The Untold Story of

IMELDA
MARCOS
CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I
“This Child will be Important” the
Father Said

CHAPTER II
The First Romualdez of Leyte
CHAPTER III
Trinidad’s Three Sons

CHAPTER IV
Hoe Vicente Orestes Brought Home a
Second Wife

CHAPTER V
A Marriage that was Not Exactly Made
in Heaven

CHAPTER VI
Dying in a Garage

CHAPTER VII
The Rose of Tacloban

CHAPTER VIII
Imelda in Manila

CHAPTER IX
How Imelda Became the Muse of
Manila

CHAPTER X
The Man with an Impediment

CHAPTER XI
The 11-day Courtship

CHAPTER XII
For Everyday a Diamond

CHAPTER XIII
A Father’s Profound Carelessness
CHAPTER XIV
Learning the Game Named Politics

CHAPTER XV
Mastering the Game: Imelda as
Campaigner

CHAPTER XVI
Fullfillment: Imelda as First Lady

EPILOGUE

Copyright page
The Untold Story of
IMELDA
MARCOS
FOREWORD

IN 1970, I WROTE AND PUBLISHED

the Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. It
was about how Imelda Marcos, once the
First Lady of the Philippines, rose from
an impoverished childhood in the
backward province of Leyte to become
the most powerful woman of the country.
At the height of her power during her
husband’s dictatorship she was also said
to be one of the richest women in the
world.
She left behind thousands of shoes
when her husband, former President
Ferdinand Marcos, and his family were
driven out of Malacañang in 1986. She
soon became known as “the woman of a
thousand shoes” in hundreds of articles
written in Western media and elsewhere
in the world to describe her profligacy.
She wanted to suppress the “Untold
Story of Imelda Marcos” by using her
power as First Lady but her attempts
only fueled curiosity about the book. It
became a runaway best seller, selling
more than 300,000 copies in the
Philippines and other countries. It has
been translated into Pilipino, French,
Japanese and Portuguese. It became a
cause célèbre.
The book had sold well but it was at a
cost to my family. For writing Imelda’s
untold story, my family and I were
forced to live a 20-year exile in London.
I had promised then that I would write a
sequel to reveal how the book very
nearly did not see print because of
threats and harassment from the
Marcoses.
Corazon Aquino, the widow of the
martyred Benigno Aquino Jr, who had
been the political archrival of Marcos,
became the president of the Philippines
after her husband’s assassination. To
millions of Filipinos, Cory was their
Joan of Arc, the epitome of a courageous
woman who would deliver them from
Marcos’s evil.
After the 1986 February peaceful
revolution I wrote another book: The
Rise and Fall of Imelda Marcos. It was
not the sequel I had planned to write. It
told the story of how she became rich
and powerful as the wife of President
Ferdinand Marcos only to lose it and be
shamed for her profligacy.
The spine of her story was a deprived
childhood. It was the reason for an
acquisitiveness that, ironically, could not
be satisfied. The Cinderella- theme is
not uncommon but it has a special
poignancy in Imelda’s case. Her public
life and her role as the First Lady of
Marcos’s presidency came from an inner
compulsion to compensate for a
traumatic childhood. That tragedy
defined her and the role she played in a
crucial period of Philippine history.
The book has been out of print since
the peaceful people power revolution in
February 1986. When the Marcoses left
bookstores that had hid their stock
during martial law finally released the
books to the public. One bookstore
reported it sold 3,000 copies in one day.
I have decided it is time to reprint the
Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. For a
new generation of young Filipinos, the
book should be made available in both
print and as an e-book.
As late as 1953, she was a starry-
eyed, provincial young woman in search
of a good fortune in Manila. Then she
met Ferdinand E. Marcos. He was the
prince who rescued her from her poverty
and misery. “I will make you the First
Lady of the land,” he promised soon
after he was introduced to her.
Complete, detailed, replete with facts
and documents unknown to the public,
her life story as told in this book, goes
back to the 1870’s and spans three
generations. It explains how Imelda’s
much-vaunted charisma helped
Ferdinand E. Marcos win in the crucial
presidential elections of 1965. She was
at the center of Marcos’s rule and puts
up the case that her story cannot be
ignored in the writing of the history of
that period.

