Frutos of labor

To have a good fruit, you must have a healthy tree; if you have a poor tree, you will have bad fruit. A tree is known by the kind of fruit it bears. – Matthew 12:33

I was just a freshman in the college of entrepreneurship about 20 years ago when I met the patriarch of this Filipino immigrant family of Chino Hills, California. Renato Fruto is a retired banker originally from Cebu and Manila. He was then the CEO-president of a newly formed bank, First Central Bank, located in the heart of Chinatown in Los Angeles. I was one of his many guests who were invited during their bank’s grand opening. For several years after that, First Central Bank financed many of my business clients’ purchase or lease of their automobiles. As we became friends, I’ve learned to respect this soft-spoken banker who left his comptrollership position of the Bank of the Philippine Islands, the largest commercial bank in the Philippines, to carve his own place in the United States. His CPA background and his being active in the community as a long-time Rotarian has contributed to his success as a bank executive in Los Angeles.

As years went by, I came to know more about Rene, his RN-wife, the former Lynn Reyes of Bacolor, Pampanga, and their six children. After many years of determined studies coupled with hard work, all their children are now all successful professionals. Richard, the centerpiece of this article, is the eldest and was a journalist for more than a decade. Since then, he has changed his career to become a business lawyer.

He has two sisters: Bernadette, who has an MBA from UCI and is now an associate director at Universal Music Corporation, and Beverly, the youngest – with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and in the process of finishing her teacher’s credentials in World History and Math in San Diego. The other brothers: Ron, with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA, now works as a planning manager with the Edison Company; Randy has a BA in Fine Arts but now works as a deputy sheriff in the County of Los Angeles; Rod has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA and now works as the customer relations manager of Star Information Technology Corporation in Boston, MA.

Richard migrated to the United States with the entire family in l978 when he was only 16 and continued his high school education which he started at the Ateneo de Manila at the Mary Star of the Sea High School, a Catholic high school in San Pedro, California, where he graduated in l980. Although he started his college education at the Occidental College in Los Angeles, he finished it with a bachelor’s degree in History at the University of California in Davis, California. In l985, he attended the Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University in Washington DC on a full scholarship. The following year, he attended graduate school at the University of Illinois, at Urbana, also on full scholarship, and received a master’s degree in journalism in l986.

For his masteral thesis, Richard went back to the Philippines and for an entire semester stayed in the Visayan region and lived with the people in the island of Samar where there was always a comfrontation between the military and communist in the rural areas. With a group of human-rights activists and church workers, Richard was able to see for himself how the poor farmers lived based on reality not ideology, how they suffered not only from natural disasters like floods but from the oppression of the military. He not only interviewed many local people but also became friends with the NPA (New People’s Army) rebels. He came to understand the political and socio-economic struggles of the peasants. His uncle Ramon, a Redemptorist priest whose passion was in the social justice teachings of the Catholic church, showed him around the Southern Philippines and showed him the institutionalized social justice issues that impoverished the marginalized poor of the countryside despite the perennial rhetorics and promises of the Philippine politicians.

Richard’s visit to his birthplace brought back bittersweet memories of his teenage life in high school years at the Ateneo during the Marcos dictatorial regime. Living with the NPA rebels made him understand why the neglected poor were attracted to the communist party. His graduate thesis was not only uniquely revolutionary in any American college of journalism but also full of feelings as Richard breathed real-life drama into it. His efforts were not left unrewarded as he was one of just two students given a standing A+ final grade.

* * *

Graduating from college seems like a common expectation for many children of Filipino families in the United States, but for Richard it was a great challenge as he was also working through high school and college. For instance, while attending school in San Pedro, California, he worked as a gasoline boy attendant at a Shell station in Long Beach after school. When he got a better job as a library assistant in the Long Beach Public Library, his younger brother Rod took his place at the gas station and later joined Richard as a part-time library assistant, too. Randy, the other brother, took over Rod’s work at the gas station. Several years after the Fruto brothers graduated from their work at this gas station, the owner (who was an immigrant from Egypt) sold his Shell station as he found it harder and harder to get reliable and honest help such as the Fruto brothers in that part of Long Beach. To date, this Egyptian-American family and the Frutos have nurtured their friendship and still maintain contact as a result of the exceptional work rendered by the Fruto brothers.

As an idealistic young man after college, to get a journalist’s job anywhere was a top priority, rather than waiting for the "big" break in the nation’s great papers in the big markets so he decided to work right away for smaller newspapers. He worked as news reporter in Sacramento and the Central Valley of California from l988 to l995. He covered space-shuttle landings at Edwards Air Force Base as correspondent for the Bakersfield Californian.

Perusing dozens of Richard’s writings, I found them very colorful and filled with life’s silent moments. He breathed life into his stories, especially his stories about Cesar Chavez, the farmers’ union in Central California farms, as well as the minority communities in Los Angeles. His articles on farmers’ strikes, labor unions and Cesar Chavez activism were somewhat the re-enactments of his masteral thesis about the militant poor in Samar in the Philippines years before. His writings helped many readers understand not only how grapes reach our dining tables but also the gripes of farmers in their cries and struggles for more equity and social justice. His affinity with all classes of people and his natural love for human understanding and interactions were unique assets as a journalist.

* * *

E-mail [email protected] or [email protected]. Visit the Katipunan-USA website at www.katipunan-usa.org.