Author's Profile
CHRISTOPHER AQUINO
Chris is lucky to realize that passion. He is the owner of The Silco Theater in Silver City, New Mexico where he and his partner, Mary reside.
He is a pacifist who lists Mahayana Buddhism as his religious view. Merriam Webster describes Mahayana as “a liberal and theistic branch of Buddhism [that teaches] social concern and universal salvation.”
Chris’ story included in this blog is about his father, Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino. Herman came to America during the first of three waves of Filipino migration to the US which started in 1906. He left Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya for the US in 1921. It must have been hard to leave his home at such a young age. He never saw his family again.
PINOY AKO!
by Christopher Aquino
My Father was born on February 22, in the year…well, that was a mystery and, I suppose will remain so. When we were children it was not important to us that we know the year of our parents’birth. As a matter of fact, why would I ever need to know the year of my father’s birth? Surely, he knewit. On his naturalization papers it said 1903. On his death certificate it said 1901. Other documents that I went through after his death had his birth year as anywhere between 1900 and 1917. I suspect that it was quite a bit earlier than that. Maybe even 1895, or so.
His actual age notwithstanding, I want to speak about my father. Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino. That was my father’s name. He eventually began to sign his name, in very fancy cursive, Herman P. Aquino.
Let me begin with his life in the Philippines.
Let me begin with his life in the Philippines.
Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino was born in the town of Bayombong in the province of Nueva Vizcaya. He was the son of Apollanaria Piedad Aquino and Cristobal Aquino. His father was the mayor of the town.
I want to go into a little family history at this point. I must remind you that this is my father’s perspective.
None of these names would mean anything to anyone except for that select group of people I have the privilege to call family. My father’s grandfather was a man named Raphael Aquino. Raphael lived a long time. Over 100 years. In that time, he was married 3 times. He was a widower 3 times. Each wife had 10 children. The 10th child of the third wife was Cristobal Aquino. My father’s father. My grandfather Cristobal and his wife, Apollanaria Aquino, had 3 sons and one daughter. My father was the oldest.
Our family is extensive and far flung. We reside in many countries around the world. From Canada to Bahrain. From Saudi Arabia to Singapore. We reside in the USA and, of course, the Philippines. After all, Pinoy kita. I happen to live in Silver City, New Mexico, USA.
My father regaled us with stories, facts and myths, as we were growing up. He related a story to us that I found pretty incredible. He and his brothers went into the jungle as was their habit to do. There was a nearby river that was inhabited by crocodiles. The three boys hopped on the backs of these crocodiles and controlled them by putting their fingers into the eye sockets of these creatures and steered them as you would a bicycle. I must have heard that story a hundred times growing up. I often thought that these were the bravest or the most foolhardy boys I had ever heard of. Or could my father be prone to a bit of embellishment? Whatever the case whenever he told this story, we were riveted.
I believe that my father missed the Philippines very much. This larger than life story was a manifestation of that yearning to be home. Whether the story was true or not was not the point. My father, this normally stoic man, spun this yarn with such relish and humor that it put each of us kids right there in the jungle with him. In this way he garnered our love and respect.
He came to the United States under mysterious circumstances. That is to say, there were two versions of what happened. My relatives in the Philippines tell the story that when my father was supposedly 17, he and my grandfather had a falling out. After this disagreement, it was said that my father stowed away on a ship bound for America.
But my father told us that his father wanted him to get an education in the United States and sent him by ship to America to look up his maternal cousin, Frank Piedad. And Cousin Frank was to greet him with open arms. My guess? There was some truth in each of these stories.
As I go on telling you about my father’s life in America, it will be my father’s telling of these stories that I will relate.
Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino told us he was 14 when he arrived in America. When he landed in Los Angeles, California he did not know that Cousin Frank was so far away. Frank lived in Detroit, Michigan and worked for the Ford Motor company and was said to be doing well. Herman was a young man of some means, so he purchased a motorcycle as his way to get to Detroit. Now, I think that a motorcycle in that day was quite a bit more basic than the motorcycles of today. My father’s motorcycle was really just a bicycle with a motor attached to it. With a minimal amount of instruction on how to ride such a contraption, my father was off to see cousin Frank to begin to seek his fortune in America.
He did not get very far before he had an accident and broke his ankle and wrecked his only mode of transportation. The motorbike was sold for scrap and that money went towards buying a train ticket to Detroit. He finally tracked down his cousin Frank. Now, Frank was either unwilling or unable to help my father because when he eventually made his way to Detroit, his cousin Frank who, in my father’s telling, did not greet him with open arms. But instead told the young Herman he was on his own.
