At the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2’s presidential lounge, friends gathered to welcome Mrs. Soliven and the remains of her late husband, who has been hailed as an icon in Philippine journalism.
Among those at the terminal were Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki and his wife, Sen. Alfredo Lim, STAR managing editor Antonio Katigbak, STAR columnist Babe Romualdez, Ambassador Benjamin Defensor, Instituto Cervantes director Jose Rodriguez, businessman Arthur Lopez and Col. Tony Dino.
Manila International Airport Authority general manager Alfonso Cusi and other top MIAA officials, such as retired brigadier general Angel Atutubo, were also on hand.
When Philippine Airlines flight PR-431 landed at the NAIA at around 1:28 p.m., police and military officers gave Preciosa arrival honors when she walked down from the aircraft to the arrival area, holding a box containing a white porcelain urn with her husband’s ashes. She was welcomed by her daughter, STAR columnist Sara Soliven de Guzman.
The box containing the late STAR publisher’s remains was given its own seat, ensuring that Soliven traveled in the style and comfort to which he was accustomed when he was alive.
Preciosa walked straight to a Mercedes-Benz limousine that was parked just outside the presidential lounge exit.
The Soliven family had accepted President Arroyo’s offer to have their patriarch buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
"Max was born a soldier. He has often defended the military because he believes in the sacrifice that they are doing for the country. There are those who have lost their lives in fighting for the country. So I believe this is a fitting tribute to him," Preciosa said, adding that her husband has a deep passion for the military — one-third of the books he collected are about military strategy and war and its history.
Armed Forces spokesman Maj. Gen. Jose Angel Honrado said the military honors Soliven, who, at 14 years old, became a guerrilla during the Japanese occupation and saw action in an operation in Floridablanca, Pampanga.
"He is also an icon of Philippine journalism and he deserves the honor that we are according him right now," Honrado told The STAR.
Soliven’s neighbors at the Libingan ng mga Bayani will be former Vice President Salvador Laurel, former Commission on Elections chairwoman Haydee Yorac, and former Armed Forces of the Philippine chief of staff and transportation secretary Arturo Enrile.
Yamazaki said he would always remember Soliven as a friend who tirelessly exchanged views with him.
"I feel deep sorrow. He is a very dear friend. He is a very good journalist. I am very much impressed with the way he wrote about Japan despite the fact that he has not gone there for the last five years. The last time that I talked to him was before he boarded the plane from Manila on the way to Tokyo," he said.
Lim said he did not only lose a friend but also a brother, adding that he and Soliven had been friends since the 1980s.
"He is a great loss not only to the country but for the people. He has always stood for righteousness. He loves his country very much and will fight for what is right. Even if you are his friend, he will not hesitate to correct you if what you did was wrong," Lim said.
Soldiers carried the urn containing his ashes and placed it in front of the altar at the St. Ignatius Chapel. Fr. Louie Soliven-David, Soliven’s nephew, officiated the Holy Mass that was attended by Soliven’s family, friends, and colleagues as well as military officials and diplomats.
After the Mass, his remains were brought to the St. Ignatius Chapel mortuary, where a typewriter, pipes, pens, the Philippine flag and a copy of The STAR were placed beside his urn.
Preciosa told The STAR that her husband’s cremated remains had been placed in a porcelain urn, which was enclosed in a sandalwood box and wrapped in a furoshiki, a Japanese silk handkerchief.
According to her, this is a Japanese custom that signifies and respects the dignity of the person who died.
Preciosa said she and her daughter Sara, as well as some Philippine embassy officials, had a chance to view her husband’s body before it was placed in an incinerator at the Kirigaya Crematory in Shinagawa-Ku, Tokyo.
Once the cremation process was completed, embassy officials used a pair of chopsticks to place the large bones inside the urn, while the rest of the ashes were poured into it. Preciosa described it as a very solemn ritual.
She said it was her husband’s decision to be cremated because he told her that when he dies, he does not want people to look at his body in that state.
Preciosa said while they feel great loss at her husband’s death, they also feel relief since he has suffered so much.
"His body has been battered. It was just good that he is able to recover. It was sad, but I think it is God’s way. We hoped he could have stayed a little bit longer but it came so sudden," she said.
Soliven had visited the defunct Baguio-Benguet council, now the Baguio City council, to inspire local scouters in the mission of training young scouts in character-building and citizenship training through out-of-door activities such as camping, said his long-time friend and fellow newspaperman Nars Padilla, 75.
Padilla, who was a scout executive during the council’s formative years from 1958 to 1965, remembers Soliven as a paragon of courage, honesty and impeccable integrity.
"He was looked upon as a model scouter from the North, BSP Region 1 in particular," he said. BSP Region 1 was originally composed of 17 local Boy Scout city and provincial councils from Tarlac to Batanes.
Soliven hailed from Sto. Domingo, Ilocos Sur. His father, Benito, was a veteran soldier and also served as a congressman.
Padilla and another of Soliven’s Baguio contemporaries, 78-year-old Gerry Evangelista Sr., fondly called him "Boss Max" and consider him as one of "a rare breed of Filipino journalist who served Philippine and international journalism in various capacities as a correspondent, reporter, bureau head, and columnist."
Evangelista is the publisher-editor of the fortnightly Northern Profile in Baguio City.
Padilla and Evangelista compared Soliven to a pliant Philippine bamboo "who, through the years, has matured tall but never refused to lean back to his roots (as an Ilocano leader)."
Soliven’s contemporaries cherish his last visit to Baguio City in March 2005, when he was conferred full military honors by the corps of cadets at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) — the only civilian given such a distinction.
After his hour-long extemporaneous speech before the officers and men of the PMA, he took the time to walk along Session Road with Padilla and Evangelista and reminisce about their grand old days as journalists.
De Venecia, who said Soliven was his journalism professor, said Soliven’s column in The STAR was in itself an institution and the man himself as "the most influential journalist of his generation."
"With his passing, an era comes to pass. He was the journalist as an intellectual, the writer as a historian, the political observer as a participant in the social and political forces that he helped to unleash. He was jailed by the martial law regime, but he remained unflappable and stood with the forces of freedom in the darkest hours of democracy," he said in a statement.
De Venecia also described Soliven as "a character of enormous charm, an irrepressible teller of tales and anecdotes" and thanked him for his friendship.
"Even if he did not always see things my way — and was a critic of the Charter reform movement to the end — I enjoyed reading him and his inimitable prose.
"Max, you will be missed. You deserve an eternal place in the hearts of Filipinos who love good writing and who hold freedom dear and eternal," he said. — With James Mananghaya and Artemio Dumlao