I had a serendipitous encounter with Amando Doronila on his final day at the Inquirer. Sitting in the lobby, I glanced up to see him emerge from his office on the top floor. With his typical tired expression and droopy eyes, he slowly made his way to the top of the stairs. Taking his time, he carefully descended while keeping his gaze fixed ahead. Amidst the usual hustle and bustle of the editorial day, a small group of people waited in the lobby, clutching a few small boxes. Ignoring the surroundings, Doronila straightened his back and shuffled out. On this somber occasion, I couldn’t bring myself to greet him, and I believe many others felt the same. Perhaps it was best that he left quietly, under his own steam, without any fanfare, in the middle of a typical workday.
Being a lover of all things French, Doronila would have agreed with Charles de Gaulle’s famous declaration that “old age is shipwreck.” Time had caught up with him, as it inevitably does. A colleague had recounted a story of Doronila bravely climbing those same office stairs, gripping the banister with one hand and pulling himself up step by step, floor by floor. In his last years, he shared an office with a colleague a fraction of his age, who was in charge of digital marketing. Jokingly, Doronila exclaimed to me, “It’s like sharing an office with Death! The Grim Reaper looking over your back!” He was a man of his generation. Concluding each column was always a ceremonious affair for him. After typing the final keystroke, he would call for Tintin, our beloved editorial assistant, who would magically appear and save Doronila’s work on a diskette (later a thumb drive), as that was the extent of his technological involvement. But no matter where he was, whether in Canberra or Manila, his insatiable curiosity, exceptional memory, and analytical prowess ensured that nothing escaped his attention. It was his analytical skills, not his ability to uncover secrets or exert influence, that he took the greatest pride in. Undoubtedly, it was his forte.
Writing, like any other art form, can greatly improve with age. In other words, age itself should not deter one from pursuing the craft. I am reminded of Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, who celebrated the benefits of melatonin, claiming it made her sleep like a baby after she paired it with a snifter of brandy. One of the few things that would bring a smile to Doronila’s face was the mention of wine and food. Suddenly, he would appear youthful again. An active and curious mind is one of the best ways to thrive in old age, as shown by the remarkable longevity of Filipino columnists, many of whom did not live abstemious lives. I avidly read newspapers starting in my teenage years after the Edsa revolution, when the bylines were filled with distinguished journalists. The eldest of all was Vicente Albano Pacis, who had been a senior editor even before the war. He was a living encyclopedia of Philippine journalism, spanning back to the 1920s. Armando Malay occasionally wrote about the 1930s, while Teodoro M. Locsin, Nick Joaquin, Luis Mauricio, and Carmen Guerrero Nakpil took readers back to the ’40s and ’50s. Max Soliven and Doronila himself belonged to the Young Turks of the ’50s but became the seniors of the ’80s and ’90s. What they all provided readers with was what we call “institutional memory,” which goes beyond knowing names and facts, but delves into the deeper understanding of why things happen. This realization struck me during a casual conversation with the late Gani Yambot. Walking with Doronila towards the famous stairs, he turned to me and remarked, “You know, this Noynoy thing, I haven’t seen such enthusiasm for a campaign since Magsaysay. Not even in 1986.” With his passing, I celebrate the countless column inches he wrote, but I mourn the books he planned but never had the time to complete. Throughout the two decades I knew him, he talked about his dream of writing a book comparing Quezon and Atatürk, teasing us with a four-column series in this paper that only scratched the surface of his interesting thesis. You can be a columnist for years, but time will always run out.
Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @mlq3
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