Don Sergio Osmeña Sr.: A great Cebuano!

Today is the 130th Birth Anniversary of Cebu’s Grand Old Man, the late president Don Sergio Osmeña, Sr. and it is a good occasion to remind our fellow Cebuanos that once upon a time, an unassuming and humble man was at the top the country’s political leadership at a very young and tender age of 29 when he was elected as Speaker of the Assembly, a feat that no other Cebuano has ever repeated even at a much older age.

I had a great opportunity to have met Don Sergio personally in our paternal home in Mango Ave. during the vigil for my late grandfather Don Jose Avila, who died on May 3, 1959 and a day after, Don Sergio arrived in our house (in those days, we had vigils for our departed in our homes) to pay his respects to my grandfather who was his close friend. I still recall that as Don Sergio sat down, my father, the late Jesus “Lindong” Avila ushered us children to kiss the hand of Don Sergio and telling us that he was once the President of the Philippines.

Of course to an eight-year-old boy, it didn’t mean anything, but there was something in that meeting that stuck in my memory bank and it is the very reason when the late chief justice Marcelo “Celing” Fernan asked me to join the Cebu Newspaper Worker’s Foundation (CENEWOF) during my father’s funeral wake, I couldn’t refuse because CENEWOF started life by holding the Don Sergio Osmeña Memorial Lectures from 1980 to 1992.

Our lecturers were in this order, 1. Sen. Blas Ople, 2, Fr. Francisco Camacho, 3. Salvador Lopez, 4. Sen. Sotero “Teroy” Laurel, 5. Sen. Arturo Tolentino, 6. Sen. Jovito Salonga, 7. Jaime Cardinal Sin, 8. Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, 9. Philippine Star publisher Maximo V. Soliven, 10. Don Sergio’s biographer Vicente Albano Pacis, 11. Manila Bulletin publisher Napoleon Rama and our last lecturer 12. Ricardo Cardinal Vidal.

I attended all the Don Sergio Osmeña Memorial Lectures and learned a lot about Don Sergio. So when Noy Celing Fernan became chief justice, I took over as president of CENEWOF and asked him to be our eighth lecturer. Almost all of the lecturers, including his eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal talked about two important characteristics or traits of Don Sergio… that it was wrong to call him Cebu’s Grand Old man for he achieved all the things he did when he was very young. He took Humanities at the young age of 11 years old and in 1894 he graduated Valedictorian.

At the age of 22 years old, he founded a newspaper El Nuevo Dia, though it closed after two years of operation. Today, most of our youth at that age hardly ever read the newspapers. At 24-years old, he was designated as acting Governor of Cebu Province and later became Provincial Fiscal of Cebu and Negros. He joined national politics and won the second district of Cebu in the 1907 elections and was a stalwart of the Partido Nacionalista.

Don Sergio together with pro-independence Filipinos like his friend then President Manuel L. Quezon headed the Parliamentary Mission to the United States to seek Philippine Independence. Their opposition was people from the US who wanted the Philippines to be granted Statehood by the US. In 1941, he became vice president to Pres. Quezon when the war clouds were upon us. When World War II broke out, Don Sergio was designated as a member of the War Cabinet while in charge of the Department of Public Instruction and Health.

Due to Pres. Quezon’s failing health, Vice-President Osmeña took over most of the president’s duties in the exiled Philippine government. On Aug.1, 1944 Pres. Quezon died in Saranac Lake, New York and Don Sergio became the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, sworn in by US Justice of the Supreme Court Robert H. Jackson. He would be the only Philippine President who did not make any inaugural address.

Don Sergio joined the invading forces of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Leyte Gulf on Oct. 20, 1944 where the world famous photograph of the American Caesar was shown to the world that Gen. MacArthur had returned to the Philippines… a promise kept. Don Sergio died on Oct.19, 1961 and is buried at the Manila North Cemetery.

Don Sergio’s other trait was humility, which is why he lost his election bid to Gen. Manuel Roxas in 1946 because he refused to use the powers of Malacañang to gain votes. Call it a mistake, but that was the character of Don Sergio, he was truly a servant of the people and never used his powerful office to launch his political career. As our beloved eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal said about him during the last Don Sergio Osmeña Memorial Lecture, “He was humble while in power” a trait that even the present generation of political Osmeñas even publicly admit that they do not possess.

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