In my research for my book The Life and Times of Perdon Family, I found out a number of questions which I deemed time and further researches will eventually provide the answers.
They refer, in particular, to the life of my late father, Regino Perdon, a public school teacher who helped the Philippine government during pre-war, the occupation and post liberation in extending the cause of free primary education to many distant barrios and sitios of Camarines Sur in the Philippines.
His career as a classroom teacher as an extension of the so-called the ‘Thomasite’ project of the then American Civil government to teach in barrio classrooms turned out to be a young man’s right of passage towards manhood and the vicissitudes that went with it. By his fourth year as school teacher in 1923, only 22 years old, he became part of the 98.5% Filipino educators who were taking over from the American teachers educating his compatriots.
I can just picture a young man drawn away from family and birth town of Nabua, Camarines Sur and assigned to a lonely far flung barrio in Caramoan peninsula and its equivalent distant other Camarines Sur barrios. I can imagine that in bringing education to the barrio, he was well respected, and welcomed by the people including the prospect of him establishing his own family in their location.
As it turned out later, the young public school teacher fathered a son named Bonifacio and, with some debates, with another woman another son named Arturo and, yet, another rumour of a reportedly only daughter which story is not covered by this article.
I grew up knowing and admiring my late older half brother Bonifacio who himself grew up and had a family of his own in Caramoan whilst my father and his real family resided in Sipocot, the other end of Camarines Sur province.
But the question of another half brother named Arturo had intrigued me for many years. I had encountered very few information about him, and left out information about this in my book The Life and Times of the Perdon Family which is almost exhaustive.
Perhaps because of my yearning to fill the gaps so to speak that I went to the Philippines, did personal research on records in Manila, and travelled to Biclo in the Philippines, parricualary Caramoan town and interviewed a number of old people who can still shed a light on the life of my late father, Regino Perdon, as a young and single public school teacher in Caramoan town.
From barrio Napolidan, Lupi, Camarines Sur where I was able to get arrangement to set up a Regino Perdon Library in Napolidan Elementary School to honour my father as the founder of the school in 1948, I ventured, together with my two nephews, Reggie, eldest son of my late brother Hermes Perdon, and Dexter, youngest son of my late elder brother Danilo Perdon, further southern tip of Luzon, in Caramoan peninsula facing Catanduanes island in Bicol.
We were joined in Naga City by my niece, Frosy Perdon Martirez, youngest daugther of my late elder half brother, Bonifacio Perdon, who was born and died in Caramoan, Camarine Sur.
I planned to visit old relatives still living in places along the way to Caramoan andto verify a number of stories about my father’s love affairs during his early years as a barrio classroom school teacher.
Those were in the far flung barrios of Bikal and Paniman, both sitios of the town of Caramoan, Camarines Sur. As I found out during my group’s stay in the place, one could easily be in love with the rustic place, especially in sitio Paniman which is nestled on the beach of the same name.
During our stay one night there, we were lulled in our sleep like babies by the noise of smooth waves and the sea breeze coming from the Pacific. On our sea travel by boat, one could easily notice the unending number of little beautiful islands dotting the horizon facing Paniman beach. And I could barely erase in my mind even in my sleep such magnificent scenery.
I willed to get on with my mission and not distracted by the beautiful sceneries and stories about many more great things to see and enjoy in Caramoan and its islands.
The continually popular TV reality series The Survivor which showed the magic of the flora and fauna of Caramoan peninsula had intrigued many both locals and visitors. The reality series in fact shoot a few segments which found its way into TV broadcast in the U.S., and in Europe.
More film crews, I was told, from the US, Israel, Poland, Netherlands, and Germany have been there and enjoyed working in the surrounds so luscious that the European and American visitors were envious of the locals for having such natural beauty in their midst.
On our way to Caramoan, we spent a night at my niece Eufrosina Perdon Bustamante’s house in the town of San Jose, close to Sabang the seaport for motor boats travelling to Caramoan and its neighboring barrios.
My father stayed in Caramoan for eight years of his early career as an educator and 19 years before I was born. Those vague years intrigued me enough to mount this type of exploration interviewing relatives and following up other leads. I yearned to learn more about those years in my father’s life in Caramoan, and shed light on matters on about my alleged half brother Arturo.
I found out from my succeeding interviews that my alleged half-brother Arturo was left behind with his mother in Caramoan when my father took another assignment in another place in Camarines Sur.
Arturo was reportedly not recognised by my father because his mother consequently married another man who gave Arturo his then subsequent legal surname Bien. In my interview I also found out that my father consequently married a woman named Jacobe whilst in Baao, but they did not had any child.
My half brother Bonifacio who was born five years after my father arrived in barrio Bikal in Caramoan carried my father’s surname,
My elder brother Bonifacio whilst born out of wedlock was duly recognised by my father and his ancestral family. Bonifacio or Manoy Pacio established close relationship with my dad’s mother and father ( his lolo), so much so some of Pacio’s subsequent children themselves came to live with my other uncle and aunty as recognition of the grandchildren’s linage.
The subsequent family of Manoy Pacio had a strong relationship with the Perdons of Nabua, Camarines Sur. At various instances, children of ManoyPacio came and lived with in Nabua, Camarines Sur and in Oas, Albay under the patronage of my aunties and uncles. The children of Manoy Pacio comprise of the increasing Perdon clans who left the Philippines for Milan, Italy and the Middle East.
