An hour-long fire hit Iligan City's densely-populated Purok Gumamela in Barangay Villaverde along Roxas Avenue at 3:30 p.m. last Aug. 8, destroying about 70 small stores and residential units, including three service vehicles.

The affected area is situated at the back of the former Fortune Bus Terminal, along the path leading to the Chinese and city cemeteries. Firemen, including the Iligan Volunteer Fire Brigade, had difficulty penetrating the fire scene due to the narrow streets and density of the premises. The fire was reported to have started in a house occupied by several women working as GROs. A little girl named Jocelyn, who was at the scene where the fire started, was said to have rushed into the burning house and single-handedly rescued four other children from the fire which quickly spread to the adjacent buildings.

Go Family Holds Reunion

Members of Mrs. Go Se Kian's family converged in Manila from different parts of the world to hold a rare family reunion on the occasion of their mother's 80th birthday last July 23. The Go family was a long-time resident of Iligan until they transferred to Manila in the mid-60's. They used to live in a house beside the old LCHS campus that was also home to many LCHS student boarders.

Mrs. Go Se Kian flew in from Taipeh where she now resides together with daughter Florentina (Chiao-Kun), of LCHS Batch '70, son-in-law, three grandchildren, and youngest daughter Helen, to join her only son, Marcelo (Chu-Ling) in Manila. Charito (Un-Huy), Batch '61, with her husband and son, joined them from Cebu. Victoria (Un-Ling), Batch '63, and Elizabeth (Un-Chin), Batch '68, with her husband and two daughters planed in from the U.S.A.

The Go clan later proceeded to Boracay and Cebu for a brief vacation before returning to their respective home bases on Aug. 10. (See related item in LCHS TRACERS section.)

(Editors' Note: Readers may view the accompanying photo without logging on to the Internet by clicking on the attachment line or icon on the e-mail message window to which the photo is attached.)

Henry Siao Donates Fund for LCHS

Henry Siao recently donated the sum of P20,000 to Lanao Chung Hua School, this was learned from the United Daily News, Aug. 5, 1997 issue. The donation was intended to serve as educational fund and welfare of LCHS.

The benefactor is an LCHS alumnus and a well-respected businessman in Iligan City. He is also the School Director of LCHS. Aside from his educational pursuits in LCHS, he is also actively involved in various community activities and civic clubs, such the Rotary, Masons, Toastmasters, as well as a host of trade and business organizations.

Alumna's Daughter Wins Award

Lullette Yau, daughter of LCHS alumna Lolicita Samson-Yau (Batch '66), has been chosen a BPI Science Awardee for school year 1996-97 with her science project called "Flash Card Addition."

The project is a computer program that displays addends on screen. The numbers ranging from 0 to 9 are generated randomly by the computer. Her program accepts input and checks if the answer is correct. The project is envisioned for use as school lessons for nursery and kindergarten pupils. Lullette finished B.S. Computer Science at the University of San Carlos last April.

From: fishers@cdo.weblinq.com
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 14:16:15 +0800

You have made Iligan a tour destination for us 'balikbayan' (or balik-Iligan?) with your fresh insights and observations on Iligan in the Aug. 4 issue of the Spectrum. If you include our falls and springs, perhaps in subsequent issues, I'm sure Iliganons living elsewhere would start planning a visit to our home sweet home in no time at all. Iligan is only a little more than an hour's drive from us in Cagayan de Oro, yet I haven't been to Timoga for decades nor have I seen the newly developed water falls. Cagayan de Oro envies our home city for its natural bounties which CdeO does not have at all. I can only name two tour destinations of note here in CdeO, the Bukidnon pineapple plantation and Camiguin Island, both of which the city or the province Misamis Oriental does not own.

Rene Tio (Batch '70)
Cagayan de Oro, Philippines

The year was 1956. I was then an innocent lad of 4, the only child who was left at home while my 3 elders (Mila, Victor, and Ernesto) were already studying at LCHS. Nursery school then was not the trend of the hour. For kids like us, we would just stay home and play. There was my yaya Takya (Eustaquia was her full name) who would attend to my needs.

But young as I was then at 4, I already had developed my memory a bit so much so that there are songs which would always remind me of the year 1956, like My Prayer, Love Me Tender, Young Love, Love Letters in the Sand, Tammy, Diana, April Love, among others. The singers who had registered in my youthful mind at that time were Elvis Presley, the Platters, Perry Como, Paul Anka, and of course Pat Boone (specially his original version of Love Letters in the Sand and April Love). I single out these two particular songs because these were the ones I always heard being spun over the radio in that year when Iligan City experienced a big fire eating up most of the stores and residences. That was on May 23, 1957. These were also the same songs which was always being played while I was starting kindergarten.

In one of my travels in Manila sometime three years ago, I came across tape cassettes sold at ShoeMart-Makati which featured the events of the year. Unfortunately, my birthyear (1952) was not available. What I got was that of my wife's (1956). And I would like to share with you some of the events of that year.

