lolo was born. While it is a widely held assumption that the Romulos were living in Camiling, Lolo’s two older siblings, born 1895 and 1896, were also born in Intramuros—at Nº 5 Sta. Potenciana. (We do not know where his three younger siblings were born.)

We also know that his father proposed to his mother at the Manila Cathedral and that their wedding photograph was taken at Pertierra, a popular photography studio located on Carriedo Street near Escolta and Quiapo.

Now, if you were a pregnant woman living in Camiling, and it was 1898, would you travel all the way to Intramuros, probably in a horse-drawn carriage, to give birth three separate times in a house? Or would that be quite unlikely? Note also that my great-grandfather became Camiling town mayor in 1901, so we know they were living there by then. According to Nick Joaquin in The Aquinos of Tarlac, the Romulos were members of the rural gentry, prominent in Camiling, just as the Aguinaldos were in Kawit, Cavite, and the Aquinos in Murcia, Tarlac.

What is casa la Legaspi Nº 19? The street still exists, as does Sta. Potenciana Street. But was this house a clinic or midwife’s house? Hospitals, like San Juan de Dios (in Intramuros), were already around at that time.

The first person who offers up a basic description of Philippine birthing practices in 1898 (i.e., house or hospital) wins one order of Lola Virginia’s Chicken Relleno at Romulo Café (Quezon City). But you have to answer, too, with a solid explanation, if it is plausible that my great-grandmother shuttled back and forth to Manila to bear three of her six children.

If it was completely and totally unlikely, then this might mean the Romulos lived in Manila until after my lolo’s birth. (The fierce Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898 would have been a good reason to leave Manila, I think.)

To win an order of Tito Greg’s Kare-Kare from Romulo Café, please answer any FOUR of the following questions (1, 5, 7, 8, and 9 are not questions). If you answer THREE, you win a free appetizer.

1. The 14th of January 1898 was indeed a Friday. The deletion in the diary suggests that my great-grandfather (Gregorio Romulo) might have been confused, so I checked this detail. Note that pretty much all sources, from history books to Wikipedia, lists Lolo’s birth year as 1899. Even CPR mistakenly celebrated his 50th birthday a year late (and other birthdays too, of course).

2. Compare with the handwriting at left. Did I transcribe correctly the phrase Salía de su cuidado? What could this mean, given the context?

3. Who was the lawyer Don Enrique Llopis y Becerra?

4. He was baptized on the 23rd of January 1898 at Sta Inglesia Catedral. Was that in Intramuros, Camiling, or somewhere else? Does anyone know if I can still manage to get his birth and/or baptismal records? If so, where?

5. Enrique Gregorio Felix is Lolo’s older brother, who would have been almost three years old at this time. Perhaps Enrique went with them to the baptism?

6. What does it say before ambos abogados on the second page? I can’t seem to read it. (Spanish speakers, can you guess, given context?)

7. Gregorio Romulo’s mother was Doña Juana Besacruz de Romulo.

8. Gregorio Romulo’s sister-in-law could be Paz Peña, one of Maria Peña’s four sisters.

9. I believe my great-grandfather made an error in calculating the age of Lourdes, la primera de un año y 10 meses, because she would have been two years and ten months old.

10. What is the word after segundo on the third page?

11. What follows after Dios Gracias ni la on the last page, given that it’s followed by tanto la mia como el otro?

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Laughter in a Funeral Parlor, Part 2 of 2

The horrors at home and the anxiety he felt for his family surely elicited feelings of doubt. With babies tossed in the air and skewered by the enemy just for sport, with women raped and men tortured and exterminated as a matter of course, my grandfather feared the worst for his family. Retaliation by capturing his family was a real threat, given that there was a price on his head for the series of anti-Japanese articles he had written earlier in the year (these later won him the 1942 Pulitzer Prize). Not only that, his radio broadcasts during battle, intended to lift the troops’ morale and urge them to keep fighting, added to the ire of the enemy, making the Romulos—who had discarded their name for protection—all the more “wanted.”