CARMEN NAVARRO PEDROSA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

SOMETIME IN 1966, WHILE MY

HUSBAND read the newspapers on the
Marcoses’ state visit to the United
States, he casually said at breakfast that
Imelda would be an interesting subject
for a book.
“Write her biography, you mean?” He
nodded in reply, still holding the
newspaper he was reading adding that
the unprecedented publicity given to the
Marcoses made him wonder if there was
something else.
 There had been other Filipino
presidents who made state visits to the
United States. But something was
different about this visit. He did not
think the extraordinary interest in her by
the American press was solely about
politics. The political reason was well
known and obvious. The United States
wanted its allies to put more troops to
the war in Vietnam and show the world
that the war was not America’s alone.
Although the move was not popular in
the Philippines, President Marcos
acceded to the request of US President
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Following his inauguration in 1965,
Marcos committed an engineer battalion
of two thousand men to Vietnam.
According to Stanley Karnow, who
interviewed Marcos for his book, In
Our Image: America’s Empire in the
Philippines, Philippine involvement in
Vietnam was important to Johnson. The
Marcoses were invited to Washington to
reinforce this new level of cooperation
between America and the Philippines in
the war in Vietnam.
For this, the beautiful Imelda was a
perfect prop. The New York Times
featured Imelda Marcos on its front and
inside pages with stories on her youth
and her beauty. Her candid remarks
were good copy for American readers.
Still, the notion of writing a whole
book about her seemed to me excessive
and regarded the publicity as usual
media hype. I had thought then that the
publicity during the state visit owed
more to image-makers than to anything
extraordinary about her.
Moreover, it was well known that
Filipino writers in the Marcos entourage
eagerly passed on superlative
descriptions of Imelda to the American
press. Her image-makers drew a picture
of her as an interesting personality, a
beauty, a patroness of the arts, a blue
stocking, a fashionista, and — most of
all — with a political and social
pedigree. She was extraordinary. At the
back of it was the effort to portray her as
the Filipino version of Jacqueline
Kennedy. At that time, the real reason
behind her unique persona was still
unknown.
More aware and honest Filipinos saw
through the image making. This might
have been partly true but it did not tell
the full story. At that time, I rejected the
idea of writing her biography because
her official story was not interesting
enough for me. But many months later,
long after the excitement of that state
visit of the Marcoses to the US, my
husband repeated the suggestion. He was
serious this time and he was insistent.
No, he said, he did not think of her as
merely a product of image-makers. He
had some strange premonition that her
appeal lay elsewhere and chided me. He
said that as an author it was up to me to
find out just where the mystique lay.
Who knows, he added, I might discover
something real and then it would be
worth the effort. At the time, he was not
aware that his insistence that I write a
book on Imelda Marcos based on some
vague hunch would change our lives
forever and lead us to a 20-year exile.
But that is going ahead of the story.
The Pedrosas, my husband’s family,
also came from Leyte. As a
provincemate he knew something about
her family but not much. He knew the
Romualdez family was politically
powerful. And she was part of it.
For my part, what I knew about her
and her origins came from newspapers.
After the story had been written, he
thought she had every reason to be proud
of her rags to riches story.
I took up the book project about
Imelda half-heartedly even as I began
research on her story. First step was to
seek as many people as I could who
would tell me anything at all about her
before she became First Lady. I was
partial to persons who did not use
connections to her from a dim past now
that she was the First Lady. They were
individuals who had memories crucial to
the writing of her story and were free
from any favors she might have given
them. There were many of those. But I
knew from the start that they would not
be enough in the search of her story.
I sought others. I spoke to her
teachers, neighbors, past friends, anyone
who knew of her then whether intimately
or casually. They must be simply willing
to tell a story. And, indeed, after those
interviews, I came across a remarkable
life-story that needed to be told.
Of her teachers, the Benedictine nuns
were most eager to claim her as
schooled by “Benedictine discipline,”
Imelda studied in the primary and
secondary grades in the Holy Infant
Academy in Tacloban, Leyte, which as
then run by German Benedictine sisters.
But the schooling was not as idyllic as it
was made to be in the official biography.
They later left the care of the school
to the Sisters of Mercy so that there was
difficulty in retracing the Benedictine
nuns who had taught her. Sister Renata,
O.S.B. is now in Pampanga, while Sister
Bernarda, O.S.B., Sister Felix O.S.B.,
and Sister Avelina O.S.B. are in St.
Scholastica’s College, Manila. Sister
Helga, O.S.B. wrote all the way from
Tutzing, Bavaria, West Germany. Sister
Albina, O.S.B. not only wrote from
Baguio, she also enclosed a picture of
Imelda on the day she received her first
Holy Communion. Among her
classmates, I interviewed Lourdes de la
Cruz Ferrares, who was one of Imelda’s
closest friends at the Holy Infant
Academy. Mary Chapman, who now
lives in San Francisco, California,
although merely a schoolmate,
contributed important details in
recollecting Imelda’s life in Tacloban.
 As to her school days in the Divine
Word University, then known as St.
Paul’s College, Very Reverend Ernest
Hoedermann, SVD generously made
available both her and her father’s
(Vicente Orestes Romualdez, who was
at one time a Dean of the College of
Law) records in the school.
I wanted primary sources but I was
told that immediate relatives would not
talk because they were on orders not to
talk. The breakthrough came when I met
one relative, Loreto Romualdez Ramos.
She was closely related to Imelda, being
a first cousin, the daughter of former
Justice of the Supreme Court, Don
Norberto Romualdez, and she was
willing to tell the “untold story.” She
believed, she said, that Imelda’s story is
a remarkable one. It needs and waits to
be told. That was her only reason for
cooperating so fully in the making of this
biography.
I also met with other primary sources
who at first were unwilling to talk.
There were Lourdes, her eldest
stepsister, and Conchita, her youngest
sister. But by the time I met with them, I
already had a notion of their family life.
My conversations with them merely
confirmed facts I already knew.
The most invaluable of my primary
sources were Estrella Cumpas and
Marcelo Sinco. They had been domestic
help in the Vicente Orestes Romualdez
household for over ten years and had a
unique relationship with the family.
Those ten years were the most crucial in
shaping Imelda’s character.
I wish to express my gratitude to
Domingo Abella, who allowed me to
read the memoirs of Don Norberto
Romualdez that have been in his
possession since the jurist’s death.
I acknowledge the help extended by
the Singian Clinic, the San Miguel Pro-
Cathedral, Jose Guevara of the Manila
Times, Ariston Nakpil, Braulio Hipuna,
Norma Javier, Mr. and Mrs. Ricardo
Reyes, Conchita Carpio, Teodoro
Abella, Blas Ople, Father Almendra,
Magdalena Dacanay, and lastly, Eric
Torres, who read through the final copy
of the manuscripts.
 At first I intended to interview Imelda
and President Marcos but as I went
deeper into my research, it became
obvious these were memories she and
he, as well, would be reluctant to talk
about. Moreover, memories of Imelda’s
life as a child and as a young woman
would not only be unpleasant to recall
but these would contradict the image
made out for her when she became First
Lady.
PROLOGUE

IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT MARCOS was

partly to blame for the making of
Imelda’s false image. He wanted his
wife to use the Romualdez name to the
hilt and portray Imelda as one who was
born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
His political image included a wealthy
and highborn wife when he sought the
presidency of the Philippines. Before his
marriage to Imelda, it is said he had
courted women with social cache —
among them Chito Madrigal of the
wealthy Madrigal clan, and one of the
Quezon girls. It was fashionable then for
ambitious Filipino politicians to marry
into wealth and name, such as what he
thought Imelda offered as his First Lady
because she was a Romualdez.
Ferdinand Marcos was still unaware of
the more complicated nature of her
relations to the politically powerful
Romualdezes.
It is my own conclusion, based on the
facts I have gathered, that Imelda’s story
is intimately bound with the history of
the Romualdez family. The pivotal point
of the story is that her branch of the
family was that of “poor relations.” That
has sensitive connotations in Philippine
culture. She said many years later in
CNBC’s Sixty Minutes after the
Marcoses’ downfall, “They don’t realize
that I come from a third-world country
and from a third-class country.” When
the other Romualdezes had made their
mark in Manila, Imelda’s branch of the
family was struggling in Leyte. She came
to Manila as a starry-eyed young
woman.
After eleven years, she returned to her
hometown, triumphant, ready to face the
unhappiness she once had when she was
poor. She did not only belong this time
to the prominent Romualdezes of
Manila, she surpassed them when she
became First Lady of the Philippines.
She had the power to put them down if
she wished to and she wanted them to
know that. Soon after Ferdinand
Marcos’s inauguration as President she
called them to a reunion and did not
mince words in telling them of her
power. She was putting them on notice.
How she moved from that powerless
and luckless childhood to the top of the
Romualdez political dynasty is her
untold story. My husband’s view that her
story was about a woman to emulate for
achieving the feat was true but it had a
dark side still unknown in the early days
of the Marcos presidency. There was
more to Imelda and her journey from
poverty to riches that would be revealed
but only after the untold story had been
written.
She did struggle hard, she did work
for what she had become. Her fight to
become Miss Manila, her fight against
her weak self which led to intense
migraine headaches, her fight to become
a perfect politician’s wife, and her role
in the presidential campaign of 1965 are
some of the episodes in her life which
can be called proofs of “a struggle
deserving of emulation.”
In a television interview after the
Marcos downfall, she admitted as much.
“The family was prominent but I was a
poor relation and if you want to know
deprivation, be a poor relation in the
Philippines.” Yet to say that she did
struggle does not answer how she
crossed the abyss from an impoverished
childhood to become a woman who
would possess nearly everything and
was once described as “one of the
richest women in the world” in an
article in Cosmopolitan Magazine at the
height of the dictatorship.
No matter how hard she tried if fate
had not been on her side, she would
have failed and counted among the many
men and women who come from the
poor provinces of the Philippines to try
their luck in Manila, the country’s
capital city.
Imelda’s story, more than anything
else is a child of fate. Her life story is
both particular and universal. Her
unhappy childhood was the driving
motive that led her to fortune and power,
a theme that happens all too often in life
stories of equally deprived individuals.
It is, well, a Cinderella story, with fate
for her fairy godmother that visited her
on the evening of April 6, 1954, and
brought her into the life of Ferdinand E.
Marcos. Thus the magic began.
Whereas, the story of her fairy tale
counterpart ends with her marriage to a
prince, Imelda’s enchanted life ends
tragically with her marriage to the
“prince” of her life - Marcos. Whether
he was a prince for good or a prince for
evil is the question. The story of
Cinderalla ends with marriage to a
prince and it is assumed they lived
happily ever after. If Marcos was the
prince in Imelda’s life who saved her
from her poverty, he was also the force
through which she would forever relive
the poverty. This time it was poverty as
memory that would haunt her even as she
lived amidst so much wealth. The rags
of poverty could not be washed away.
They remained locked up inside her. No
wonder she was insatiable even while
wearing the best finery in the world.
As First Lady of the Land one of her
more significant actions was to dissuade
her cousin, Norberto Romualdez, Jr.
from running for reelection as Governor
of Leyte. There could be only one
powerful Romualdez family of Leyte and
as First Lady she was the head of that
family. She wanted that act to end her
journey of “poor relation.” Whether that
was possible is not the issue. But it is
the logical end of the unraveling of her
untold story.