My father did not like Detroit. He decided to seek his fortune in Chicago. He hopped a train (literally, he hopped into an empty boxcar) going to Chicago. When he arrived in Chicago he got a job as a bellboy at The Lexington Hotel. At the time, The Lexington Hotel was a high-end hotel. My father claimed to have waited on Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford. They were the Brangelina of the silent movie era. And, of course, the most famous resident of them all at The Lexington Hotel, Al Capone.
It was at this time that my father was befriended by a woman of senior years. She took a shine on him. She became his benefactor. She wanted him to get a college education and was willing to pay for it. So, he took her up on her offer and spent the next two years taking premed courses at the University of Chicago. But the woman passed away soon after his second year of college. She did not provide for him in her will and he couldn’t afford college without her assistance. So, he was forced to quit school.
At the urging of his cousin Frank, he moved back to Detroit. My father rode the rails back to Detroit where he got a job on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Co. He stayed there for several years.Not a lot of folks know this, but my father was married twice. After some years in Detroit, he married his first wife, Helen. She was a divorcee with two daughters. She had two more children with my father. My father’s children with her were named Gwendolyn, who died of some mysterious disease when she was 5, and Herman Jr. who was born in 1935. Alas, Helen was not a faithful wife. According to my father, she had a roving eye. This was not a medical condition but a lack of morality. My father and Helen divorced,and my father got custody of Herman, Jr. while Helen’s 2 girls went to her.
If what I am telling you seem disjointed it is because my father would skimp on details and this was told to us over an extended period of time. Allow me to proceed.
In 1943 he met my mother, Etta McIntosh, at a dance hall. They were married in June 1943. My father was working for Ford motor company during this time. World War II was in full swing and factories weren’t building cars. They were building B-29 bomber aircraft for the Army Air Corps. That’s what my father did during the war. My brother Doug was born in July of 1945. The war ended a couple of months later.
He caught wind of an innovative automobile manufacturer named Preston Tucker, who had just bought the largest manufacturing plant in the world located in Chicago, IL. Preston Tucker wanted to build a better, safer and more efficient car. My father wanted to be part of something new and exciting. In 1947 my parents moved to Chicago for my father’s new job in the Tucker Corporation as a factory worker. I was born in 1948.
The history of the Tucker automobile was a short one. Only 50 cars were built, and the company went out of business in 1950. By this time, I was 2 years old. I lived in and around Chicago for most of my life.
My father then went back to school. My sister Linda came along in 1952. By this time dad had finished his engineering degree and went to work for an engineering firm named A. Epstein, Inc. That company, and by extension my dad, designed and built a few of the skyscrapers that were erected in the Chicago Loop in the 1950’s and 1960’s. My father worked for this firm until they asked him to retire in1972. After he retired, his health began to fail.
My parents stayed married for 37 years when the vow of “until death us do part” kicked in. My dad had encouraged my mother to go to school and find a career. She did just that by becoming a computer programmer.
When us kids were growing up, my dad was a strict disciplinarian. Always pushed us toward success. That was, success as he perceived it. When I was in my twenties, (and very rebellious) I vowed not to be like my father.
Ultimately, we become our parents. It’s like “The Invasion of The Body Snatchers” in very slow motion. We don’t realize it until one day we look in the mirror (actually and figuratively) and we see our parents staring back. It is a natural progression, I suppose.
My father was a strong-willed survivor. I have had to be that in my life also. He had a thirst for knowledge. As do I. He was obsessed with formal education. If my brothers and sister did not measure up academically, he was quick to show his utter disappointment.
Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino had many hardships in his life but not as devastating as experiencing the death of four of his children. My step-sister Gwendolyn, who I never met, died of some mysterious disease when she was five. Linda was the youngest of my siblings and the youngest to die. She was 15 when she succumbed to the terrible disease, Lupus. My brother Doug was killed in an automobile accident when he was 27. My brother Herman Jr. died of a heart attack when he was 44. My mother, Etta, died in December of 1986.
For all the flaws I saw in my parents, I always felt their love.
We all have stories about our growing up years. And if we are lucky our stories will be told by future generations. In our stories we are not forgotten. I love my father. But I really did not know him until after his death on October 6, 1981. To know him, I looked back on his life and the many stories he told us. Hermanagildo Piedad Aquino, died at the ripe old age of…
STORY PHOTOS
The young, Herman P. Aquino (my father)
Family Photo
L-R: Herman Aquino, Etta McIntosh Aquino, Linda, Chris
L-R: Herman Aquino, Etta McIntosh Aquino, Linda, Chris
Pinoy Ako! (Chris)
No comments:
Post a Comment