My father, Mr. Justice Hilarion Lolarga Aquino, will turn 83 on Wednesday, the 21st of the month. He was born while the star spangled banner yet waved over a land that was not so free but definitely the home of the brave! Camiling was the town of the Romulos, the Peñas and the Kippings. It was the town of the composer of “O Naraniag a Bulan,” and it was my father’s town too. But the entire family spoke Pangalatok, besides Ilocano. Lineage went back to Mangaldan, Pangasinan. So it was that when the Japanese became vicious, the entire family escaped to Pangasinan, only to endure life in the trenches because of the bombardment that accompanied the landing of American forces. That made my paternal grandmother, Esperanza, anxious and on edge—a terrible condition at a time that tranquilizers were not easy to come by.
The Camiling house was a typically huge middle-class residence. I was born in that house. Daddy’s parents had parcels of land that yielded palay that was more than enough for the family’s needs which is why daddy went to law school, an elder brother became a mechanical engineer, a younger brother, to medical school, one sister finished a degree in commerce and another sister became a teacher and rose through the ranks of academe. But the Manila schooling of the brood took its toll, and the parcels of land were gradually sold. My father once told me that one of the reasons he decided to study law was to take up the cause of the victims of loan sharks and opportunists!
My father met my mother in law school and while both were sitting for the Bar Examinations, tragedy struck: dad’s father, my grandfather Melanio, stricken by sarcoma, passed away just before the examination of the third Sunday of the Bar. Grief-stricken, daddy was no longer interested in finishing the examination, but mommy, ever so persistent, goaded him to do so. He did, and while he did not make it to the newspapers’ list of the top 10 passers, he notched a place in the first 15 of the roster!
He decided that his family would settle in Tuguegarao and, though virtually unknown, he introduced himself to the public by running for public office as a municipal councilor, soon surprising all by besting natives of Tuguegarao, at a time when PCOS machines did not misread results! I saw him interview clients regularly, and seeing him reading late into the night was rather common. I learned from him the lesson early in my life that it pays to be diligent, studious and earnest. When I started going to school and bringing home report cards with creditable marks, he was not remiss in his appreciation but he emphasized one thing: there could be no excuse nor pretext for arrogance. And he lived that precept. He still goes by it.
He entered the service of the judiciary late, because he did not want to be corrupt, and a judge’s pay was hardly enough to send the three of us who had chosen long courses to school. Mine was the most unprofitable economically—the priesthood. It is a course that is investment-intensive with no prospect of economic return. But when my father finally accepted appointment to the judgeship, he conducted himself as he continues to lecture today’s judges: with dignity, but without conceit, with becoming distance without aloofness, with respect without obsequiousness! And he was respected by all. Winning the twin awards of Outstanding Trial Court Judge and Outstanding Decision in Remedial Law, he was appointed to the Court of Appeals. But by the time he reached the court of penultimate appeal, he brought with him a wealth of experience as trial lawyer, trial judge and law professor. He loved teaching and still does. He was an examiner in the Bar twice, but he was not one out to display brilliance in questions that befuddle and confound. His were the reasonable questions of a wise pedagogue! His teaching experience, he put to good use as Chairman of the Legal Education Board, a position he continues to hold today on a hold-over capacity.
Old age has taken its toll on him. But when I think of him, I think of my young daddy running after a kite he had made for us that had cut free of the twine; I think of him fashioning a work of art of a lantern for Christmas; I think of him teaching me how to drive a lumbering Chevrolet and seeing his expression of exasperation because I could not quite get the art of stepping on the accelerator and releasing the clutch pedal in sync, I think of him cracking his jokes, sometimes corny, but always amusing.
Life has had its travails, but on the whole, it has been full of gifts, among the greatest of these, my father!
