Just when everyone thinks that Loren Legarda has gone into a hiatus after tirelessly campaigning for the vice presidential race in the 2004 elections, here comes the news that the former senator has launched a book, The Story of Loren Legarda, Her Legacy and Vision, written by Bing Carrion-Buck and Maria Lourdes Javier-Brillantes.
Bing brought up the idea to Loren back in 2003, even before Loren filed her candidacy for the vice presidential race. "But I’ve been too busy attending to so many activities, events and projects, plus the campaign when I eventually ran for vice president, that’s why the book didn’t materialize," Loren shares.
However, Loren admits it didn’t take much convincing for Bing to push through with the book. "I thought it would be nice to chronicle my personal and professional life at midlife," Loren says.
Thus, the book accounts for Loren’s illustrious media career for two decades and her political salvo in the senate, with more than 15 million votes to her name – "a clear and unequivocal mandate from the people – a triumphant, historical victory that upstaged even screen superstar Ramon Revilla and sports idol Sonny Jaworski."
The book launch, held early October at the Manila Polo Club, "was a good date for my birth time, my mom’s birth month and it was also breast cancer awareness month," informs Loren. "As a lot of people know, breast cancer is one of my advocacies."
In her foreword, Bing wrote, "As mother, daughter, sister, friend, lawmaker, journalist, environmental warrior and peacemaker, Loren continues to look beyond what is and dreams for what is yet unseen. It is this that has given her the strength to become a fighter for everyone’s cause."
The book is replete with photos of Loren, who rose to become a leader among her peers, as well as her anecdotes about the people she worked with in the broadcast industry and also in the political arena.
The photos detail Loren’s growing up years in her ancestral home in Malabon, to her grade school and high school days at the Assumption Convent, to her many interviews with different prominent personalities (heads of state, politicians, celebrities, royalties and even rebel leaders) when she became a broadcast journalist and the many causes she undertook as a senator.
There are shots of Loren with heads of states such as US President George Bush, Korean President Kim Young Sam, South African President Nelson Mandela, former US President Jimmy Carter, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayema, and Philippine Presidents Fidel Ramos, Cory Aquino, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Loren also posed with royalty figures like Prince Charles and Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, King Juan Carlos de Borbon of Spain and Prince Norodom Rannaridh of Cambodia. Then, there’s a memorable photo with the late action king Fernando Poe Jr., who was Loren’s running mate in the 2004 presidential elections.
Naturally, there are also photos of Loren with her family, the Bautista-Legarda clan, with her sons Lanz and Lean, and her faithful Nanay Fely, who has been a central figure in the Legarda household, being Loren’s yaya since she was a baby and also her sons’ yaya up to this day.
In the book, Loren gives a picture of her self as "ordinary, boring and uninteresting." However, the authors use exceptional words that best describe Loren, her life and her career. "Friends in the know say that behind the sophistication, confidence and power of the lady lies a Loren who, through the years, has remained simple and unaffected, despite the long list of awards and accolades and the trappings of politics."
Her mom, "the ebullient and effervescent" Bessie Legarda, was a great fan of Sophia Loren and dreamt of naming her first child Loren. Hence, when the first-born turned out to be a girl, the mom named the baby Lorna Regina, "Loren" for short. Loren has poignant thoughts about her mom Bessie, who succumbed to cancer in 1996.
Loren is the only girl and eldest in a brood of three children of Tony Legarda and Bessie Bautista. Loren’s dad said that from the day she was born, she was christened "Moonie" because her face was so round. This was amusingly shown in her juxtaposed black and white childhood photos in one page of the book.
There are also trivia on how Loren started her TV career. Two pages toward the end of the book are devoted to the many remarkable highlights in Loren’s life.
Did you know that as an 11-year-old fifth grader at the Assumption Convent, Loren appeared as a presenter for a French documentary aired on European television? She graduated valedictorian from Assumption grade school and cum laude from the UP Institute of Mass Communications. As a teenager, she co-hosted a variety show and appeared in a TV commercial for Close Up and a print ad for Pond’s Cold Cream.
As a broadcast communications major at UP, Loren’s professor, Orly Mercado, asked her to report to GMA 7. Little did Loren know she would get her first break on TV when she was made to pinch hit for veteran TV host Tina Monzon-Palma in the program, What’s Up.
In 1981, Loren joined Discorama with The Apo Hiking Society and worked as a disc jockey, her first job. That same year, she became the youngest anchor on Philippine TV in RPN 9’s late-night edition of Newswatch, with Pat Lazaro.
In 1982, Loren applied as a writer for Max Soliven’s Manila magazine. In 1985, she made her US TV debut via KSCI Channel 18 in L.A. as host and producer of Manila Envelope, a pioneering TV magazine for the Filipino community in the West Coast.
The following year, 1986, Loren became the first recruit of the post-EDSA ABS-CBN newsroom and the first anchor of the widely acclaimed English newscast, The World Tonight, which she did for 12 years with Angelo Castro Jr.
The book also deals with Loren’s passions as a journalist, which started when she used to tag along with her Lolo Pepe, the late Jose Bautista, a newsman for the old Manila Times. For Loren, those visits to the newsroom inspired her to follow in Lolo Pepe’s footsteps. To this day, she carries the esteemed legacy of her grandfather.
"He had the greatest influence in my career," says Loren of her grandfather. "He was a journalist in the real sense of the word. I have always admires him for his integrity, diligence and his nose for news. In a way, I think I inherited his nose for news, eye for detail and ear for humor."
The Story of Loren Legarda, Her Legacy and Vision would not have been possible without the corporate sponsors that helped finance its printing, as well as long-time supporters of Loren including Regal matriarch Lily Monteverde, who has always been behind Loren even during the latter’s unflagging campaign for the vice presidential race.