Ballsy & Pinky on Ninoy: ‘Our first Superhero’

I wrote this in 2013, during the 30th death anniversary of Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. — JRR

When they were little girls, Ballsy and Pinky Aquino couldn’t understand why their father put “country before family,” why he made them give gifts on their birthdays instead of the other way around, why he made them read Time and Newsweek like they were everyday comic books, why he gave perfect strangers a free ride — and why he was kind even to his political foes.

But as they grew older and realized their father Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was no ordinary man, Ballsy (now Mrs. Eldon Cruz) and Pinky (now Mrs. Manolo Abellada) realized how privileged they were — are — to be his daughters. So when he said goodbye to them in Boston 30 years ago, they understood that it could be his last, and that despite the risk of death during his homecoming, he would not have it any other way. Their mother Cory would later console them after their father was assassinated, “It was always your dad’s dream to die for the country.”

 “I think of my dad more of a hero than a dad,” says Ballsy in an exclusive interview for PeopleAsia magazine as the 30th death anniversary of her father approached. “He was Superman. There was nothing that he couldn’t do. My memories of him are mostly about his brilliance, his kindness, his sacrifices for the country.”

“He feared nothing,” recalls Pinky.

“His dream was that democracy, freedom would be back. Prosperity came second,” Ballsy shares.

“Before martial law, Dad’s dream was to have a prosperous country, a beautiful country. But after martial law, the fight for freedom was everything to him,” Pinky adds.

He was willing to die for it.

The father

 Their father always wanted to make every moment count, and wanted things done, “yesterday.”

“You know, we use this word in our family, Pampamparam, go, go, go! No wasting time. Everything had to be done yesterday. That was my dad,” recalls Ballsy, the eldest of Ninoy and Cory’s five children. (After Ballsy came Pinky, Noynoy, Viel and Kris.)

The sisters recall that on Saturday mornings, somebody would pull their toes playfully and chirp, “Mga kumare, gising na! Maawa naman kayo sa bayan! Gising na!”

It was their dad, raring to seize every moment of the new day. “He was hyper, always in a hurry,” explains Pinky. On weekdays, their dad was almost always on the phone or in a breakfast meeting when they kissed him goodbye on their way to school.

“I don’t recall him ever still being in bed when we said goodbye,” remembers Pinky.

In that sense, says Ballsy, Cory was both “Dad and mom to us.”

“As Mom said, Dad told her, ‘You take care of the family, you take care of the kids. Kasi ako sa bayan’,” Ballsy shares.

Though her father was always busy with work, and was perpetually on the go, when he had the time, “Talagang papasayahin niya kami,” recalls Ballsy.

Ballsy cannot forget the Barbie Doll her dad got for her, simply because it came from him.

“Mom knew what we wanted and would buy us all our things. Then suddenly one day, dad asked mom, ‘What can I get her?’ So he got me this Barbie Doll that had a wig, whose color you could change. I was so happy! I don’t know how old I was. I would sleep with that Barbie Doll with the wig. I hadn’t traveled yet at that time, so he bought that for me during one of his trips abroad. Even then, I felt that I would really treasure this because it came from Dad. It wasn’t normal!” she laughs at the memory.

Starting when Ballsy was about 10, Ninoy would take Cory and the kids to Hong Kong at least once a year, usually in late November, his birth month.

“It was a big deal to us that we could go to Hong Kong. It was, wow! Then we would have our meals together, we would eat good Chinese food, as in siya talaga pipili. That was just an enjoyable time, kami-kami lang.”

One day, Ninoy surprised Pinky, whom he called “Double Mommy” because she is named “Aurora Corazon” after his mom “Aurora” and Cory, with a box of rings.

Pinky was thrilled because she had asked a ring from him during one of his trips abroad. He came back with not one, but eight rings (one of which Pinky still has to this day).

“If you think about it, he found time to go to the little girls’ section to buy my ring,” Pinky turns sentimental.

Ballsy says that in the Aquino home, if you were not abreast of current events, you were thought of as a dimwit.

Pinky agrees. “It’s a no-no that you didn’t know what’s on the front pages. Time and Newsweek were really a must.”

