Max burial at the Libingan: Poetic Justice

Hard to believe that we get to hear of two friends dying one after the other. Yes, by now the whole nation knows that our dear friend and mentor Sir Max V. Soliven's remains inside an urn will be arriving at the Ninoy International Airport on PAL flt.432 arriving from Tokyo at 3:00 p.m. where an honor guard from the Philippine National Police (PNP) will escort his remains to the St. Ignatius Cathedral in Camp Aguinaldo, where military honors will await his entourage.

Sir Max will be buried at high noon at the Libingan ng mga Bayani after all; he was a real life hero who got himself imprisoned by the Marcos Dictatorship for exposing his martial law plans on his TV Show "Impact". At the end of their lives, Sir Max gets the privilege bestowed by a grateful nation to be buried with our nation's heroes, while the family of the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos continues to insist that the only dictator that his country ever produced should also be buried there. This is poetic justice, as Sir Max himself will have written it in his famous column, "By the Way."

Late last Saturday afternoon... I got a text message from a friend asking me if it was true that Mr. Roy Bruce, that Briton who wowed many Cebuanos doing aerial acrobatic maneuvers above the skies of Metro Cebu had crashed? I was playing golf on the 16th hole at the Cebu Country Club when I heard the unmistakable drone of the 300 horsepower 6-cyclinder Lycoming engine on his US$ 5 million dollar Extra 300L aerobatic monoplane some distance to the South. It was almost five in the afternoon and strangely, I didn't hear the planes come back when we finished our golf game by 5:30 p.m. I didn't know that Roy Bruce already fell out of the sky!

Just before 6:00 in the evening, I got that text message that Roy Bruce's plane had gone down. I have met Roy Bruce in several occasions but the first one was when we had lunch at the Cebu Country Club to plan out how we were going to do an aerial shoot to be shown on our talkshow "Straight from the Sky". That shoot never materialized because on the planned date, the weather was so bad...two resets later, the weather still didn't give us a chance to shoot and fly. We were to do it next year.

The last time I saw and talked to Roy Bruce, he flew his Extra 300L to the recently renovated Camotes airstrip and he wowed the people of Camotes with his aerobatic maneuvers. A couple of years ago, he had a near accident in Maasin when his plane's left wing hit some tall grass and swerved to the left. Roy told me that minor accident cost him a hundred thousand US dollars. For sure, money was not a problem in maintaining his aircraft.

I have always believed that Cebu was so blessed when Roy Bruce decided to live here in Cebu. We got the rare opportunity to see those exciting and yes dangerous aerial maneuvers... but then death always lurks from a distance and now Roy Bruce is gone. May he rest in peace.

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While I attended the Kabkaban Festival of Lights last Friday, I missed the parade which I was told was very unique when compared to the other Festivals done here in Cebu or in other places in the country. Perhaps Carcar may have found its niche for its fiesta and the Kabkaban Festival. Even more remarkable is the fact that this year the Municipal government of Carcar left the handling and organizing of this festival entirely to the Carcar Heritage Conservation Society (CHCS) the group that fought to keep Carcar's heritage homes and won. Last Friday CHCS honored this writer and Mr. Bunny Pages as Honorary Members in a short ceremony at the Mercado Mansion before the Kabkaban Festival began.

Incidentally, this was my first time ever to set foot at the Mercado or Green Mansion, which is centrally located at the corner of Santa Catalina St. and the national road. It turned out that this place is the ancestral home of Don Mariano Avila-Mercado who was the town mayor of Carcar in 1922. This was his house from 1877 to 1944. Today his daughter Doña Catalina Lucero and children Luz Lucero and Elsa Lucero Yares live in that historic place. Yes, they are my direct relatives; though it was the first time I ever met them. Perhaps this was because we always went to the old residence of Dr. Pio Valencia, which is the "Balay ng Tisa" Carcar's oldest heritage home.

As to what Kabkaban means. I looked it up from the book authored by our good friend, Dr. Resil B. Mojares entitled, "Theater in Society, Society in Theater, Social History of a Cebuano Village". The name was taken from a fern called Kabkad or Kabkab (Drynaria quercifolia), which was abundant in that place. The legend goes that Kabkab sounded so similar to a small town in the Province of Navarre in Northern Spain where the Parish Priest came from so instead of saying Kabkab, it became Carcar.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit's columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com