The Story Book Image

IMELDA MARCOS WAS NOT ALWAYS
POOR and for a while her family had
sufficient means to be equal to the rest of
the Romualdezes. As her aunt, Loreto
Romualdez Ramos pointed out to me, the
story of Imelda Marcos begins with what
she calls the blue book. There are two
versions of Imelda’s story that she has
called the red book and the blue book
depending on what writers seek to know
about Imelda.
 When I first met her in her modest
house in San Juan, a suburb of Manila,
Loreto did ask what I wanted: the blue
book version or the red book. The blue
book version was her official biography,
and the red book the unofficial and
closed-to-the-public version. Both start
from basic facts but they separate at
about the time of her mother’s death.
From this point, there are two tracks,
distinct from each other of how to treat
her story.
The official version is on this track:
“She considers herself of the South,
being a Romualdez of Leyte, where her
forbears founded the town of Tolosa and
established a family that has become one
of the mightiest political clans of the
country.”
“Her father, Don Vicente O.
Romualdez, was a prominent lawyer, the
youngest in a family of three boys, all of
whom distinguished themselves. His
eldest brother, Norberto, became a
justice of the Supreme Court and a
member of the Philippine Assembly. He
wrote the preamble to the Philippine
Constitution, pioneered in the
compilation of Philippine folk songs,
and popularized My Nipa Hut by scoring
it for school use. The other brother,
Miguel, became Mayor of Manila.
Succeeding generations of the
Romualdez clan have produced senators,
congressmen, ambassadors, governors,
bank presidents, and eminent
professionals, not to mention the late
Speaker of the House, Daniel
Romualdez, a first cousin of Imelda
Marcos.
Having established her family
pedigree, the official version then
glosses over her own branch of the
family, by saying, it was not political.
“Her father was a scholarly man more
interested in music and culture than in
public life. On her mother’s side, she is
a Trinidad from the Bulacan town of
Baliuag, which is as famed as the South
for the charm of its women.” Actually,
therefore, Imelda Marcos is of both the
North and the South. She spent her
childhood in the shadow of Malacañang;
her family then lived in a house just
across the San Miguel pro-Cathedral
Church. She had her first schooling at
Holy Ghost College. When her mother
died, her father moved back to the
ancestral house in Tacloban, where he
became the dean of Law of St. Paul’s
College. The young Imelda continued her
schooling under the Benedictine sisters
in Tacloban at the Holy Infant High
School. She earned a bachelor’s degree
in education at St. Paul’s, taught for a
while there and at another private
school, but teaching was not to be her
life.
 She was a beauty queen at 18, as the
“Rose of Tacloban” became Miss Leyte,
went to Manila in 1953 to act as
presiding beauty of the first International
Fair and Exposition. Of more
importance to her and her family was her
singing, which won her a music
scholarship at the Philippine Women’s
University. “A lyric (sic), she has been
singing since childhood, to popular
acclaim, though she never considered
singing as a career. Nevertheless, her
voice has proven to be one of her
husband’s prime political assets!” While
at the Philippine Women’s University,
she was employed at the Central Bank,
as a writer for its house organ, “The
Central Banker.”
In 1954 she met then Congressman
Ferdinand Marcos. After a whirlwind
courtship in Baguio during Holy Week,
they were married in May of that year at
the Manila Pro-Cathedral with President
Magsaysay as principal sponsor. The
reception was at Malacañang Park. The
Marcoses honeymooned abroad, made
their home in San Juan, Rizal. They have
three children, Maria Imelda, 10,
Ferdinand, Jr., 7, and Irene, 5.
The First Lady has travelled
extensively abroad, and even more
extensively in the Philippines, especially
during the recent campaign, when she
visited almost all the towns of the
country, people asking her to sing
wherever she went. No professional
singer ever undertook so strenuous a
tour! The First Lady’s interests augur
well for the arts. If, despite the pressures
of political schedules, she has managed
to find time for civic work — raising
funds for orphanages, hospitals,
seminaries and churches — the new
pressure of Palace schedules will surely
not keep her either from what she plans
to make one of her major activities as
First Lady: the promotion of culture and
the arts and the encouragement of the
various beautification projects in Manila
and in the rest of the country. Not all the
pressures of all the schedules in the
world could make her merely the
decorative figure she is certainly
equipped to be, and might content to be,
did not her upbringing and her family’s
traditions demand that she be more.
 Those who recall with delight how
young First Ladies in other countries
gave an accent of culture even to social
life in their capitals and thus imparted a
new dimension to the world of politics,
look forward eagerly to the new regime
in Malacañang, under young Mrs.
Ferdinand Marcos, herself so committed
to the finer things in life. Because she
comes from a family not only of
politicians but also of scholars and
artists, the beauties and graces of Higher
Life may well accent the era of Imelda
Romualdez Marcos.
So it went, this official biography,
with its dead-serious intent to glamorize
her life, family background and personal
capabilities. All throughout the first year
of her husband’s term of office as
president, the image-makers of Imelda
were bent on exalting her as the paragon
of the virtues of the accomplished life,
the stuff out of which myths and story-
book romances are made. It is a truism
that “facts” can convey different stories.
Indeed there are many “facts” in the
official biography that can be found also
in the untold story. It is the perspective
