In honor of Ramon Magsaysay awardees among NAST members

Today, we honor three Academicians and two National Scientists (one posthumously) who have received the Ramon Magsaysay Awards. As you all know, the Ramon Magsaysay award is a very highly regarded recognition accorded to persons or institutions who have worked in Asia toward the betterment of society, most especially the common man. For the common man was the late President Ramon Magsaysay’s object of service and his single-minded obsession that those “who have less in life must have more in law.” And now the mark of his great leadership albeit short-lived has been honored by awards that highlight the greatness of spirit.

The Ramon Magsaysay awardees include persons who have shown remarkable and courageous leadership in the political, social, cultural, and scientific arena. They are our exemplars of high standards of integrity. They are our thought leaders in the struggle for societal transformation. They are our hope that the challenges we face could be surmountable.

We are proud that the National Academy of Science and Technology may be the single institution that can claim to be the haven of five Ramon Magsaysay awardees. We honor

Fe del Mundo (1977) for her lifelong dedication as a physician extraordinary to needy Filipino children.

Angel C. Alcala (1992) for his pioneering scientific leadership in rehabilitating the coral reefs of the Philippines and in sustaining for Filipinos the natural abundance of their country’s marine life.

Christopher C. Bernido and wife Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido (2010) for their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great and daunting poverty.

Romulo G. Davide (2012) for his steadfast passion in placing the power and discipline of science in the hands of Filipino farmers, who have consequently multiplied their yields, created productive farming communities, and rediscovered the dignity of their labor.

Ernesto O. Domingo (2013) for his exemplary embrace of the social mission of his medical science and profession, his steadfast leadership in pursuing “health for all” as a shared moral responsibility of all sectors, and his groundbreaking and successful advocacy for neonatal hepatitis vaccination, thereby saving millions of lives in the Philippines.

But I would hasten to say, that the Ramon Magsaysay Awards have just really captured a part of their life’s mission. For those of us who have been associated with them, our fellow Academicians, our Secretariat, and the science community as a whole, we know them as highly respected individuals, always willing to help, and more importantly, always willing to nurture the next generation of awardees not only by sharing their expertise, cascading them to as many as are interested, and inspiring others by the example of the lives they have led.

Allow me to read a good portion of a speech delivered by Prof. Concepcion Dadufalza who was honored by the University of the Philippines for her distinguished career in teaching. I know of no other way to express appropriately what our honorees symbolize:

For true quality is an inward event, apprehended and appreciated in the very act of doing and toiling and achieving, with no consciousness of either praise or blame, or anxiety over recognition or repudiation. It comes as a sudden illumination at the height of total engagement, by which one is surprised with the unequalled assurance, itself the reward, of deep certitude. Gerard Manley Hopkins, that great priest-poet calls it “the achieve of — the mastery of — the thing!”

So it is that the reward is enjoyed in the doing. The ultimate reward is itself the finish line. Which almost makes plaques and awards irrelevant, being extrinsic to the experience of true merit. True quality therefore, is lived. This is the only true distinction. It is a summit reached, not by comparisons, waylaying and often invidious, with others, but toiled after and discerned and recognized by the individual himself in his becoming more and still more true to himself and to his ultimate nature...

As many as there are among us to whom this view of excellence is alien, so many are there in our midst to whom it is a fact and by which they style their lives, even if they are not recognized. Would that everyone in academe awakened to the call to excellence! For it is realizable and available to all. We are not meant to strive against each other. We are rather meant to compete with our own selves, to struggle against what we are not to become the better and best being we are intended to be tomorrow. All of us without exception, are meant to grow and become our mostest selves, our fullest fullness. The seed of perfection is in the heart of us all. 

Let me now propose a toast to our honorees, for the distinction of receiving this very prestigious award.

I thank you all for attending this momentous occasion.

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This message was delivered by Dr. William Padolina at the luncheon to honor the Ramon Magsaysay awardees of NAST last Sept. 6 at the Traders Hotel, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City. Padolina is the current president of the National Academy of Science and Technology. E-mail him at secretariat@nast.ph.