PETER’S PINOY PATTER — JUNE 2017
Bridge Generation
Past blogs have featured Bridge Generation Filipino American jazz performers Corney Pasquil, Flip Nunez, Josie (Tenio) Canion, Gabe Baltazar, and Rudy Tenio. All were adherents of straight ahead jazz and influenced by 1940s bop icons like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. But Filipino jazz musicians are not limited to the American born. The Philippines has long had its own practitioners of straight ahead jazz. Among the first Filipino nationals to extensively perform in America was Bobby Enriquez. Born in 1944 in Bacolod, Negros, he was self-taught on the piano at the age of four and became an internationally traveled jazz professional at fourteen. In America, Bobby became known as “Wild Man” because of his flamboyant antics on the piano. He would often play with his elbows, fists, or with the flat of his hands without missing a beat. In 1967 he moved to Hawaii where he became Don Ho’s musical director. He performed with famed Filipina singer Amapola from 1976 to 1977 in San Francisco followed by appearances in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. There, alto saxophonist Richie Cole asked him to join his band. Bobby went on to appear with jazz luminaries Dizzy Gillespie and George Benson, cut eight long-playing albums on GNP-Crescendo Records, and performed before three U.S. Presidents. Given his talent and their sharing the same ethnicity, Bridge Generation jazz musicians, as well as straight ahead jazz aficionados, embraced Bobby almost immediately upon his arrival in America in the late 1960s and kept in touch with him until his untimely death in 1996…………….. On April 26 Herb Jamero of Livingston CA was among 66 Central Valley WWII/Korean War veterans who flew home from a 3 day all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. visiting the many memorials in the nation’s capital…………. Former Iron Workers Union national president Fred Basconcillo and musician/teacher Vince Gomez were among ten inductees to the Hall of Merit of the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco on April 7…………….. An excited Vi (Reyes) Andrade of Fremont CA recently returned from her first visit to the Philippines, where she had an emotional reunion with a sister she hadn’t seen for over forty years………… Owing to its history as the first major destination point for Philippine immigration, Hawaii is the home state of most “Filipino American Firsts.” Among them: Ben Cayetano, first governor of a U.S. state; Eduardo Malapit, first mayor of a county; Lorraine Rodero-Inouye, the first Filipina American county mayor; Benjamin Menor, first justice of a state supreme court; Daniel Kihano, first speaker of a state house of representatives; and Robert Bunda, first president of a state senate……………… “Proud of my Powerhouse” — Mike Nisperos‘ description of his wife, Eleanor (Oducayen) Nisperos, the first Filipina-American attorney in California. The East Bay couple, both accomplished lawyers, are now in well-deserved retirement………………. Fond farewells to: (1) Margie (Cabatuan) Talaugan, 84, of Santa Maria who passed away on April 4. After years raising her family and operating a down home restaurant making adobo and hamburgers in nearby Guadalupe with Joe — her husband of 67 years — she found her calling as a community organizer, civil rights advocate, researcher, and teacher. Her crowning achievement: founder of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts and Education Center. (2) Richard Bustillo, 75, on March 30 in Torrance CA. An authority on Filipino martial arts (kali, escrima, arnis), he co-founded the Filipino Kali Academy in Torrance with noted martial artist/actor Dan Inosanto. (3) Don Bilar, 98, of Stockton. An original member of the Filipino Youth Association basketball team in the 1940s, he served with the U.S. Army Filipino Regiment during WWII……………. Happy Birthdays to: Joe Cabrillas, Virginia (Velez) Catanio, Judy (Contorno) Tafoya, Manuel Viernes.