and the many things left unsaid that make
the two stories different.
In the socially frenetic months of
October and November 1966, Imelda
broke into the international scene with
the Marcoses much-publicized state visit
to the United States.
“A photographer’s delight,”
Americans said of her as they trailed her
from the White House to a Metropolitan
Opera House opening to the Rockefeller
Estate, noting her fashionable clothes
and jewelry.”
There was no hint that this fairy book
story was the cover for a sad and tragic
story she and her husband wanted to hide
from the world.
When Ferdinand Edralin Marcos took
his oath as sixth President of the
Republic of the Philippines at high noon
on December 30, 1965, in rites at the
Luneta witnessed by thousands of
Filipinos, not a few observers predicted
he was ushering in a controversial
period in the country’s history. His
youth, his dynamic oratory, his
impressive congressional record, and
his war heroism preceded him. Marcos
cultists, partisan journalists and
Malacañang press agents were poised to
make hay with a new president with an
unusual background.
But Imelda Marcos, his young wife
and former Miss Manila, would steal the
show. The cameras turned to this beauty
queen elegantly gowned and coifed in
the best tradition of French fashion. With
her height of five feet seven inches she
towered over the other women on the
platform and easily played the role of
being out of the ordinary.
She was the first First Lady of the
Philippines who would use her height
and beauty to the hilt. She had
campaigned vigorously for her husband
but on the day of Marcos’s inauguration
as president there was no trace of
exhaustion, edginess, or undue
emotionalism in her face, even as people
said she was her husband’s charismatic
ally in the longest, bloodiest, and
bitterest campaign in the country’s
history.
Newspaper reports said she sat on
that platform that day composed,
beaming with a sense of quiet triumph.
The delicate, innocent beauty hardly
betrayed a character that had the subtle
glint of fine steel.
Even then, without any prompting, a
foreign correspondent had called her
“Steel Butterfly.”
 Those who did see her on the
campaign trail said there was something
desperate about her determination to
win, to make good. Newsmen had
lavished praise on her as they saw her
crisscross the country gathering votes to
make her husband win. She went from
town to town, city to city, to 1,200
municipalities in the country’s scattered
islands. She made important decisions,
plans and gave suggestions at a pace that
matched her husband’s. She sang, she
danced, she crowned beauty queens, she
prayed, she charmed. For all that, she
won.
Her politicking was a stunning
performance.
Imelda, agreed political observers of
varied persuasions, was her husband’s
principal weapon in the 1965
presidential campaign.
“She was responsible for at least a
million votes,” the president-elect had
said of his wife almost immediately after
the results of the elections were out. A
million votes was the margin that made
him the winner.
It seemed to many who came close to
her during those days that politics had
become an obsession. She did not
merely move to seek votes: she was
driven by some inner compulsion. What
was that deeply felt need?
When victory was finally her
husband’s, she would not be content with
being merely a decorative prop as other
first ladies before her had been.
In her first press conference, on
November 17, 1965, she said: “My
dream is to have a theatre — a
completely equipped auditorium where
artists can find full expression of their
talent. Something like Carnegie Hall,
perhaps. But, of course, I shall ask the
advice of experts and of artists, as I do
not presume to know everything about
the subject. I have to push through the
beautification project began by Teodoro
Valencia (a local newspaper columnist)
and so ably implemented by my
predecessor, Evangelina Macapagal.
She deserves credit for that. My idea
about projects in general is not to disrupt
but to provide ... some continuity, for
instance, of work that has already been
started.”
By the last year of her husband’s term
of office in 1969 the Cultural Center was
a reality. It was done in record time as
she had promised or at least a part of it
— the theater. Built at a cost of P50
million, the theatre designed by favorite
architect Leandro Locsin is a stunning
edifice on reclaimed land against a
backdrop of Manila Bay. Work on the
Rizal Park, the project began by her
predecessor, was also followed up and
completed.
She indeed kept her promise of
cultural leadership. Immediately after
Imelda moved to Malacañang Palace to
reside there as the First Lady, a team of
publicity men prepared to fantasticate
her image.
The first hints that she was headed for
a tragic end showed up during her trip to
the United States. It may have been
harmless gushing but she was
overwhelmed by the wealth she saw in
America and gave portents of her future
as First Lady.
She was quoted and written about in
several newspapers. “At the National
Press Club in Washington, D.C., it was
Imelda’s eyecatching black-and-white
pearl earrings and brooch ...at the
Metropolitan Opera House opening, a
white-over-pink terno ...at breakfast
with Cardinal Spellman, a stunning
polka-dotted terno.
 She sprang a surprise on 1,400 guests
during the return reception for President
anal Mrs. Lyndon Johnson when she
stood up and sang her signature song
“Dahil sa lyo” (Because of You). The
wife of a visiting dignitary of any other
country at any other time had never done
it before, but she did it, and was
convinced that it added to, rather than
diminished, the luster of a state function.
Imelda’s off-the-cuff impressions of
the state visit were published in the
October 16, 1966 issue of Woman and
the Home: “Anyway, it was a big hit .... I
was told that never in the history of
Washington did a reception last on and
on and on.”
“As for President Johnson,” she
