Copyright Quisumbing Family 2007. All rights reserved.
cemented walls and lowered floor to suit the occupant’s height) and a stairway connecting the upper floor and ground floor as well as two rooms (one shared by two occupants and the other intended for whatever purpose), a toilet-bathroom between these rooms, a receiving-dining room and a dining-kitchen space on the ground. The room shared by his grandparents served as an office. Here his grandfather had a long and wide narra table for drawing plans and writing letters as well as cabinets for storing engineering plans, letters and replies, drawing instruments, stamp collection and books. His grandmother had her own cabinets for her shell collection classified scientifically in drawers.99 She also maintained a small garden planted with different varieties of orchid, cactus and flowers in front and at the back of the house.
The house had its own water system consisting of a deep well whose water was pumped and stored by an electric motor in an elevated steel tank supported by four steel posts. At present its water supply is provided by Metro Cebu Water District (MCWD). It had its own electricity supplied by the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) whose billing of monthly consumption is still in the original owner’s name.100
Aside from the meals they ate together during the usual hours, both grandparents followed their respective schedules of activities during a daily 24-hour period. The author still remembers the happy moments he shared with them. He visited them after his classes, joined them in their meals, and slept in his grandmother’s room during the years 1952-1955. She served him different preserved fruits for merienda and gave him pocket money for movies. The author’s grandfather narrated to him his past experiences in his profession, military service, and foreign travels. He remembered all the birthdays of his grandchildren by marking their individual birthdays on the calendar to give the celebrant some amount of money.101
On special occasions like Christmas, New Year and their birthdays on April 28th and February 2nd, the grandparents invited Carlos and Pacita’s families for a reunion in the house. Lola Maring cooked and served different viands and dessert to the visitors while Lolo Emilio gave money to every grandchild during Christmas.102
His grandfather and this writer had one common hobby: philately or postage stamp collection. The former taught the latter how to collect, preserve and exchange postage stamps in 1954. He gave the writer rare foreign and Philippine stamps of Spanish, American and Japanese eras and an album of thick white paper sheets for stamp mounting while Manuel, his uncle, gave the latter his entire collection of first day issue Philippine stamps and commemorative envelopes covering the years from 1947 to 1958. Aside from them, Eduardo, his grandfather’s younger brother or granduncle, who was the Director of the National Museum, gladly turned over to the author, then a minor seminarian of Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City (1955-1958), all the stamps of various countries from correspondences during occasional visits to his office at Herran Street, Manila. Two German pen pals, a CICM Belgian priest and the author’s family contributed both local and foreign stamps for collection. This writer owes to his grandfather the celebration of a golden jubilee in philately (1954-2004). This collection in two albums will continue to increase in number in the coming years.103
Sometime in the 1950’s, Pacita, the younger sister of the author’s father, together with her second husband, Abraham Luspo of Camiguin, and their three small children (Ma. Soledad, Concepcion and Victoria) aside from Eduardo, a son of her first marriage, arrived in Cebu City. They lived in another house built behind the elevated water tank as mentioned earlier. Their children were sent to private schools for their education. The Luspo twins, Benjamin who died during infancy and Abraham, Jr., were born in this city. Their mother taught cooking to home economics students at St. Theresa’s College (STC) for several semesters. Their father, a ship captain, who worked overseas visited his family and parents-in-law whenever his ship docked at this city’s pier for several days. Eduardo who successfully hurdled his medical examinations became his grandfather’s personal physician.104
This writer, a secondary seminarian as noted earlier, had an unexpected visitor to see him: his grandmother. She was in Manila to collect the back salaries of her sons killed during the war from the Philippine Army.105
During the 1960’s, his grandfather was invited by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee all expenses paid to come to Manila to present his evaluations on the proposed Marikina Dam. He strongly objected to the construction of this dam due to a geological fault in the proposed location. His objection was based on the assumption that if an earthquake would occur and hit the foundation of this proposed dam, its entire water capacity would flow and flood the entire City of Manila, thereby causing widespread destruction of properties and deaths of several thousand people. This was the main reason why Angat Dam whose design was based on an Indian original as previously mentioned was instead built in Norzagaray, Bulacan.106 Another consultation of the same nature was made when Mayor Sergio Osmena, Jr. of Cebu City requested him to present his views and opinions on the proposed Lusaran Dam in Talamban.107 According to one informant whose complete name escapes this writer’s memory and whom he met during his first teaching experience at Maryknoll High School in Cateel, Davao Oriental during the school year 1964-1965, his grandfather’s consultation fee was two thousand pesos per hour.108 It is highly possible that this hydraulic engineer was first consulted by the national government prior to building dams anywhere in this country but it is definitely difficult to verify which dams he was consulted from existing official records on account of red tape and bureaucracy in the government.
In the same decade, this engineer donated his whole collection of American military maps on the Philippines to the University of San Carlos. This writer recently tried to locate these maps without any positive result due to personnel changes in the past years.109 He gave to the author’s twin brothers his drawing instruments, slide rule made of wood (now rotten) and engineering books in l964.110
On December 31, 1969, his grandmother Maria passed away and was buried at Cebu Memorial Park, Banilad, Cebu City. With her death, his grandfather Emilio lived alone in the house although his daughter Pacita lived next door. Some of the grandchildren took turns to accompany him and to sleep in his house during the night. His granddaughter-in-law and author’s wife, Godofreda, a professional manicurist, came to the house to trim his fingers and toenails when needed.
A few years before his death, the land owned by him was divided among his three surviving children. The lower portion was bequeathed to Manuel, the youngest of the three; the middle, including the house and the right of way to the lower part, to Carlos, the eldest and author’s father and the front to Pacita, the only daughter. In her inherited portion she built a new house and stayed there with her family until she transferred her residence to Camiguin.111 The back and front parts were later acquired by individuals not related to the Quisumbings by blood.