1956 was the year Elvis Presley rose to popularity with his songs dominating the jukeboxes. Making waves in the movies were Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Moviegoers filled the theaters to watch the year's blockbusters "Around the World in 80 Days" and "The Ten Commandments." Another box-office hit was "Giant" that saw the rise of a new rebel teenage idol, James Dean. While in Iligan, it was the year a great earthquake shook the city. Registering 8.1 on the Richter scale, the tremor sent residents out of their homes in panic for a couple of days. Many sought refuge at the public plaza and other wide open fields.

Victoria "Un-Ling" Go (Batch '63) is now a medical technologist in California, U.S.A. She visited Cebu recently after a family reunion in Manila and was elated to read about her fellow alumni in the Spectrum. She spoke of bringing the Spectrum back with her to the U.S.A. to share the news with fellow alumna Elizabeth "Betty" Ang (Batch '63), now a resident of New Jersey, U.S.A. Victoria also wanted her former LCHS classmates in Iligan, Eliza Uy and Elita "Po-Hua" Dy-Lai, to know that their batchmate, Nelly "Nene" Ang, is now residing in Australia.

While in Cebu, Victoria also had a get-together with her two other batchmates and best friends, Lydia "Yok-Yong" Sy and Victoria "An-An" Kho. Through them she expressed her wish to visit her classmates and friends in Iligan someday.

WHILE some parts of Iligan City are riding high on the heels of prosperity, a few others appear to have been stuck in seeming oblivion. The former LCHS grounds on Benito Labao Extension (formerly Roosevelt Ext.), once a beehive of activity, have been obliterated by clusters of squatters since the school transferred to its new site. The pine trees still stand in the premises, jutting out like sore thumbs in a sea of forlorn vegetation.

New LCHS. The new LCHS in Pala-o manifests as much its new image as it does a few remnants of the old campus. The new concrete buildings housing the administrative offices and classrooms are spic and span. The computer classroom now comes fully airconditioned. Ironically, the school gym, which doubles as auditorium, is a recycled structure. Materials dismantled from the old gym were reassembled--lock, stock and barrel--to constitute the present gym. The structure seems like an incongruity amidst a fine sprawling campus, prompting a few concerned alumni to express unabashed wish that the gym be soon given a once-over or, in due time, a new facelift.

Access to the campus is now restricted. A security guard posted at the gate sees to it that vehicles entering the school premises bear a prescribed sticker pass. Which is understandable, given the spate of kidnapping cases that have taken place in Metro Manila and elsewhere in the country.

The Queen Theater, once the royal crown of the city's entertainment fares, has since closed shop. The structure, now deserted, still stands on its site like a ghost, a pathetic reminder to its once fabled history.

Along Cabili Avenue, the Lu Do building, once the site of progressive enterprises like the Lanao Arkay Radio & Electrical Supply (now relocated at Sabayle St.), the Manila Bazaar (now on J. Luna st.), and the defunct Al Toro Hotel of the Diago clan, has now been converted to a warehouse of Gaisano Iligan, Inc. The whole structure now looks like a fortress that has seen better times.

Plaza Scenario. At the city plaza on lazy afternoons, promenaders mingle with chess aficionados and kibitzers around clusters of dilapidated chess boards. A few other sports buffs engage themselves in a few games of table tennis. By nightfall, the plaza comes alive as barbecue vendors set up makeshift grills along the fringes of the park to peddle their ware to nocturnal habitues, who hail from a merry mix of the social strata: from teenage students to jobless vagabonds, from tired office clerks to the hoi polloi, from noisy gays seeking shady leisure to idle maidens offering quickie pleasure.

Commuting in the Iligan traffic is like entering an obstacle course. Private cars, PUJs, and pedicabs compete helter-skelter with one another for right of way. Several new traffic lights installed in key intersections bring a semblance of order somewhat. But traffic along Quezon Avenue at the Pala-o area moves at snail's pace as works on its drainage system continue to rule the day.

By nightfall Quezon Avenue grinds to a standstill and falls into an uncanny silence. Yet in its hushed emptiness, one still remembers the eerie echoes of lost long tartanillas plying the street at some moments in time long gone.

And as the echoes fade away into the night, so does one's attachment to a hometown that one has consigned to the bygone days. Such sentiment defines a city one has stored so much of one's roots but which has emerged today with varied nuances that can make a total stranger of a returning native-born Iliganon. Odd as it may seem, the memory of the city continues to beckon like a muse in the twilight.

To read our back issues, click here: 4-15-97|4-23-97|5-01-97|5-11-97|5-19-97|5-26-97|6-02-97|6-09-97|6-16-97|6-23-97|6-30-97|7-14-97|7-21-97|
7-28-97|8-04-97

Printing Advisory: This issue prints in four pages when font size option is set at 10 points on Netscape, and "small" on Internet Explorer.

New listing and old class photos now accessible at LCHS alumni home page:
http://www.iligan.com/~lchs/alumni/