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Postscript A Good Night’s Sleep

The way to go

Second in their brood of three, George SyCip has spent most of his adult life in the
United States, where he and his siblings were sent to school in their teens, and where
he now lives with his family and runs his business and civic concerns.

Wash’s busy schedule when they were young meant that he was away from the house
a lot, although he took them out swimming on Sundays at the Polo Club until they
had their own pool at home. Sunday lunches alternating between the two sets of
grandparents also brought everyone together.

But his long years of study abroad—at Phillips Exeter and then at Stanford—followed
by employment and marriage in the US kept George away most of the time. It was
an arrangement that Wash himself approved of, making it clear to his children that
he expected them to succeed on their own. “He didn’t tell us not to follow him into
SGV, but he gave us the example of my grandfather, Albino, who said the same thing
to his kids. He told my father, if you come into the company and you do well, people
will say it’s nepotism. And if you do badly, you’re going to suffer by comparison. So
it’s better that you don’t come in,” recalls George.

“After graduation, I thought, and he actually agreed, that if I went back, then it
would be hard to prove myself on the Philippine side because too many doors would
open for me automatically. He preferred that I spend my time in the US to kind of
sink or swim here, to see what I could do on my own.”

So George stayed in the US and established himself in business and humanitarian
work, connecting American companies with Asia and facilitating the flow of
philanthropy to Asia. As the years went by, his visits to Manila became more frequent,
both because of business and of the need George felt to get closer to Wash and to
lend him a helping hand. He became his father’s constant traveling companion. Just
before that last flight to the US in October 2017, they had gone together to Taiwan.
They had also visited China once or twice a year, traveling outside the major cities.

This time around, George was accompanying his dad to their big event in New York.
“We normally hold an annual dinner in New York at the Links Club. For the last ten
years or so, I’d been in charge of arranging things, getting the guest list out, and all

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