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Ateneo de Davao High School Class ’62 celebrates Golden Jubilee

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Fifty years after graduation from high school, members of the Ateneo de Davao High School Class 1962 will return to the Matina campus on December 7  for a reunion that will begin with a  mass and recollection.

Retired Malaybalay Bishop Honesto Pacana, SJ, who was one of the class advisers, will officiate the mass and the recollection with another former teacher, Fr. Rene Ocampo, SJ, who heads the Alumni Office.

Forty-eight students gradudated from the Ateneo de Davao High School in 1962, many of  them distinguished in their respective fields, including the scion of a prominent family who went underground when martial law was declared and was arrested, tortured and killed in 1975.

Class members who are now based in the United States, Spain and Australia and  from other parts of the country have confirmed their attendance to the reunion.

Those who have confirmed attendance to the reunion are Davao City-based Michael “Mike” Aranas, Solomon “Mon” Carpio, Jerry “Jerry Garcia, class valedictorian Manuel “Manny” de Leon, Frank “Sulim” Liu, Prospero “Totoy” Mojica, Humberto “Nonoy” delos Santos, Jose “Ting” Tiongco and Amor “Amor” Yap; Mati-based Octavio “Boy” Zamora; Quezon City-based Domingo “Inggo” Garcia and Cristeto “Titoy” Vertido; Alabang-based Joseph “Jojosan” Sison; Subic-based Roberto “Boy” Calida; Malaybalay-based Danilo “Danny” Fanlo.

Class members who are coming from abroad are class salutatorian Bertito “Bert” Bisnar who is now based in Reno, Nevada: Rey “Rey” Domingo of San Francisco, California;  Alfono “Apo” Gallego of Zaragoza, Spain; Nilo “Nilo” Garriga of Sydney, Australia; and Gil Ernesto “Hell” de los Reyes of Baltimore, Maryland;

Other members of the class who have been contacted but have yet to confirm attendance are former Trade Secretary Tomas Alcantara,  now Chair and President of Alsons Consolidated Resources, Inc.; Amable Aguiluz V, the father of computer education in the Philippines; Benjamin Malones and Bienvenido Gamir.
Aguiluz  V, whose nickname is King, is founder of Asia’s first largest computer-based education system in the Philippines — The AMA Education System — and  since 2003, the Special Envoy of the Philippine President to the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Aranas is a retired bank manager of Family Bank before it merged with Bank of the Philippine Islands; Bisnar is an actuarian of a Health Maintenance Organization  in Reno Nevada, Calida is a businessman based in Subic, Zambales, Carpio is into agribusiness,  Domingo is  retired from his job in a research lab in California,  Fanlo is a mechanical engineering graduate and an efficiency expert, Gallego is an anaesthesiologist in Zaragoza, Spain; Domingo Garcia is a civil engineer and housing contractor; Garcia, Jerry is a retired prosecutor in Tagum City, Garriga is a retired salesman in Sydney, De Leon retired as consultant of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization in Japan, Liu  runs a wholesale grocery in Sta Ana, Mojica is a lawyer, Morales was with top management in a pharmaceutical company; De los Reyes is a retired  doctor in Baltimore Maryland; De los Santos runs Humberto’s Hotel along Palma Gil St., Sison is a retired diplomat who served as Agricultural attaché in Japan, Tiongco is chief executive officer of Medical Mission Group Hospitals and Health Services Cooperative-Philippines, a  health cooperative that started in Davao City in 1991 and has since spread nationwide;  Vertido is a retired actor and playwright; Yap is a practicing lawyer; Zamora is into agri-business.

Those who have sent word they could not attend are Carlos Tamayo, Vicente Tionko and Alex “Yackwa” Liu.

Among the class members who passed away are Eduardo E.  Lanzona who belonged to a rich, prominent family, taught economics in his alma mater, influenced the student movement there, helped organize farmers and the labor unions of Ateneo teachers and bank employees, went underground when martial law was declared in 1972 and was arrested, tortured and killed along with four others in Nabunturan, Compostela Valley on January 17, 1975; and Amado Lacuesta, who was an investment banker for 10 years before becoming an award-winning screenplay writer.  Lacuesta suffered a fatal heart failure on New Year’s Day 1997.

 

The success of his first screenplay,  Working Girls (1984), encouraged Lacuesta to continue writing for film and television.   He also did the screenplay for critically acclaimed films such as  Balweg: The Rebel Priest (1987), and Mumbaki (1996), wrote the scripts for the television series Sic O’Clock News and the mini-series Maynila;  did a musical (Taos) and won a Palanca for the short stories “Lost” and “The Little Girl Who Saved Her Yawns.”

Other class members who have passed away  are Calixto Arbas, Aristotle Antonio, Honorato Buhay, Arturo Danao, Vicente Derecho, Virgilio Durban, Virgilio Doromal, Ernesto Lizada, Omar Sayoc, Patricio Villanueva and Jose Neri Ilaya.

For more information, please view Ateneo de Davao HS 62 page on Facebook.  (Ateneo de Davao High School Class 1962)

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