My trip to Caramoan turned out to be a time of reconnection with the family of my half brother Arturo who departed about few years after my elder half brother Manoy Pacio passed away.
Manoy Pacio and Arturo’s children agree that the two of them who both grew up and established their own families in Caramoan recognised each other as brothers from two different mothers.
I never met my other half brother Arturo at all and I did not have idea how he looked like. However, his children welcomed me and gave their recollections of stories handed down to them by their parents.
An 81-year old local named Jaime Sancha, claimed to be a chilhood friend of both Manoy Pacio and Arturo. Jaime said everyone in the barrio knew that Arturo and Bonifacio were brothers. He said even in the poblacion of Caramoan, people knew the two regarded themselves dearly as brothers from different mother, hence their different surnames.
Arturo’s subsequent daughter of Milagros Bien or Lagring herself told me she once lived with my mother Concepcion in the 70s in Quezon city as a house help brought by then stll living brother Danilo. She said she accompanied my mother who likes living by herself up to the time she moved to San Pedro, Laguna. She said Lola Cion was already approaching senility
For her part, Coring told me that their grandmother’s name was Josefina Mercado who was a student of my father when he was teaching in Paniman and who doubled as laundry woman for his dirty clothes. School teachers before WWII had prim and proper dress code even if they are posted in remote barrio.
It turned out that sometime, just after the birth of Bonifacio by Agatona Sales, another of my father’s labandera subsequently gave birth to Arturo. It was also about the time the he was given a new teaching post, first briefly in Baao, then in Cadlan, Pili. The poor Josefina who was left pregnant by my father found a saviour in another man named Felix Bien who became the father of Arturo and the subsequent other children.
That union, after the birth of Arturo, also in 1925, followed by Marqueta, Merlita, Carlito, Sabel and Elsa, all known in Caramoan, including Manoy Arturo as having surnamed Bien.
My father’s stint as classroom teacher in Bikal ended in 1927, two years after his first son Bonifacio was born. He was a single father. He was re-assigned and given a new teaching post in the town of Baao, Camarines Sur, closer to his birthplace town of Nabua.
My father subsequently married in Baao a woman named Jacobe. In Caramoan much much later, I met an old man named Mr Arsenio Dolloro a retired policeman of Caramoan whom I interviewed also during my trip . He claimed that as a young boy he lived with my father and his wife Jacobe who were childless for years. that he lived in Cadlan with my father and his wife for seven years, in fact, he told me that the couple did not have a child, so they decided to adopt him.
He said that my father was a kind man who even treated him as his own son. He repeatedly told me that when he arrived in Cadlan at the age of 6 years old, my father bought him a small bicycle.
The old man apologised and said that it is the only information he could give me about his being a former ward and for seven years living with my father and his wife Jacobe? At the time of the information about Jacobe came into the picture, I recalled seeing an old burial photo from the old photo albums left behind by my mother when she died in 2003. In that photo I identified my father who was prominently seen grieving for the deceased person. .
From the Delloro residence we proceeded to the barrio of Paniman where the children of Manoy Arturo still live. We stayed in the house of Milagros Bien or Lagring, daughter of Manoy Arturo, facing the beach of Paniman, a beautiful place made by the presence of fishing boats creating a rustic atmosphere.
My father stayed for two years in Paniman until 1929, when he was again given a new post, at barangay Curry, a remote barrio of the neighbouring town of Pili. There he had to hike morning and afternoon for many kilometres to reach his teaching post and back to his accommodation in town in the evening.
The place is also in Camarines Sur. My mother would tell us later that my father opened the school in that barrio in Curry, located at the foot of the legendary Mt. Isarog, a former active volcano, where many of the inhabitants were Aetas, the nomadic aboriginal tribes who were enticed to a more settled life and adapted into a more permanent lifestyle in the lower lands. A couple of these negritoes, in fact, worked as household helps for my parents.
Back in Australia, I looked for the burial photo I remember seeing but had no clue why my father was figured prominently on the photo. He was seen still in state of grieving and at the back of this photo is handwritten the name ‘Jacobe R. Perdon’. I identified the handwriting was that of my mother.
I closely scrutinised the photo and using a magnifying glass I found the face of my mother when she was still single, as among in the barrio residents who bade goodbye to the deceased Jacobe.
I never knew it but my brother Nonoy said our mother confided to him my father was a widower before she married him. I just can analyse that being in the small barrio of Cadlan , almost all residents knew each other. My mother was probably was moving int he same circle as my father and his wife Jacobe, particularly in her religious membership with the town’s Dignitarios de la Accion Catolica.
Another reason was the fact that the period, from 1929-1938, a ten year period, when my father’s wife died, he decided to court my mother who was nearing 30 years old. In 1938, in February, my father married my mother at the Naga Cathedral. He was 37 and she was 27 years old.
The marriage could also be the reason why my mother never received the customary ‘dowry’ given by my paternal grandparents when their sons settled down and got married. After all, it was already a second marriage for my father.
As I close this story about my long lost half brother Manoy Arturo whose place in our family tree remain a blank space for the main reason that no one could show me a photo of him except a hazy burial photo which is too blurred to know him more, at least, his face. But my distant relatives in Paniman promised me that they would continue looking for a surviving image of my half-brother, Arturo.