FINDING OUR GREAT LOLO

(Interview with Veritas1911)

Justo D. ca. 1918

When did you make that research? What was the circumstance?

Through reading your father's journal, I learned of his stay in San Francisco. Before graduation as an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to interview with a company called EDS Corp. in San Francisco. The company flew me there and I took the opportunity to see you and my cousins (do you remember?) but to also conduct more research on your father. By the way...they hired me.

What was it so compelling that you took time and effort to make the research?

Family history has always interested me. To know where your roots are and where you come from intrigues me greatly. I also found your father's life history very interesting. Also, the period in which he lived here in the states was not an easy period for the Filipino which intrigued me even more.

This "pre-Filipino wave" of immigration must have been a very difficult one during the early 1900's. America was really still in its infancy in terms of its global presence. The pending first world war was just around the corner. Filipinos were treated like blacks...without rights mostly. Interacial relations were forbidden. How my Lolo, your father, did so well in this period is what intrigues me most. The real first wave of Filipino migration during the twenties through the fifties wasn't much better...most imigrated for the labor. I'm proud to say the we were part of the second wave of Filipino migration which included mostly of professionals...vastly different circumstances than my Lolo, your father's circumstance.

Where did you start your inquiry? What led you to San Francisco Mission School?

I started my inquiry when I received your father's journal. In that journal he wrote the names and addresses of all his friends during his stay at the Mission High School. He also wrote the address of the apartment where he stayed. It also provided me the Class year....Summer Class of 1916. When I was in San Franscisco, I found his old apartment...old and run down, but still there...and I went to the SF Mission High School and spoke to the archives librarian. She showed me the archived yearbooks and I found your father's class photo as well as some other very interesting writings and photos of his art (sculpture of a woman's bust). He wrote a farewall poem to his classmates in Spanish and apparently he also received an Art Scholarship to the University of California.

Hon. Just D. ca. 1940

If I have to go and make my own research where or how would I do that? I really must go there too.

Go to the San Francisco Mission High School. Speak to the archives librarian and you can read, touch, smell your father's original yearbook. Go visit the apartment where he lived. Try to experience what he must have experienced...he was only 25 years old at the time, his friends where far younger than he. Most likely his friends were white. Try to imagine being there away from his own family yet knowing the eyes of the "family" were among him...great expectations I would imagine. Try to imagine those around him who were nice and those who were not so nice...maybe even racist. Maybe he found a girlfriend...surely they had to hide their love interests! What were his favorite spots...the Fisherman's Wharf perhaps? Looking at the Golden Gate Bridge (built between 1853 and 1861) must have been awesome for this native boy from the Philippines. Perhaps it was these life experiences in the US that caused him to be a greater man back in the Philippines later on in his life...UP Law, Mayor, land-owner, etc.