Page 31 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition

Passenger on a Ship

The place had no air-conditioning then, but Wash remembers that it was cool and
well-ventilated because the walls that divided the rooms did not go all the way up to
the ceiling. He and his brothers shared one long room.

A photograph from the late ‘40s or early ‘50s could be all that remains today to
suggest how that house looked, and the kind of people it hosted and sheltered. The
picture is a group portrait of the SyCips and the Zuelligs. The Zuelligs were a Swiss
family whose patriarch, Frederick Eduard Zuellig, had come over to Manila in 1901
and had built up a major trading firm; Frederick was a good friend of Albino’s, and
his son Stephen was in turn a friend of Wash’s. Though not much of the interior is
visible in the picture, the living room where the picture was taken looks fairly large,
with carved wood in the cornices.

Their neighbors included Simplicio del Rosario, a judge and a signatory to the Malolos
Constitution, whose family would hide the SyCips when Albino was arrested by the
Japanese during the war. Sergio Osmeña lived across the street; Albino was a good
friend of the future president, and Albino would teach Esperanza Osmeña some
exercises, being a health buff.

P. Burgos Elementary and Mapa High may not have been the most obvious choices
for the children of the Filipino elite—and given their father’s position, the SyCip
boys would certainly have belonged to this category—but Albino was intent on
impressing upon his sons the need to lead modest, unpretentious lives. “We’re all
going to be living here, we should get to know the people here,” Albino told his
sons. The boys walked to school or took public transport, despite the fact that their
father owned a car. It was also a time when the public schools were still on par with
their private counterparts as far as the quality of instruction was concerned. V. Mapa
(opened in 1923 as the Manila East High School), for example, would produce such
luminaries as the writer Nick Joaquin and Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban. The
high school had quite a few American schoolteachers on its staff—Wash remembers
the indefatigable Mrs. Sarah England—and Wash learned his English there from
Miss Orata, a lady from Arizona.

The boys knew some Tagalog, but nearly everything was conducted in English, and
they learned it well. Albino himself had learned English from the Thomasites, and
barely spoke Tagalog; much later in life, in his mid-70s, Albino would remedy this

15