Indeed, little things mean a lot

To simple music lovers especially of the old standards or popular ballads when songs long used to be with definable tunes, there was that nostalgic line that “little things mean a lot”.

Today, January 12, is UV Founder’s Day in honor of Don Vicente A. Gullas, who founded the Visayan Institute in 1919 and became the University of the Visayas in 1948, pioneer university in Cebu. Mrs. Josefina “Inday Pining” Gullas, was an indispensable co-founder.

In private education, Don Vicente earned enviable tributes… He pioneered the night secondary and collegiate classes for working students; blazed the branching out of school campuses in towns; prophesied post-graduate EQ for higher academic positions; fathered the “study now, pay later”; and a prolific writer of books, including an English-Cebuano dictionary. However, one’s early teenage and later youthful palpable experiences with him often take precedence in spontaneous recall. It’s not just nostalgia, or sentimentalism that one’s fond memory runs along the “little” sidelights not written or known about him, except to a few.

The first and lasting “little” impression one had with Don Vicente came in the first few weeks of the special freshman high class some two years in post liberation. Gullible “probinsyanos” just “accelerated” from town schools and still disoriented from city life, they were put at ease by the “Old Man’s” pep talks, like, a surrogate father.

Also with fondness and gratitude, one reminisces that very special privilege a couple of years later that the “Old Man” insisted that one be granted a weekly allowance. Perhaps to allay one’s discomfiture over such “free ride”, that one had to discontinue it after a few months, the kind benefactor understood his feelings and gracefully acceded.

There was also that sidelight that as president of the senior high graduating class, one invited then Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson as graduation speaker. The hitch was that the college deans and the school had in mind then President Elpidio Quirino as the UV commencement speaker, a Manila High School classmate of Don Vicente in their 1911 class. Charge that youthful gumption to inexperience, our invitation was without the school’s prior clearance, nonetheless, the “Old Man” eventually went along with it, made the final arrangements and formalities for Mayor Lacson as UV’s commencement speaker, and Don Vicente never said a word of rebuke. Imagine, the school president giving way to a young nobody!

Don Vicente enjoyed his routine “visits” to the UV branches, and inter-acted with both faculty and students without being condescending. In UV Compostela branch, the “Old Man” enjoyed rousing students having noon naps by the seashore shades after eating their noon “bawon”. He had a good time shooing the still sleepy students to their afternoon classes.

On Sunday ROTC and then PMT affairs, the “Old Man” was always around, during ceremonial parade and review, and during annual tactical inspections; and, he marched along the sides with the cadets in street parades. He had picked up the unit leader’s orders to march in step with the bass drum, or “Knee High” when in half-steps, or “Clip your right elbow to the side” while marching in right shoulder arm, or “Keep that guidon upright” to the guidon bearer. The “Old Man” was unusually fascinated by the delayed two-count “present arms” with the rifle. The snap of the white-gloved hand in unison had such magical beauty to the spectators, especially the “Old Man”.

As the UV community celebrates the Founder’s Day today, his simple greatness for innovative thrusts in education and the academe have defined Don Vicente’s big role that even the government has duplicated. But for the admiring horde of Visayanians, let some sentimental “little fools” remember first the “little things” he did or said in spontaneity.

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