Dean Malay, 89

The guardian of memory speaks no more. Journalist, teacher and human rights activist Armando Malay died Thursday night at a hospital in Quezon City. He was 89.

Malay was rushed to the Capitol Medical Center after he slipped into a coma Wednesday.

His remains lie in state at the Protestant Chapel at the Gumersindo Garcia Hall of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.

Born in 1914 in Tondo, Manila, Malay attended Torres High School where he wrote his first column, entitled "We," for the school paper, The Torres Torch.

That began more than half a century of journalism for the compulsive writer and habitual note-taker, who earned the monicker "Dean" for being the dean of student of affairs and the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines.

Malay was editor of the Philippine Collegian at the UP in 1934, where he graduated with a degree in philosophy a year later.

Malay first worked as a beat reporter for the Roces family-owned newspaper The Tribune in 1935. After the Pacific War he became the editor of the Daily Mail.

He later became a columnist for many publications, among them The Manila Chronicle, Star Reporter, We Forum, Evening Chronicle, Weekly Women’s Magazine, Malaya, Philippine Review, The Manila Times, Bagong Abante and Manila Standard.

Malay was highly regarded for his extensive knowledge and experience in the practice of journalism in the Philippines and was reputed to have been one of the editors of the Times under Don Joaquin "Chino" Roces.

According to the souvenir program of the 2001 Search for Outstanding Journalists, while Malay was a champion of a free and independent media, his legacy can be found in the "hallowed halls of academe."

He was a professor of journalism at the Far Eastern University (FEU) from 1948 to 1953 and taught journalism in UP from 1954 to the early 1970s.

Malay nurtured some of the most respected Filipino mass media practitioners today.

A former student, lawyer Marichu Lambino, recalled how during a conference of the College Editors’ Guild in Cebu in 1983, Malay sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" during fellowship night. He also sang on the boat to Cebu.

"He was fun to be with," Lambino said in a phone interview, adding the 16-hour boat trip was her most vivid memory of the Marcos years.

Malay had just been released from prison, and yet he was there with them, "tall, defiant and unbending."

"There was no free press at that time, and Dean Malay encouraged and exhorted us to expose the violence in the campus press," said Lambino, who is now chairman of the Journalism Department of the UP College of Mass Communications.

Retirement from academe did not stop Malay from fulfilling his commitment to training journalists. He served as a Philippine Press Institute (PPI) training officer from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

In 1982, Malay was jailed for his criticisms of the Marcos regime in his column for We Forum. He and the rest of the staff were charged with subversion after the dictatorship shut the newspaper down. The charges against them were dismissed in 1986 after the EDSA Revolution.

As an activist, Malay was a staunch human rights advocate, as chairman of Kapatid on behalf of political detainees from 1978 to 1980 and vice-chairman of Selda, an organization of ex-political detainees from 1990 to 1992. He was also a member of the Council of Leaders of the National Alliance for Justice, Freedom and Democracy in 1983. — With Nikko Dizon