"Good-bye, slaves"

Our running dialogue went, "O, Pulitzer Prize winning ba ang lay-out mo bukas?" and his answer would invariably be a colorful expletive, sometimes accompanied by a threat in jest, "Miss Yu ha...."

He may shout, he may glare, he may threaten, but you could always banter with him–about the color of his skin (especially on Quiapo’s Feast of the Black Nazarene on Jan. 9, the jokes flew thick and fast), his limp (which doctor should he have gone to?), the hours he kept (at our editorial lunches, you were really late if you arrived after "the late Alex Fernando"), and other topics best left inside the newsroom. He may have looked intimidating and his voice around deadline time downright menacing, but he was really pusong mamon, a softie who would always spring for merienda, a friend you could count on.

The very sudden death last Monday of STAR deputy managing editor Alex Fernando was a shock to all of us in The STAR family, and to his many, many friends in the industry and in government. Alex occupied a special place here at The STAR: if the year had 366 days, Alex was here 364 days (except Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, when the office shut down), his motto probably being that days off were hazardous to his health. The two occasions I recall him being absent was when his mother died a couple of years ago and, more recently, when he was in the hospital because of a severe allergy, which again was the topic of office jokes for a few weeks. He was the go-to guy for background information and trivia: if you needed to know how many died in the ferry sinking or which congressman fought with which senator, the answer was but a holler away.

Alex was one of the last of the stereotype newspaperman as hard-nosed, hard-drinking, stay-up-til-dawn, growling bear of an editor hunkered behind the newsdesk. He did his lay-outs the old-fashioned way–with dummy sheet, plastic ruler and red China marker. Every night, when page one was finally put to bed, you would find him at his impossibly cluttered desk, with his feet up, reading a book.

Every Tuesday, when we at STARweek worked late to put Sunday’s issue to bed, his parting shot when he left the office a little before eleven always was, "Good-bye, slaves." It’s a ritual we will miss, in the late hours of all the Tuesday nights ahead.