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RECALLING MANG RAMONING,
DR. RAMON C. SISON
By Jose Maria Sison
January 13, 2009
(Read at the funeral services for Dr. Ramon C. Sison by his son Dr. Reuven
F. Sison on behalf of his uncle Prof. Jose Maria Sison.)
My parents always called my eldest brother, Dr. Ramon C. Sison, "Ramoning"
to show endearment. We the younger siblings called him "Mang Ramoning".
Only before strangers would we formally call him Ramon or Mang Ramon.
He was supposed to be the informally adopted son of my father's sister
Dona Rosario S. de Pilar. But I recall that he was often in our house at
the town center of Cabugao or in our evacuation house during the Japanese
occupation. He enjoyed having two homes and two sets of parents. Up to the
time that he finished his medical degree at the University of the
Philippines, he had the privilege of having two sources of financial
allowance.
My earliest pleasant recollection of him was that he could play very well
several musical instruments, including the piano, the violin, guitar, the
trumpet and harmonica. He would impress everyone in our parlor or in
family gatherings by playing one instrument after another or a combination
of two or three instruments. We used to call him the one-man orchestra. He
was also well known for his drawings and carvings. He would display these
things on the table of our father.
My recollection of the unpleasant was when he caught me taking a puff from
my father's cigar and compelled me to take more puffs until I became dizzy
and threw up. Since then, I had hated the smell of tobacco. I surmised in
later years that he was trying to teach me a lesson so that I would hate
tobacco and not smoke. The lesson was effective for a long while because I
started to smoke quite late, at the age of twenty nine. It is ironic
though that Mang Ramoning also became fond of smoking. We did not know
then that on our mother's side we had a predisposition to lung cancer in
our senior years.
Mang Ramoning was ten years older than me. For that reason, it seemed like
he was always running far ahead of me. I was still in Cabugao when he was
already in Manila for his high school at the Ateneo de Manila. Then I
caught up with him and with my other elder siblings in Manila and we lived
together under the care of our eldest sister Corazon when I took my high
school and early years of university education. Then Mang Ramoning and
three other siblings would go to the US for graduate studies not on
Fulbright or Smith-Mundt but on the Serrano-Sison family scholarship. I
recall my parents arranging the dollar allocations for them in the 1950s.
I drew certain advantages from Mang Ramoning's having entered the Ateneo
de Manila ahead of me. Before I took the entrance examination, he tutored
me on how to handle the IQ test. He saw that being valedictorian of the
Cabugao elementary school I had no problem with English grammar and
arithmetic but he thought that I might be confounded by the IQ test which
was the main part of the entrance examination. His tutoring was successful
because I topped the entrance examination.
Next project of his was to straighten out my Cabugao accent in English. He
was not impressed that I had been the top declaimer of my class in
Cabugao. So he gave me pronunciation drills everyday for some two weeks.
When I failed to pronounce a word correctly, after three attempts, he
would thump the table.
He was delighted or amused when I was taking painting lessons seriously. I
made use of his books on figure drawing and still life. But when I tried
my hand at abstract painting, he scolded me for doing so without first
mastering the basics. He said that Picasso had to excel first in the
academy before venturing into abstract art. He never pressed me to take
piano lessons like the rest of our siblings. He knew that I had always run
away from the piano lessons when I was in grade school.
Mang Ramoning had the reputation of being very successful at courting
girls in his high school and college years. That is because he was
handsome, taking the best features from our parents. And he was highly
intelligent. But most important of all he played jazz and classical music
and he could draw portraits. With his music, he could win the heart not
only of the girl but also the hearts of her parents. His portraiture of
the girl was the most irresistible. I think that Manang Charito can attest
to that fact.
As far as academic studies were concerned, Mang Ramoning and I had a
mutual admiration for each other for normally getting into the honors'
list of the dean. But we also recognized each other's erratic side. We
could excel in many subjects but get mediocre marks in a few others. We
also liked to play truant or skip classes. While in high school I got into
trouble by exceeding 30 days of absence. While in medical school, Mang
Ramoning was threatened with dismissal for exceeding the allowable limit
of absences. At any rate, we never failed in any subject because we always
availed of the notes of classmates.
Our mutual admiration for each other for academic and professional
achievements became even more pronounced in the long run. I stood in awe
of him when he went through postdoctoral studies and cancer research at
the Georgetown Medical Center and the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and
became a diplomate in pathology. He was also proud of me when I finished
my Bachelor of Arts in English with honors. He took the trouble of getting
my pins and certificates from the US headquarters of the Phi Kappa Phi and
the Pi Gamma Mu honor societies.
During the times that Mang Ramoning visited the Philippines and The
Netherlands, he would narrate to me how he succeeded with his professional
practice in the Mid-West and earned enough to buy a house in Beverly
Hills, invest in a restaurant, a beach house in Malibu and other
properties.
He became an official of the Kaiser hospital system. He was happy to have
been appointed by then Governor Jerry Brown to the California medical
board of examiners. He was also thrilled about being a doctors' doctor in
the US army medical corps and reaching the rank of full colonel.
