US grandma appeals to keep name of PHL street

GLENDORA, Calif. – Pilar Mencias Kierulf will turn 90 in October, and she hopes to celebrate the milestone with a victory for her family.

Kierulf recent wrote a letter the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), the mayors and council members of the cities of San Juan and Mandaluyong, to preserve the name of the street where she grew up and the legacy of the heroes it honors: revolutionary icon Gen. Antonio Luna and Dr. Bonifacio Lopez Mencias, her father.

Luna Mencias, the street between the cities of San Juan and Mandaluyong, is where the Pangasinan-born Dr. Mencias built a home for his wife, Barbara Sacro, a nurse, and their six children, in the 1930s.

Dr. Mencias lived and died for his country. The graduate of Colegio de San Juan de Letran was an epidemiologist was dean of the College of Medicine of the University of Santo Tomas from 1938 until he was captured by Japanese while tending to guerrillas in World War II.   

That mission to save lives led to his capture by the invaders. He was never seen nor heard from again. His children later learned that he was executed—beheaded—for abetting the underground resistance.

For his ultimate sacrifice, grateful town authorities attached his name to that of General Luna.

Threatened

But the honor is threatened by efforts to rename the national road by the family of another departed resident, former Congress member Rufino D. Antonio.  

The move prompted street resident Mariel Kierulf Asiddao, 28, to alert her grandmother and relatives in Manila, Northern and Southern California, Chicago, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Antwerp, Belgium, to appeal the name change.

"At the start, my motivation was merely pride, that the name of the street where I live honors my greatgrandfather," said Asiddao, a marketing executive at an IT and consumer electronics multinational company while pursuing her MBA as a senior at UP Diliman.

"In my short research, I found out details of a man’s life that awe-inspired me—I could not believe that his accomplishments exceed what we alI knew. I realized it was up to me and my family to defend his memory. Lolo may not hold a prominent place in history books, but in this corner of the city where he bought the land and built his home and brought up his family, he enjoys well-deserved recognition."

She and her mother, Marian K. Asiddao, embarked on a campaign to illuminate city officials on their ancestor's gift to Philippine history.

"This appeal is to ensure that he and his great deeds are not to be forgotten," said Asiddao.

She produced flyers heralding her Lolo's accomplishments, which she distributed at the February 24 hearing of the San Juan City Tourism and Cultural Affairs Committee.

Similar case

Mariel Asiddao also discovered a similar case last year in Lucena, where local officials had renamed part of a street originally named after the city's first Catholic priest, Fr. Mariano Granja, after Felix Y. Manalo, founder of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC). The INC has a church on the street in contention.

A resident protested the renaming and brought the matter before the commission.

NHCP chief Maria Serena Diokno in a letter to Council Member Benito Brizuela, head of Lucena's committee on tourism and cultural affairs and main proponent of the renaming, objected to the change.

Such renaming "would tend to disrupt the continuity of the street name,” Diokno said in a report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Besides noting the impracticality of the change, Diokno questioned the propriety of renaming part of a street that "has been sanctified by usage and therefore has attained a degree of historical association and importance in the community."

In the case of Luna Mencias, the heirs of Dr. Bonifacio Mencias hope that the NHCP will adhere to its responsibility to conserve and preserve the country's historical legacies by objecting to the renaming of the entire street that begins at P. Guevara Street in San Juan City and ends at Shaw Boulevard.

Nine families since the early 1930s have continuously resided in the Mencias clan compound, including Margarita Mencias Castaneda, one of the two surviving daughters of Dr. Mencias.

"Our father's name was attached to that of revolutionary hero Antonio Luna as testimony of how our neighborhood had recognized his important contribution to our community, country and history," Mencias -Castaneda said in her letter to authorities.  "Changing this street's name erases his legacy of hard word, perseverance, love of country and achievement."

Castaneda's eldest son, Bernardino M. Castaneda, Jr., is a "Kagawad" or member of the barangay council. Like his grandfather, he has chosen a life in public service. Many of his siblings and cousins also chose the same path as their patriarch in the fields of medicine, education, journalism and humanitarianism.  One of them received the 2006 Philippine Presidential Award for Overseas Filipino Organizations and Individuals for service to Filipinos in the United States.

"While we can understand the Antonio family's wish to honor their ancestor, we appeal to you to prevent them from doing so at the expense of the memory and legacy of our grandfather who died so that others may live," the Mencias grandchildren said in a joint letter to the NHCP head, San Juan Mayor Guia Gomez and Mandaluyong Mayor Benjamin C. Abalos, Jr, councilors and the Addition Hills barangay captain.

"Our grandfather never met us but he lives in us. Some of us have transplanted ourselves in other countries, but we remain rooted in our home country, the heart of which is Luna Mencias," they emphasized. —Philippine News

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Philippine News executive editor Cherie M. Querol Moreno is daughter of Rosario Mencias Querol, eldest of Dr. Bonifacio Mencias' six children.

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