Silay Institute
To the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Silay Institute, Mr. Alfonso Gamboa, the Vice Chair, Mr. James Donovan, the President, Mrs. Lilian Reventar, all other Directors and officers of my esteemed high school alma mater, and all those who are present tonight.
I am truly humbled by the honor of being specially recognized by the SI twice, the first when it considered me fit to graduate as Valedictorian of the High School Class of 1947, and the second – 78 years later – , as one of its outstanding or prominent alumni, even as there are certainly others more deserving of the award than I. I guess it must have been my good fortune to have outlived many, in not most of them.
Actually, my career at the SI started at the Sta. Teresita Academy where I was enrolled from Kindergarten to Grade Four. Tony Locsin and I had to transfer to a public school when we reached Grade Four, because we were the only boys left in Sta. Teresita at that time. Whether this was an advantage or a disadvantage, we then did not know. At least, it put a stop to Mother Irene’s taking one half of my daily stipend, or “balon”, of two centavos, for her charitable purposes.
We transferred to the Silay South Elementary School, where the first lesson I was assigned was to clean the school toilet. I was also taught how to produce a crop of vegetables by buying the plants from the market and planting them in the school’s garden the day before inspection. Most of all, I cannot forget my first lesson in graft and corruption. I had joined the Boy Scouts of the Philippines and one night, we had a jamboree, in which we were required to spend a night in the campus. At the last moment that night, it was discovered that no one brought salt for our barbecue. One of the senior scouts took me to the market, where he ordered me to engage the storekeeper in a conversation, while he scooped handfuls of salt, placed them in his pocket, and brought them out of the store. Because of that, I offered to resign from the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.
I first enrolled in the Silay Institute in the summer of 1941. By December of that year, the school had to close down due to the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. But, although we had no class to attend, I remember joining a group of students who spent the day going to the church belfry day and night, to determine if the Japanese forces had invaded the town by land or by sea, day or by night. Many members of that group joined the guerilla forces later on.
Conditions did not normalize until the Liberation. I re-entered the SI in 1945. Because of the school’s policy to credit certain subjects that the students studied in private lessons during the war, I was able to graduate with the class of 1947. I must have graduated Valedictorian of the class because the Ateneo de Manila offered me an entrance scholarship after graduation.
Because of the war, the ages of my classmates varied. Some of them were five years older than me. I also found myself in the company of identical twins, where one of them may be called to recite twice in one day, while the other none at all, with the teacher believing that she called on both to recite.
We had the usual PMT parades, where the cadet company commander would march backward until he falls into a canal. We also had class parties, where the Class Treasurer would run off with the ticket sales proceeds.
Actually, my boarding house in Manila at that time was located only about 500 meters from the De La Salle College, and I could have walked daily to that school. But I had an elder brother who was an Atenean from its Intramuros days, and he convinced my mother that there was no other college than the Ateneo de Manila.
Moreover, the Ateneo subsequently offered to give its students two diplomas in seven years instead of eight. Thus, the Ateneo gave me the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Magna cum Laude, in 1951, and a Bachelor of Laws, cum laude, in 1954.
I took the Bar examinations in 1954 and became a member of the Bar in February, 1955. I was an Assistant Attorney at the Deogracias T. Reyes Law Office and the Angel S. Gamboa Law Office, and a name partner in the Gamboa & Hofileña Law Office and the Guingona, Nepomuceno and Hofileña Law Office. Simultaneously, I taught Law, and was appointed Registrar in the Ateneo de Manila Law School from 1958 to 1994, if memory serves me right,
Life in the Ateneo was a lot of fun. Our classes were held in quonset huts, because the college buildings were in ruins. Classes were cancelled whenever it rained, because we could not hear the professor then. One of my classmates, who lived in Pasay, used to go to school driving a small vehicle called “auto calesa”. Sometimes, he would even give me a ride to or from the school. One time though, we played a joke on him. When he was drilling in an ROTC course, we, his classmates, carried the auto calesa from the parking lot to the library and parked it there. He did not give me a ride to school after that.
In February, 1994, I was appointed Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals. I was compulsorily retired on December 31, 1999, upon reaching the age of 70 years. I resumed my activities in the academe. I was appointed by the Supreme Court to be a BAR examiner in Civil Law in the years 1996, 2000 and 2001. I was the Vice Chairman of the Department of Judicial Ethics of the Philippine Judicial Academy.
I also resumed giving lectures in Mandatory Continuing Legal Educational seminars. In 2007, I was appointed General Counsel of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. In 2016, I was appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Law of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM).
The PLM is a university created by law to give the residents of Manila the benefits of a university education. Enrollment is limited to residents of Manila who can pass a strict entrance test. The program is so successful that poor parents with bright children devise means to be consider to be residents of Manila. Enrollment in PLM is attractive not only because it is free, but because of the record of their students in passing the board examinations.
It has been said that the legal profession is a noble profession. But what my education in law has taught me, and as I have witnessed throughout the many decades spent as a lawyer, magistrate, professor of law and dean, is that such proclaimed nobility is deserved only because the law and the legal system are mere channels through which more fundamental values are allowed to operate towards attaining peace, order and justice.
Thus, when members of the legal profession allow the practice of law and the legal system to stray away from the values that underlie them- the rule of law, the promotion of justice, and service of others- the very foundation of the law and the legal profession is eroded, if not completely erased- and so well, the nobility of the legal profession. My 95- year old heart is saddened whenever I behold this disconnect between the practice of law, on the one hand, and its foundational values and principles, on the other hand.
Next to families and churches, it is perhaps educational institutions which most profoundly embody those values and principles. SI is among such repositories of fundamental values and principles which each and every SI graduate ought to imbibe and live by. As SI proudly proclaims, its mission is that of providing quality Christian education that is relevant and accessible to all; its vision is to remain a leading learning institution that provides high-quality education which shapes students as morally upright, socially sensitive and globally competitive professionals, its objectives include the holistic formation and development of its students as Christian men and women who, apart from being competent in their chosen professions, are dedicated to the social transformation of their communities and the country and are committed to the continuing pursuit of truth and knowledge and the exercise of moral and ethical values in their personal and profession lives.
For as long as such lofty, value-laden principles continue to be fervently promoted by SI, there is every reason to believe that its centenary this year is only the first of many.
CONGRATULATION, SI, for 100 year of meaningful existence and participation in the noble task of educating the youth of Silay City and its environs. Pease accept such a heartfelt greeting from a grateful – and maybe your oldest-living – alumnus.
Justice Hector L. Hofileña
Outstading Alumni, Class 1947