Pinakbet — News Across America
Meet Dr. Elenita Fe (Leny) Luna Mendoza-Strobel, Chair of the American Multicultural Studies Department of Sonoma State University and Project Director of the Center for Babaylan Studies (babaylan — Visayan term which means healer, mediator between spiritual realms, counselor and therapist). Leny may be a professor, an eminent scholar, author, activist, and a babaylan-inspired woman. But she also considers herself a “settler” and a “colonized person,” who brought the concept of “decolonization” to the Filipino community. “When I was decolonizing, I became aware of the insidious and unconscious messages I was internalizing – our ‘inferiority,’ our brownness, our need to be ‘improved and corrected’, our need to be whitened.” In 1996 her dissertation at the University of San Francisco “The Process of Decolonization for Post-1965 Filipino Americans” became the Most Outstanding Doctoral Student Dissertation. In 2001 it was published under the title: Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino Americans…………… Teresita Batayola, CEO of the International Community Health Services of Seattle was honored by the University of Washington Women’s Center on April 1 with a Woman of Courage Award for “bringing equity and diversity to local and global communities.” CEO since 2005, Teresita is responsible for an ICHS budget of more than $36 million, serving primarily Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander communities. Beginning as a small storefront in 1973, the agency is now fully accredited and received the 2015 Warren Featherston Reid Award for Excellence in Health Care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also named ICHS the only “National Quality Leader” in Washington State in 2015 for “exceeding national quality benchmarks for health care.”………….. After winning the MVP award for scoring the highest league performance rating on April 10, young chess grand master Wesley So, 24, continued his brilliance in the playoffs for the 2017 U.S. chess championship. The Philippine native, now living in Minnetonka MN and representing America, beat 2006 U.S. champion Alex Onischuk, for the $50,000 grand prize to become the new U.S. chess champion…………….. Congratulations to Frank Aurelio Yokoyama who won a seat to the Cerritos City Council on April 11, joining incumbent Mark Pulido in the two-person Filipino American contingent on the five member council…………………. On March 19 the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March drew a record field of 7,200 retired and active-duty military personnel and civilians to the hot sands of New Mexico to honor victims of one of World War II’s worst atrocities. Participants walked the 26.2 mile-Bataan Memorial Death March course, to honor the 58,000 Filipino servicemen and 10,000 Americans who courageously defended the Philippines before surrendering to overwhelming odds only to be forced by the Japanese military to walk more than 65 miles through the hot jungle of the Bataan Peninsula without food or water. At least 10,000 Filipinos and 650 Americans died in stifling heat or at the hands of Japanese soldiers who shot, bayoneted or beat those who fell or stopped for water. Other commemorations were held throughout America, including Washington, D.C, where a wreath laying ceremony took place at the WWII Memorial and in San Francisco where Cecilia Gaerlan, the hard working Executive Director of the Bataan Legacy Historical Society, organized a beautiful remembrance at the Presidio……………. Followers of action movies “Guardians of the Galaxy I and II” may know muscular Dave Bautista as the villainous Drax the Destroyer. But few know he is the grandson of Filipino immigrants……………. When the White House announced on March 8 that President Trump will nominate Acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco to be the next solicitor general of the United States, the nomination was immediately criticized by several prominent members of the Filipino American community. On March 9, New York psychologist Kevin Nadal wrote, “I’m not interested in celebrating Filipino Americans who are nominees to perpetuate white supremacy, colonial mentality, misogyny, LGBTQ phobia just because one of their grandparents was born and raised in Batangas. Let’s not be so desperate for recognition that we celebrate mediocrity among our people.” And on March 10, San Francisco attorney/activist Rodel Rodis said, “African Americans are not proud that Justice Clarence Thomas is in the U.S. Supreme Court when he consistently rules against the interests of African Americans on virtually every issue. I don’t believe that we should be proud of Trump’s appointment of Noel Francisco when his job will be to defend Trump’s racist, misogynist, xenophobic policies before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has never taken a position in support of civil rights for minorities. The fact that he has Filipino ancestry is just an accident of birth, nothing for Filipinos to be proud of. He may have the blood but that’s all he has.”
Musings
Countdown: 9 months – For the Board of Trustees, Filipino American National Historical Society, to provide critically needed financing to ensure keeping open the FANHS National Museum in Stockton — the historic center of Filipino immigration………….. Hypocrisy: (1) Americans appreciate Mexican culture (Cinco de Mayo/tacos), but want to deport and keep out its people. (2) The President declares opposition to all religious discrimination but wants to exclude Muslims from coming to America……………. Is the following disturbingly familiar? “Powerful and continuing nationalism, disdain for human rights, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, supremacy of the military, rampant sexism, controlled mass media, obsession with national security, religion and government intertwined, corporate power protected, labor power suppressed, disdain for intellectuals and the arts, obsession with crime and punishment, rampant cronyism and corruption, fraudulent elections.” (“Early signs of Fascism” posted in the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.).
###################