continued, “he kept on signing cards for
me and on the ninth menu card he said,
`to Mrs. Marcos with A and A.’ So I told
him, ‘Mr. President, I am a little bit
dumb. Can you tell me what this means?’
And he said, ‘Admiration and affection.’
And I replied, ‘Oh, I just wanted to
make sure.’
She had imagined herself a conqueror
when she really was conquered. Like a
breathless Alice in Wonderland, she
gushed at the awesome wealth in
America:
“The Met — it was fabulous — those
chandeliers, those paintings, the
audience — my God, the Rockefellers,
the Duponts, the Fords, the Magnins, the
Lindsays, the painter Marc Chagall, you
know he wanted to paint me but he was
reluctant — would my husband allow
him to do so?
“And the jewels the women were
wearing — it is a good thing I decided
not to wear any diamonds, because those
that the Americans were wearing —
wow! — strands and strands of them
around their necks. My, in America,
when they’re rich they’re really rich.
When I came in wearing my pearls I was
so thankful I chose them because
everyone else was wearing diamonds.
“I went to Mary Lasker’s house —
wow! You never saw anything so
fabulous. I never in my life saw anything
like it, her collection of Matisses,
Pizarros, Monets, Gauguins — and
especially Matisse — really fabulous —
and the ten minutes I was supposed to
stay dragged on to almost three hours.
Really fascinating. “The Rockefeller
Estate was another place we visited.
Imagine the estate right in the heart of
New York — with its own golf course,
an orchard of rare fruits, flower gardens
of the best blooms — and stables, what
stables — beautiful horses and they did
not even stink!” Her eyes were opened
to possibilities for herself with that state
visit when she saw how wealthy
Americans live.
Back in the Philippines, the Marcoses
reciprocated America’s hospitality. They
had barely returned from the
“successsful trip” when feverish
preparations were made for the Summit
Conference in Manila, in which the
heads of state of the United States’ and
her Asian allies in the Vietnam war
would be invited to join. The
seriousness of war was matched by the
frivolities of the state functions that
Imelda put together.
The state banquet for the US and its
allies in the Vietnam was a grand affair.
The celebration of a partnership for war
was a much-publicized affair with
Malacañang Palace opened up for some
2,000 guests. The park across the river
was transformed into a fairyland of
lights.
 Imelda was to be the hostess of the
biggest social extravaganza ever to be
held in Malacañang. She was out to
show foreign dignitaries Filipino
hospitality at its most lavish and to
impress them with a fiesta complete with
cockfights, lantern-lit dances, a tilbury
parade, 14 booths of food, and a
Santacruzan (religious procession in
May) with movie stars and starlets as
participants.
At the end of the extravaganza,
President Johnson said, “The fiesta was
far bigger and better than any social
affair I had ever attended in Texas.” He
called Imelda “the hostess with the
mostest,” adding that she had just taken
the title away from Perle Mesta.
Life magazine (Asia edition) featured
the Imelda story, put her regal face on
the cover, and called her Imelda, the
Fabulous in its August 8, 1966 issue.
She entered the exclusive
international realm of beauty, wealth and
power in which such demi-goddesses as
Queen Sirikit and Jacqueline Kennedy
reigned.
In the first year of her husband’s
administration, people who valued truth
and restraint were willing to forgive the
exuberance of the imagemakers’ praises.
There were scattered and random
criticisms but the masses accepted the
image and grew proud of it. Anyone who
dared knock it off would be a villain.
One person did. He wrote a letter to
the editors of Life after the article on her
appeared in its August 8, 1966 issue.
The writer claimed that Life had erred in
mentioning that Imelda came from an
affluent family. The letter-writer, who
hid under the cloak of anonymity, said
Imelda was a modern Cinderella but had
every reason to be proud of her struggle
from rags to riches.
The letter was branded as
“poisonous,” “politically motivated,” by
friends of the Marcoses. The writer was
a heel, and by choosing not to reveal his
identity, a coward to boot.
But that began the whispering, and
more and more people wanted answers
to their questions. The novelty of a
beauty queen as First Lady soon wore
off. She became an increasingly
controversial figure. To some she
remained a heroine with good intentions;
to others, a ruthless woman who gets
what she wants. The letter to Life
Magazine was soon followed. This time
it would come from Marcos’s arch foe
— Senator Benigno Aquino.
 Senator Benigno Aquino compared
her to Evita Peron, the wife of the
Argentine dictator, who became
powerful in her own right. He said
Imelda’s flair and extravagance were
traceable to an impoverished childhood
thus establishing something she had in
common with Evita Peron. At that time
the Marcoses were too powerful for
anyone to question the storybook image
that the Palace made out for her. Aquino
was a political rival and he was not
believed. It was dismissed as politically
motivated.
Far from the image-makers of
Malacañang Palace was a woman of
Leyte, sad-faced, shabbily dressed, who
too, found the glamorized Imelda of
Palace image-makers unrecognizable.
In 1967, when Imelda made a
triumphant return to Leyte, hundreds of
poor townsfolk came to watch the
celebration held in Imelda’s resort house
in Barrio Ulot, Tolosa.
One of those who inched her way
among the crowds to pay her respect to
the hostess was this shabbily dressed
woman.
“Imelda waved at me from the car,
and so I thought maybe I should see her
and remind her to help me.”
Her name, she said, was Estrella
Cumpas.
“I know Imelda’s story from the year
she was born to the year of her mother’s
death.”
 These are years, Estrella says, that
Imelda appears to have blotted out from
her memory.
CHAPTER I

