‘Every day should be like Valentine’s Day…’

Even before Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara set his sights on politics, he was already a winner.

Born to gifted parents and more than the sum of their extraordinary assets (including, undeniably, his mother Gloria’s movie-star looks), he went to the best schools, earned a Law degree and won the heart of a woman who makes him feel like a champ. (The former Tootsy Echauz would later be the mother of his three children. When I ask him what is the best thing about his wife, Sonny says, “Her heart. It’s pure.”)

But a man as blessed as Sonny inevitably is pressured: 1.) To be like his accomplished father 2.) To give back 3.) To pay it forward.

“The sons of a successful father,” he tells us, “are either extremely turned off by their father’s careers or they aspire to be like their father.” His father Sen. Edgardo Angara, after all, is the longest-serving post-EDSA senator and author of just about all landmark social legislation in recent Philippine history (Free High School, Generics Act, Philhealth, Senior Citizens Act, K to 12, among others).

But Sonny Angara, who is running for the Senate this May, turned what could have been tremendous pressure — the credentials of his father — into a  benchmark. There were things he would accomplish in the name of his father, and there were things that were solely his own, bearing his unique imprint.

Sonny and Tootsy with their chilren Manolo, Ines and Javier.

Sonny was hailed as one of The Outstanding Young Man (TOYM) awardees in 2010 and the “most prolific and hardworking legislator” in the 14th Congress. Eighteen of his bills eventually became national laws — 10 of which he principally authored.

Sonny was principal author of the Magna Carta of Women, the Legitimation of Children Born to Parents below Marrying Age and the Civil Aviation Act of 2008, among others, and one of the authors of the Kindergarten Act of 2012 and the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

Sonny shares that growing up, he experienced “Tough love.”

“Tough from my father, and love from my mother,” he chuckles. He remembers marching down the aisle during his graduation from the UP Law School. His mom Gloria was smiling proudly on one side and his dad Ed still lecturing him on the other. “When I told him I was in the Top 20 of the graduating class, he asked, ‘Why not the Top 10?’ And when I told him I was with the Law Journal, he countered, ‘And why weren’t you the editor-in-chief?’”

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They say one of the best — if not the best — ways to know a man is to ask his wife to describe him.

Theirs was “love on second sight,” says Tootsy. She says she was scrawny and awkward when they first met. But after the second time they met, Sonny confided to his friend Raj Palacios that he had found “The One.”

Raj pressed on, “Why?”

“Because she makes me laugh,” Sonny answered. When he introduced Tootsy to Raj, the latter told him, “You told me she was funny, but you didn’t tell me she was gorgeous!”

Tootsy, 37, says she and Sonny, 40, are like Dharma and Greg, of the now defunct TV series about an unlikely but deeply in love couple. “We had very different backgrounds — I was raised in the mountains by mom who was a journalist, he was born and raised in Manila. We had a wedding in Manila and an Igorot wedding (canao) in Baguio. Laughter keeps us together and we are both young at heart.”

“Before we were married, we had a long-distance relationship. While studying my masters in Chicago and him going through Law school in UP, our relationship stayed strong on the promise that we would see each other every four months, the promise that we’d both go the distance, no matter how far, no matter how wide. And because of that, we are now blessed with three beautiful children  — Manolo (eight), Ines (seven) and Javier (one). They are living proof that Sonny and I have since kept our hopeful promise to each other. We also live by this, ‘May our hearts reflect the wishes of each other.’ That’s why we really support each other in all our endeavors.”

Tootsy says it was really when Sonny became a father that she saw “that he had the heart to serve.”

“His unconditional love for our children is what gave him the empathy and the heart to help each and every child out there. That was his true motivation when he authored the Free Kindergarten Act — because he feels all children belong in school and not on the streets; why he authored the Anti-Bullying Act, because he felt no child should be bullied and hurt the same way our son, Manolo, was in school.”

A year ago, Tootsy underwent surgery due to a health situation and remembers how Sonny stayed strong for her and their children.

“He became our family’s rock that kept our faith solid. Imagine the emotional difficulty that a family goes through when someone is struck with a health problem. But imagine the financial difficulty that it can bring other families, it can wipe out a family’s savings. That’s why he authored the Universal Healthcare and is pushing to expand it even further.”

Tootsy has remained a working mom despite the fact that her husband can surely afford to keep theirs a one-income household.

“I share his joys. But we never really involve ourselves in each other’s work. I only get involved during campaign season, and the involvement is emotional, personal. As a working mom, it’s always a current struggle between spending time with the kids and working. But I see our kids are happy and are secure, they know we love them dearly and that I am working for them. Of course their happiness is top priority, but working gives me a sense of self and I’m happy to be part of the daily grind. I’ve been working for 18 years straight and have never stopped except during delicate pregnancies. As Khalil Gibran said, ‘You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth’.”

Today being Valentine’s Day, I asked Tootsy to share her thoughts on the red-letter day. “Every day should be like Valentine’s Day…” she smiles.

With her “pure” heart, imagine how every day would be like with someone like her. Sonny Angara is truly a winner.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)