The radical philanthropist

St. Theresa’s College, San Marcelino was not quite the playing fields of Eton, but our AB ’63 barkada had weekly Saturday Mass at 7 AM, Sodality medals dangling from ribbons over our white blouses and navy blue skirts. After breakfast, we packed USAID flour and used clothes for the urban poor living under Ayala Bridge, spending the rest of the morning persuading couples twice our age to formalize their live-in arrangements in church. Then we chucked our uniforms for “outside dress" and headed for the movies, a poetry reading or soiree with well-spoken college boys. In this company prone to lyrical flights, Loida distinguished herself with measured words and empathic gestures swinging 45 degrees forward. Four decades later, she confesses how flummoxed she was by our giggling at her absolutely serious Student Catholic Action reports. Was it raging hormones navigating the trapeze to dignified womanhood or was it the earnestness that remains Loida’s trademark?

Nothing has grazed it – come derailment of her plan for a political career; come the stupendous fortune her husband willy-nilly created; come his too-early death and her discovery that she was capable of purveying the fortune he left her for the commonweal. She remains essential Loida amid the causes, society photographers and namedroppers - a practical idealist and courteous radical equally at home in high fashion on a magazine cover or huddling in intimate reunion with her Sorsogon folk. She still measures life’s grief and bounty with the same deliberate speech and gestures that once reduced our chattering posse to giggles because well, she sounded like a lawyer. No one was surprised when she did go on to UP Law School. Passing the Philippine Bar in ’68 set her well on the way for the political to career her dad envisioned. But would he have rewarded her with a trip to New York if he had known what awaited his promising Loida? She was on holiday, waiting for her sister Mely to finish her MA in art history before going home together, when a Village Voice ad caught her eye: Wanted – Assistant Clerk, Civil Rights Council. “Why not?" she thought. It would be good work experience. Neglecting to mention that she had already passed the Philippine Bar, she got the job assisting Puerto Rican would-be immigrants through the legal maze in Spanish Harlem. But one weekend, her boss wanted to take Mely out on a foursome with a blind date for Loida. Enter the Afro-American dynamo Reginald Lewis, 24, who had never dated an Asian, meeting a Loida so focused she never even dated her law classmates. He was amused and intrigued by her banter. She turned un-typically giggly and feminine. Six months later, he abandoned his own plan not to marry until 35 and proposed. They got as far as arranging a date in NYU’s Catholic chapel when the prospect of giving up her Philippine career suddenly gave Loida cold feet. Breaking the engagement, she began a homeward escape with Mely, but why was she progressively sadder the farther she traveled from Reggie? Thank God they dropped in on old friends on the way, among them the commonsensical Gerry Gil. Assessing Loida’s state, he demanded, “So why don’t you call him?" That was just the push she needed. She called and a relieved Reggie suggested that she go on home to break the news to her parents first. But Loida was in no hurry, causing Reggie more jitters as she and Mely spent two leisurely weeks in Korea and Taiwan before flying home. Now a determined fiance would follow to the Philippines and finally make Loida his bride in that chapel amid the ruins of Paco’s lovely circular cemetery, a hangout of our college barkada. And so began life in New York with Reggie, a corporate lawyer whose series of leveraged buyouts would make him the first Afro-American billionaire, installing Loida and their two daughters in an East Avenue flat in New York, a mansion in East Hampton and a home in Paris, higher and higher into the stratosphere. But came the day when his unbearable headache diagnosed as brain cancer claimed Reggie a brief six weeks later. He was only 50. Loida spent a year in deep mourning. Forty-one years since they married, their daughter Leslie, 37, is a visionary theater artist married to a Canadian businessman-with-a-heart, Gavin Sword. Christina, 30, is a journalist engaged to fellow-journalist Daniel Halpern. Both Gavin and Daniel are whites who know the beauty of black. Loida is thrilled that Christina asked for “a Catholic wedding in the Philippines" wearing her mom’s jusi wedding dress. Her eye on the goal through protracted time also make Loida’s ears sensitive to peak memories of the Philippine drama echoing from the walls of Fort Santiago where Christina marries Daniel in Raja Sulayman courtyard beside Jose Rizal’s cell. She never stopped being a part of Philippine history, you see. She was with us in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship out in New York. Her advocacy for recognition and just compensation for Fil Vets since the ‘70s is just beginning to see its rewards. She may have supported Gloria Arroyo because “we need an economist" but backed Noynoy Aquino in a powerhouse Fil-Am campaign, as founding chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations. Right after victory, Loida Nicolas-Lewis lost no time promoting good governance and OFW bonds to help hoist the Philippines out of the debt trap. Last seen, she was making appointments with the officials concerned. Loida would indeed have made quite a Philippine senator had an unusual destiny not derailed her with Reggie Lewis. His exit as unexpected as his entrance into her life tested her trust in life and what comes after, and she’s come through with colors flying. Today the cause dearest to her heart is the Lewis College she founded in Sorsogon ten years ago. It’s grown to a thousand students from grade school to college. She hopes to unleash them on the world as change agents equipped with a superior education earned right in the Philippine grassroots. Meanwhile, on a family visit to Manila, 5-year old Christian Sword screaming “Nanay!" scrambles into Loida’s arms the minute she opens the door to the Lewis domicile in Rockwell. As Grandma Loida bends to kiss a Rwandan orphan Leslie adopted with his sister Savilla, is that Reggie Lewis’s invisible smile I see? - GMANews.TV