Farewell to the Grand Old Man of Colawin

Anybody going up for the first time to Colawin, a mountain barangay about seven kilometers from Argao highway, cannot help but be impressed by the developments in the area. There he can see a complex of structures, mostly permanent and semi-permanent, housing elementary, high school and non-degree college classes, set on a sprawling tree-shaded ground. The biggest of the buildings is a large two-storey edifice with mahogany woodworks and fixtures. This is the Colawin school library, probably the biggest barangay library in the country.

This educational phenomenon, as well as the other socio-economic initiatives in that place, is the handiwork of one man - the late Hilario Davide Sr., 'Noy Ondo, as Colawin folks called him.

But today, at age 101, 'Noy Ondo will be taken to his final resting place at Cempark.

To Mr. Davide's sorrowing family - former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. among them - we offer our condolences and prayers.

I first met the "grand old man" of Colawin in 1981, two years after my assumption as schools division superintendent of Cebu. He saw me at the office and briefed me about his school library project. Soft-spoken and exuding his characteristic humility, he confided to me his vision of Colawin: An upbeat area where people could have access to good education, one way, he said, of improving their quality of life.

At that time the name Hilario Davide was already familiar to me, having heard good words about him as schools superintendent of Lapu-Lapu division. But it was "Somos" Davide's disarmingly sincere personality that convinced me of the importance of his project. Being a barrio boy myself, I realized that what he had in mind was exactly what the barrio folks in Cebu needed most: Access to education. From that time on until towards the later part of 1990s we were in regular contact with each other with regard to Colawin and other happenings.

Late in 1981, I visited Colawin to see the status of the library project. One thing I noticed was that a number of workers were the parents themselves who volunteered as non-wage personnel. On the matter of fund raising Mr. Davide showed me a notebook where the names of "donors" - mostly school children and their parents - were listed. And their donations? A bunch of bananas, a bundle of firewood, pieces of dried coconuts, seedlings all of which were sold and the proceeds went to construction costs.

It was really a touching sight - barefoot farmers, some no-read-no-write folks getting into the thick of a school project, out-of-school youths pitching in as utility workers, all because of the inspiration given them by "Lolo Ondo", as they called him.

After retirement in 1970, Mr. Davide could have spent his time in ease and without a hassle, after all, his children were already successful professionals. But the sense of generosity raged in him, and so for more than three decades he spent his advance years serving his fellowmen in Argao and outside. Thus, at one time, when Colawin needed a big piece of land for DepEd's secondary education building project, he donated half-a-hectare of his roadside property for the purpose.

As a development advocate Mr. Davide's concerns knew no borders. For example, when he learned about DepEd's "pocket forest" project designed to convert open spaces in schools into mini rain forests, he earnestly offered to supply the needed mahogany seeds, free of charge. In that year he sent to our office sacksful of mahogany seeds for germination. Through this arrangement more than half a million hardwood seedlings were planted in the schools of the five Cebu divisions. Today one can see these fully grown trees forming oases of greenery in these school campuses.

Even in schools where the open areas were rocky and barren, these trees have been successfully grown, thus proving true what Colawin's grand old man had been preaching: "There are no barren soil, only barren minds!"

Such an idea has been the motivating force behind the "farmer scientist" project of son Dr. Romulo Davide, a UN-awarded agriculturist, which was first set up in Colawin and is now a nation-wide project of the Department of Agriculture.

"He just fell asleep then was gone", remarked one of his children during the wake.

This reminded me of the poet Thomas Gray who said that when one lives a full and successful life, he goes away like a man who just "raps his couch and goes down to pleasant dreams".