“This child will be

important,” The
Father Said
WHEN IMELDA ROMUALDEZ WAS
BORN AT dawn on July 2, 1929, her
family was not only basking in the
glamor of the Romualdez name — a
name made famous by the first
Romualdez who made good — the civic
and intellectual leader, Norberto. Her
side of the family was not yet ‘poor
relations’ because they enjoyed the
comforts of material prosperity like all
the Romualdezes. Imelda’s father,
Vicente Orestes, had a law practice that
was lucrative enough to support a young
second wife and a brood of five growing
children by his first. Shortly before
Imelda’s birth, her father’s house on
General Solano, in the prestigious
district of San Miguel, Manila, was
being remodelled to accommodate a
garage for a car he had recently bought
on installment plan — an Essex Super 6
(Berlina) — from the only car dealer
before World War II, the Estrella del
Norte.
He was glad he had bought the car at
the time he did. His young second wife,
Remedios Trinidad, was expecting her
first child. In the evening of July 1, she
began suffering labor pains and felt
definite and regular contractions at 10-
minute intervals. The time had come for
her to give birth according to Estrella.
At 6 o’clock in the evening, calling for a
taxicab in the San Miguel district would
have been next to impossible. The
brand-new Berlina limousine was a
godsend, ready for any emergency.
It was a hot summer evening when the
limousine rushed Remedios to the San
Juan de Dios Hospital, which was then
in Intramuros (the Spanish Walled City),
a busy hub of Manila’s cultural and
commercial life at the time. Inexplicably,
during the trip to the hospital, it was
Vicente Orestes who grew increasingly
nervous, as if this were the first time he
would become a father. Upon reaching
the hospital, he called for two
physicians to attend to his wife, Dr. Luis
Guerrero and Dr. Pedro Lantin.
Certainly this was proof, Vicente
Orestes was far from poor. Normally,
one doctor would have sufficed. The
doctors found it odd that this father-to-be
should be in such chill sweat. After all,
he had been through this experience
before, having sired five children by his
first wife. Then out of the blue, to the
raised eyebrows and puzzlement of
relatives who had started to gather in the
hospital, he announced: “This child will
be important.” He surprised the
Romualdezes for saying that much. Did
he have a premonition?
Reservations were made for a suite
costing P25 per day — a small fortune at
that time. But the nervous father-to-be of
his first child by his second wife was
willing to spend that much because, he
said, and would keep saying afterwards,
he had this vague feeling, or intuition,
that the coming of this child would augur
well for the Romualdez household on
General Solano.
The following morning, July 2,
between 5 and 6 o’clock, almost at the
rising of the sun, Vicente Orestes’s
“important child” was born. It was a
baby girl. And to this day, the
Romualdezes remember her as a
beautiful baby with rosy cheeks and
limpid skin.
In recalling those times, Loreto says
doting aunts and cousins who saw
Imelda on the day she was born agree
she looked different from the other
children of Vicente Orestes from his first
marriage.
Like most prestigious Filipino
families, the Romualdezes were strict,
no-nonsense Roman Catholics (catolicos
cerrados). They went by the strict rules
of the Catholic Church, most especially
in sacramental rites. More than 24 hours
would have been intolerable for a
Romualdez baby to remain pagan. The
very, next day, the tiny baby blinking at
the glare of the morning sun was brought
to the parish church of San Miguel and
baptized amid many witnesses.
Her name was registered as Imelda
Remedios Visitacion Romual dez. Her
second name was her mother’s.
Visitation comes from the Catholic
calendar, the feast celebrated on that
day, commemorating the event when St.
Elizabeth visited her cousin, Mary.
Her baptismal certificate also reads
that she is the child of Don Vicente
Orestes Romualdez and Doña Remedios
Trinidad, born on the second day of July
in the year 1929, and solemnly baptized
the next day, July 3. The ceremony was
officiated by Monsignor Juan Somera,
now deceased. The two sponsors
registered in the certificate were Estela
Romualdez, now Mrs. Sulit, eldest
daughter of Vicente Orestes’s brother,
Miguel Romualdez, and Don Francisco
Casas. The certificate is filed in the
Baptismal Registrar No. 14, volume
number 187, of the Church of San
Miguel.
All the witnesses of the baptismal
event kept remarking how
extraordinarily pretty the baby was. The
father fussed over the child throughout
the ceremony and kept telling everybody
about his vague sense of this child’s
“importance.”
Only one among those gathered for the
occasion, Imelda’s paternal
grandmother, remained quietly aloof —
the grand matriarch of the Romualdez
clan, Doña Trinidad Lopez de
Romualdez. All the finicky adulation
over the child she could not understand.
If she sat through the ceremony cool and
indifferent she had reason. After all, had
she not brought up the family through all
sorts of trials and disasters?
There they all were, members of the
entire Romualdez clan, assembled in a
church ceremony. There was this big
fuss over the extraordinary prettiness of
a baby girl, and there was the father
beaming with pride over his “important
child” as if it were a seraphim that had
come to earth to be born, and she was
getting bored by the minute by it all, or
perhaps only feeling ancient at the
thought of all the births and marriages
and deaths that she had been through in
her too-long-drawn-out lifetime.
In her time, such excessive exultation
over the birth of a child was
inconceivable, so much gross vanity. A
newborn baby then meant an additional
mouth to feed, agonizing over finances,
another emotional adjustment, if not
another domestic crisis. So acute were
the hardships of those days that an
addition in the family could mean
moving to another town, pulling up
stakes, upsetting a whole way of life just
to find a new and better source of
income for a growing family.

