Page 51 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_LastChapter_2nd_Edition

Postscript A Good Night’s Sleep

Delia noticed that day that “He looked okay except that his gait was very slow.”
Something heavy was weighing on his mind, an unresolved issue having to do with
one of his most valued projects, but he focused quickly on the task at hand.

They went over the guest list, the menu, and even the music, which was invariably
provided by a UP choir. “He asked me to make sure the garden was ready. He was
concerned with every detail, even the seating arrangements. I reminded him that we
had two more dinners scheduled for the German and Japanese ambassadors. He told
me to take care of the planning. And then he had to leave. His last words to me were
‘I have to go now and thank you for everything.’”

Delia Albert would be the last person from SGV whom Wash would see before
boarding his plane. That evening, she got a text message from Wash’s son George:
“Delia, Father just passed away in his second home.”

His second home, of course, was in the air, where Wash spent countless hours flying
to and from his international engagements on behalf of the Philippines. He was an
ambassador no less than Delia, albeit without a portfolio.

With Wash gone, and even in the depths of her grief, Delia had to ask George what to
do about the dinners Wash had lined up for the ambassadors—should they continue?
“Of course,” George said, and so Delia wrote everybody a letter saying that the dinner
for Ambassador Kim would push through as planned. Ninety-nine percent of the
invited guests came. The dinners with the Japanese as well as the German ambassadors
likewise pushed through—just as Wash would have wanted. In New York, one of the
guests invited to the dinner party that never happened, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, hosted
a memorial in Wash’s honor.

Wash SyCip’s remains were flown back to Manila, but his true homecoming had
happened a few years earlier, thanks to Delia’s intervention: he reacquired his
Philippine citizenship, which he had to give up during the war to enlist in the US
Army as a codebreaker. Despite the passage of many decades during which Wash
was often described as “more Filipino than many Filipinos,” he had remained an
American citizen, until Delia Albert showed him how he could become a dual
citizen. “I didn’t know it was so simple!” he would later exclaim, happy to receive his
Philippine passport. The inveterate traveler was home for good.

332