First Posted 11:11:00 07/24/2008
As President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is set to inauguarate Plaza Sugbo and the Doña Eva Macaraeg-Macapagal session hall at the Cebu City Hall today, local officials and society scribes recalled the life spent by the President’s mother in Cebu.
“Evangelina ‘Eva’ Macaraeg-Macapagal had quite a strong personality,” recounted Jaime Picornell, lifestyle columnist.
“She was frank. She spoke what she thought and you’d know from looking at her that she was refined and well educated. She had good bearing,” Picornell said.
Picornell said he first met Doña Eva , President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s mother, when she became the first lady.
“She and then President Diosdado Macapagal paid an official visit to Cebu in 1964. I was working for the Morning Times,” he said.
Picornell recalled that the first lady spoke Spanish very well in their s first meeting at the reception area of what was once Magellan Hotel in Lahug.
“After the reception, the guests had dinner at the Villalon mansion,” he said.
But Picornell said it was only recently that he knew Doña Eva, a physician and the second wife of Diosdado Macapagal, had lived in Cebu with her family when she was in her teens.
Her father, Juanito Macaraeg, was a district engineer at the Department of Public Works and Highways.
He was assigned in Cebu in 1926 when the South Road connecting Santander town to the Cebu Port was being built.
It was then that he brought his whole family with him.
“Eva Macaraeg had her debut at a club house near where the Redemptorist Church is now,” Picornell said.
Picornell said the area where the club house stood belonged to the Unchuans who donated the area to the Redemptorist Church later.
Doña Eva was close to the Unchuans, specifically Elena Tan Unchuan, who died last May 6.
They met during the Macaraeg family’s stay in Cebu.
Unchuan was President Arroyo’s guardian when she went to the United States and studied at Georgetown University.
“From what I heard, Ms Macaraeg was quite popular during her stay in Cebu,” Picornell said.
“She was once crowned Carnival Queen in the 1930s,” he said.
The Carnival Queen is usually the highlight of the summer season and the most popular girl was chosen as the Carnival Queen, he added.
Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama said President Arroyo told him and other city officials that her mother used to live in Cebu.
He said when the President mentioned donating P15 million in 2006 for the renovation and landscaping of Cebu City Hall, local officials suggested naming the session hall after her late father.
“But she said there are already many halls named after her dad, and suggested we name it after her mother, Eva Macaraeg, who used to live in Cebu City when her grandfather was assigned here. So we did,” Rama said.
According to Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem, Doña Eva was indeed popular and was known by a lot of people in Cebu society.
“She and my dad, lawyer SilvanJakosalem, were friends. They used to go out,” Jakosalem said.
He said it was President Arroyo who recalled this relationship during a function in 1996 when she was still a senator.
At the time, Jakosalem said, he was president of the Cebu chapter of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP).
“We were sitting next to each other and we introduced ourselves. She said, ‘Jakosalem? That sounds so familiar.’ And she called somebody on the phone, probably her mother and she laughed. Then she said, ‘my mom knew your dad,’” he said.
“Maybe they used to go out... I don’t know, maybe as friends. But the President joked once and said ‘you could have been my brother,’ so yeah, maybe they went out, with chaperones probably,” Jakosalem said. /Joyce C. Abaño
GMA’s mom once lived in Cebu’
Originally Posted by Motownkid
kamo nlng president...
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