Pres. Magsaysay delivered his last speech in Cebu
President Ramon Magsaysay left Manila from Nichols Air Base on the afternoon of March 16, 1957. He boarded the C-47 Mount Pinatubo. His fellow passengers were Cebuano Congressmen Ramon Durano Sr., Pedro Lopez, Manuel Zosa, Mamimino Noel, and Nicolas Escario. Congressman William Chiongbian of Misamis Oriental, former senator Tomas Cabili, Secretary of Education Gregorio Hernandez Jr., Brigadier General Benito N. Ebuen (the Mactan Airbase was later named after him) who was the Air Force Chief, and Leiutenant Leopoldo Regis, the Junior Presidential Aide.
President Magsaysay carried with him a serum for Cornelio Faigao, the president of the Cebu Press Club, who was confined in a hospital in Cebu for acute liver ailment.
President Magsaysay arrived at the Lahug Airport at 3:45 p.m. and was welcomed by Mayor Sergio Osmeña Jr. and Governor Jose Briones led the city and provincial officials.
It was a busy day for President Magsaysay, he was commencement speaker of the University of the Visayas at 4:00 p.m., the Southwestern Colleges (now Southwestern University) at 6:00 p.m., and the University of San Carlos at 7:30 p.m.
Magsaysay was conferred an honorary doctorate of laws. It was Don Vicente Gullas, the founder and U.V. president, who placed the cap and gown on the chief executive.
President Magsaysay in his speech for the graduating students of Southwestern College, told them about Neutralism. He said: "Neutralism is un-Filipino." He further said: "To attempt to foist upon our people is to do them a grave disservice. The country has no need for fence-sitters in the struggle to preserve our way of life. Either we continually love and live this way of life, or communism stretching across the earth and threatening us here and now, will choke it from the body of our nation."
The patriotic words of Magsaysay echoed with the following words: "We are a people with a history of courage." He then said: "There is no place for the fear of freedom, the fear to be on the side of freedom, the fear to be against slavery, the fear to strike a light for liberty amid the encircling gloom that is communism."
In lambasting communism, he said: "Communism is anti-Filipino…. When communist sympathizers in the Philippines say their movement is indigenous and not under the influence or control of any alien power, it is merely to coat with the veneer of a so-called Filipinism the dagger that they have aimed at the very heart of the Filipino way of life."
The man who crippled communism which catapulted him to the presidency continued his speech: "We cannot, for one moment, afford to put in jeopardy the freedom of this way of life. Between it and communism there can be no peace, no grey neutralizing co-existence, no gray neutralism. There can only be conflict–total and without reconciliation."
The words of Magsaysay were prophetic at the University of San Carlos before the graduating students: "You do not have to be anti-American or anti-foreign in order to be resoundingly pro-Filipino. You are the battlefield on which future wars will be won or lost–you cannot remain neutral–you will have to take a stand."
President Magsaysay had his dinner at the home of Mayor Serging Osmeña. At 9:00 in the evening he was a guest of the Patria Society and then an hour later, spoke before local veterans and the local Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
The following day, Mount Pinatubo took off at 1:15 in the morning darkness from the Lahug airport. Five minutes later, it sent back a message on weather conditions–the last it managed to send out before the crash on the mountains of Manunggal, Balamban. The sole survivor was Nestor Mata, staff member of the Philippines Herald. It was at 6:30 p.m. that the plane wreckage was sighted. The first official report of the wreckage was Barrio Lieutenant Marcelino Nuya.
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