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But what seemed to be far more
exciting to him than his medical accomplishments was his becoming a
Hollywood actor in a number of major films. That is not surprising at all
to me. He was fond of associating with showbiz people even while he was in
Manila. I recall Rosa Rosal and other movie actors coming to our apartment
in Manila to practice some music with him. I recall that it was a
sensation in the family and in our hometown when he appeared in a Filipino
film as a trumpeteer.
I think that Mang Ramoning was far more accomplished as a musician than as
a movie actor or as a stage actor. His playing of the piano and the violin
was of concert quality in jazz or in classical music. He associated and
jammed with the best Filipino musicians of his generation. He was a close
friend of the conductor and violinist Redentor Romero. As far as I know,
he was never a soloist in any classical concert but he was often part of a
symphony orchestra, usually playing a string instrument.
As a piano jazz player, he was superb in providing the intermission
numbers in community and professional gatherings. I remember vividly when
during his first visit to me in Utrecht we went to a piano bar to listen
to a Filipino pianist-singer who was billed by the management as the best
from Asia. He and the Filipino artist talked shop during the latter's
break. Then Mang Ramoning took over the piano and delighted the customers.
In the early 1990s, he and Mang Charito came to visit us in The
Netherlands on time for the Van Gogh centennial. While we looked at the
Van Gogh paintings, he gave a running interpretation of these. He told me
that Van Gogh rebelled against the fine portraiture of the rich merchants
and that there was an element of social criticism in making the poor
potato eaters look like dogs. He declared that upon retirement he would
concentrate on painting more than ever before. When he became the chief
inspector of all US military hospitals in Germany, he also visited me a
number of times in Utrecht.
I consider as his most important visits to me those he made in the early
1980s when I was imprisoned by the Marcos fascist dictatorship. On his
first visit, he told me about the good situation of my children abroad.
His visit also served to start breaching the solitary confinement I was
in. Before visiting me, he had a brief fruitless talk with Marcos arranged
by a relative who was a police general. This relative told Mang Ramoning
that I actually had no problem if I agreed to accept a government
position. I responded by saying that I would outlast and outlive Marcos.
The second time that Mang Ramoning visited me in prison was in 1982 on the
occasion of celebrating his silver wedding anniverary with Manang Charito
and the united front baptism of my son Jasm. Both events were officiated
by Cardinal Sin in the same morning. My mother had requested Cardinal Sin.
She had been acquainted with him since my arrest in 1977 upon the
introduction of Archbishop Juan Sison who was a close friend of Cardinal
Sin.
After my release from prison,
Mang Ramoning took the lead in the family to accept and pursue the offer
of the American Civil Liberties Union to file a case against Ferdinand E.
Marcos and others for human rights violations, particularly for my torture
and for the disappearance of Mang Paquito. Together with other individual
and class plaintiffs, we won the case against Marcos in the US juudicial
system. But unfortunately, the Philippine government has prevented up to
now the indemnification of the victims of human rights violations and has
misappropriated the money from the Swiss bank accounts of Marcos.
After he retired from medical practice in 2001, Mang Ramoning gained more
time for painting, playing music, writing the history of Cabugao, bringing
his grandchildren to school and fetching them, dancing the tango, writing
a funny alternative history of this dance and cleaning his swimming pool
as a frequent form of physical exercise. Among his paintings were those of
the Cabugao church, the public primary school, the old municipio, the
ancestral mansion, our parents and grandfather and my poem The Guerrilla
Is Like a Poet.
Although he could play several musical instruments quite well, Mang
Ramoning did not sing. Only Johnny Carson could trust him in 1986 to sing
on TV in a parody of the dictator Marcos. Mang Ramoning was probably
amused when I sent to him the computer discs of my amateur singing in
2004. I asked him to provide the piano accompaniment for the songs that I
sang without any accompanying musical instrument. He complied. I also
heard that he reproduced the CDs and distributed the copies to relatives
in California.
Mang Ramoning's history of Cabugao reads like the history of the
intermarrying principalia families of the Azcuetas, Sollers, Sisons and
Serranos because they have dominated the politics and economy of Cabugao
since Spanish colonial times. Nevertheless, the history mentions other
prominent natives of Cabugao and covers the most significant events,
including the battles of Diego Silang and Gabriela Silang in the environs
of the town, the Philipppine revolution against Spanish colonialism, the
war of resistance against US aggression and the Japanese fascist
occupation.
Finally, some people might be curious enough to ask whether I got along
well with Mang Ramoning and why. Definitely, I got along well with him for
several reasons. We loved each other as blood brothers. I was proud of him
as he was proud of me.We respected each other as members of a family that
values intellectual and professional achievement. We also respected each
other's ideas and views on important Philippine and international issues.
We often concurred because he was open-minded and progressive even if he
was not a Marxist like me. He showed concern for my children and to Julie
and me when I was in prison and whenever I was in danger in the
Philippines and abroad. We are quite alike in having a sense of humor and
in enjoying whatever main or subsidiary work we do. ### |
