Page 38 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition

Part One

This proved to be a problem when he graduated from college—as usual, at the top
of his class, “When I graduated, the dean told me that we were having a graduation
party at the Manila Hotel. And, as I was at the top of the class, I was supposed to be
at the reception line and would open the dance. This was to be at the Fiesta Pavilion.
I didn’t know how to dance, so he told two girls to teach me—Virginia Borbon and
Aurora Enriquez, who later married an Azcona, the owner of Tropical Hut. In two
weeks they had to teach me how to dance the foxtrot.” Presumably applying the same
resolve he did to his books, Wash learned what he had to. “Today, if I had to dance,
I probably still could. But not the kind of dances the young people do these days.”

The relative lack of social skills didn’t mean Wash shunned the company of the fairer
sex. He remembers taking not one but three girls out to Chinese dinner at the Great
Eastern Hotel. All came from prominent families and would become, or already
were, society belles—Chito Madrigal, Elvira Manahan, and Diding Mañosa.

For such delicate encounters as this, he needed to brush up on his Spanish, an
acknowledged weakness. Washington SyCip has a “Z” as his middle name, for the
Spanish-sounding “Zarate”; his passport shows it, but he doesn’t know exactly where
it came from; Albino used it as well. To help him along in Spanish Wash got a friend
named Bololo Tuason, whom he was tutoring in accounting, to tutor him in turn.
Bololo promptly taught Wash some cuss words he didn’t know the meaning of, and
when his dinner dates began conversing in Spanish, Wash had a ready “Coño, coño,
coño!” to contribute.

A teacher at 17

Wash started teaching as soon as he graduated, summa cum laude, at the age of 17,
when most Filipino students today will just be starting college. Dean Prescott was
going on vacation for the summer, and asked Wash to take over his senior class.

Wash put on a de hilo suit and tie, and marched into a room full of his former
classmates. But, he says, “It was all right. I liked it, I enjoyed teaching.” Wash’s
problem—if it was that, at all—wasn’t his teaching. “One day the rector, Fr. Sancho,
sent for me and said ‘Do you know that this is a pontifical university—and that
you’re the only non-Catholic on the faculty?’ I said that I didn’t know, but also that I
didn’t apply for the job.” The rector then asked Wash if he could send someone over

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