Lolo knew firsthand the nightmare and desperation of war, and once on US soil the indifference of Americans shocked him as much as the cheerful jitterbugging in nightclubs jolted him. Having just arrived from the battlefield, bloodied friends and mangled bodies still fresh in his mind, such gaiety and seeming ingratitude made him lose faith in the America that twenty-one thousand Philippine youths had died defending. To him it was like “laughter in a funeral parlor.”6

The ignorance and complacence he encountered infuriated him, but he refrained from berating his audiences and instead went out of his way to make them feel at ease. Being an expert in PR, Lolo knew full well that scolding would get him nowhere in terms of garnering public support. The Philippines still needed to be liberated. Perhaps mindful also of the rehabilitation funds his nation would eventually need from the US, as well as the veterans’ benefits that would be due to Filipino soldiers, he was careful to position himself as a friend; not a critic. Getting people to like him was an important first step in convincing them to care about the Philippines, after all, and it would serve Filipinos well, both at present and in the long run.

Liberation finally began on October 20, 1944, when my grandfather—now a brigadier general—joined President Osmeña and General MacArthur on their triumphant return to the Philippines. Sailing for seven days from Hollandia toward Leyte aboard the 140-meter troopship John Land with 1,800 young American soldiers, tensions were high. But Lolo must have been filled with the hope of reuniting with his family, and cruising at a speed of 17 knots (or 31.5 kilometers) per hour must have felt interminably slow.

In November he received a cryptic message from guerilla leader Yay Panlilio that gave him reason to believe that his wife and children were still alive. It had been almost three years since he’d had contact with them.

Photo dated February 28, 1945, from Leocadio De Asis's book Crusade of Service: “In a hut on the grounds of Santo Tomas University, Brig. Gen. Carlos P. Romulo addresses the first ‘Rotary meeting’ held in Manila since 1941. Most of the internees in his audience had spent 3 years of enemy occupation here and had been released just 25 days before.”7

But the reunion did not come for several more months. My grandmother was trapped in enemy-held territory with my dad and my uncle; the other two sons, already teenagers, had joined the resistance as guerillas. Before they could be located and rescued, General MacArthur sent Lolo on a new mission. As the new Resident Commissioner to the US Congress, he was to report to Washington about the landing in Leyte.

“It is the story of these men on Leyte beach that I have returned to tell you today,” he said before the House on December 7, 1944, his heart aching for his family, “but it is also the story of other men who fought—in the beginning without uniforms or shoes or guns or food or hope. Their courage helped us on A-Day on Leyte. They are the Filipino guerrillas whose story can at last be told.”

As he spoke these words he could not have known that a terrifying bloodbath was still to come. The battle of Manila, which ended the Japanese Occupation, resulted in the total destruction of what was then considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Having been “seized by the Spanish in the 16th century, attacked by the Chinese in the 17th, occupied by the British in the 18th, and taken by the Americans at the end of the 19th,” Manila had had its share conflict. “But even this tumultuous history could not have prepared the Filipinos for what happened in 1945, when Manila was utterly destroyed in a single month” and more than a hundred thousand civilians were slaughtered.8 General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe who, prior to the war, had spent four years in Manila as MacArthur’s special assistant, has been often quoted as saying, “Of all the cities I have visited, Manila is the most devastated, next to Warsaw.”

On March 3, 1945, the same day the battle of Manila finally came to an end, my grandfather kissed his boys and held his wife in his arms once again.

“To the men who fought
In defense of the Philippines
In the 1941-1942 campaign
The ill-trained, ill-armed recruits
In straw helmets and rubbers shoes
The pilots without planes
The sailors without ships
The men on horseback
Fighting tanks with sabers
The gunners short of shells
The soldiers with obsolete rifles
Hungry in the foxholes of Bataan
And the batteries of Corregidor
Racked by dysentery, malaria, beriberi
Surviving on false hopes
Defeated at long last by their bodies
Sent to die in their faceless thousands
In the long cruel march to Capas
And in the concentration camps
This memorial is dedicated
By their grateful countrymen
Who will not forget
That their defeat was weakness of the flesh
But victory of faith loyalty and love.”
~ Carlos P. Romulo9

6 Al Lesmez, Notre Dame Scholastic, March 17, 1944, p. 6.
7 Leocadio De Asis, Crusade of Service, (Manila: Rex Book Store, 1994), p. 81.
8 www.pbs.org
9 These lines are written on the back of what appears to be a memento in memory of soldier Philippine Sergeant Antonio N. Fenix. Though it is not clear when General Romulo wrote the lines, or even for what purpose, it is implied that it is the text inscribed on the Bataan Monument. The date reads April 9, 1975. (This still needs to be verified.)

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