“I remember Kris was in grade one or prep, and one day she went home to mom and said, ‘Mom, my classmates don’t know what Time magazine is. I was discussing it and they said what’s that?’ So the teacher said ‘Wow, it’s good Kris reads Time already!’ It was like no way kaming eng-eng (ignorant) about current events,” Ballsy remembers.

Ninoy was the “sun, moon and stars of his mother,” Doña Aurora Aquino. When Doña Aurora had a persistent suitor whom she seemed to like, too, Ninoy flew on a dangerous assignment as a Manila Times correspondent in Korea. “Nagtampo,” chuckles Pinky. That was the end of her Lola’s budding romance with her suitor.

Ninoy was the original “go-to” guy. His daughters describe him as the “takbuhan” of his relatives, even of his Cojuangco in-laws. If someone eloped, they went to him to mediate. When someone died abroad, Ninoy would volunteer to take one last look to ensure the relative’s remains in his casket would look dignified.

Ninoy had the gift of being easily accessible to anyone, from all walks of life. Pinky succinctly describes this quality as being  lapitin.

Even in school in Manila, Ninoy was known to take under his wing the so-called provincianos, who hadn’t made new friends yet in school. He would approach them and be nice to them. Later on, he would tell his children that when he ran for national office, guess who volunteered to help him in his campaign? His classmates from the provinces!

Pinky says her father was kind, even to perfect strangers. She remembers a trip the family made to Tagaytay. On their way home, Ninoy spotted a foreigner (he turned out to be Bangladeshi) looking absolutely frustrated in a payphone booth because he didn’t have enough change to make an important call. It turns out the man had found himself stranded and had no ride back to Manila. Ninoy did not only give him coins to make his call, he offered the stranger a ride — and dinner at the family home on Times Street! The children were simply flabbergasted — but that was Dad. 

That perfect stranger became the Aquinos’ lifelong friend. When he invited Ninoy to Bangladesh, the latter was surprised that his host, whom he “picked up” at a phone booth in Tagaytay, was actually a top government official who owned a yacht and took his guests on hunting trips.

“Dad never judged a book by its cover,” Pinky says proudly. “Even in Harvard, he would tutor promising students who would come to him for advice. (One of them turned out to be the son of the sultan of Johor, who later offered to help Ninoy make a backdoor entry to the Philippines in 1983, an offer Ninoy politely refused. For Ninoy, entering the Philippines through the “front gate” was the only option.)

“Dad’s gift of being so welcoming, who reaps it now? Us! Sa dami ng tinulungan niya, we still get surprised when people approach us and say, scholar ako ng tatay ninyo,” Pinky continues. “Or, ‘tatay ko, pinaaral ng tatay mo’,” Ballsy adds.

“Because I think being a politician, you have to be so lapitin. That’s your nature. To be a successful politician, people must feel they can approach you. Dad gave the time of day to everyone.”

The sisters remember how one wall of their house on Times Street got filled up by paintings. “He inherited the really good ones from his dad. But the rest were sold to him by friends and artists in need. Iiyak sa kanya. Suddenly, we would have another painting at home! He couldn’t say no,” laughs Pinky.

Though he was generous to others, he didn’t splurge on himself. He would constantly exhort his daughters to be as simple as their mother, who wasn’t fond of jewelry.

“Material things were never at the top of our list,” chorus the sisters.

The only indulgences, if you could call them that, that Ninoy allowed himself, were paintings and quality neckties.

Ballsy remembers that when Ninoy was released after seven years and seven months in prison and they were packing for a trip, he made sure he would be bringing with him his prized neckties — even if they were over seven years old and their designs were outdated.

 “Kaming lahat, we begged him, ‘Dad, huwag na yan. Those ties are not in fashion anymore.’ And he’d say, ‘Hindi! Hindi ko pa nagamit ‘to! Binili ko, eh, nag martial law, kaya hindi ko pa ito nagagamit’!’ Obviously, he had no occasion to wear them in prison.”

Same with his suits. He thought his hardly-used, pre-martial law suits were still perfectly presentable in the early ‘80s. “We kept telling him, ‘Dad, hindi na uso yan.’ They were shocking plaid suits. He said, ‘Hindi, bago ito eh!’ So we rode the tram when we were in San Francisco for one of his meetings and people were just staring at him,” Pinky recalls with mock horror. But Ninoy couldn’t care less.

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