Daniel Romualdez, Imelda’s grandfather was

originally of Pandacan, Manila
 the Romualdez house in Ermita which
Norberto converted into the Romualdez Law
Offices in 1921.
CHAPTER II

The First
Romualdez of Leyte
WHEN IMELDA WAS BORN, DOÑA
TRINIDAD was a tired, old woman, her
life almost over. At the time of her death
on April 6, 1932, she was 89 and Imelda
was three years old. It would seem that
before she could die, she had to wait for
the birth of this child—whose father
regarded as special, someone who
would give greater luster to the
Romualdez name.
The Imelda myth would not have been
possible without the hardships of Doña
Trinidad.
Back in the 1870’s, there were no
Romualdezes of Leyte. The
Romualdezes were originally of
Pandacan, a dusty middle-class suburb
of Spanish Manila. They were an
insignificant lot, without claim to either
fame or fortune. Nevertheless, the
Romualdezes of Pandacan had acquired
the reputation of being mighty proud —
at least they were city folk.
One of them, Daniel Romualdez, was
a cabeza de barangay and a teacher at
20. By virtue of these two respectable
positions, he was considered a man
“with a promising future.”
Unfortunately, this talented youth
contracted tuberculosis. In those days, it
was an incurable disease. When he
learned that he had it, he grew
despondent. He abandoned his work and
devoted his time to prayer and hoped for
a miracle. Like most parishioners of the
church, he believed in the special
patronage of the Child Jesus of
Pandacan, reputed to be miraculous.
The belief in the miraculous powers
of this image started after the earthquake
that rocked the city of Manila in 1852.
The entire church of solid stone
collapsed beyond repair. But written
accounts of Franciscan friars relate how
the entire community of men and women
worked relentlessly day and night
clearing the ruins and carrying new
stones with their bare hands for 20
months until a bigger and better church
rose from the disaster site.
As a reward for such devotion, a
miracle was said to have taken place.
While clearing the ruins, a group of
young boys found the image of the Child
Jesus intact and unscarred. At that time
the parish of Pandacan was under the
jurisdiction of the larger parish of
Sampaloc. When the image was found, it
was immediately turned over to the
Diocese of Sampaloc; but soon after, it
miraculously returned to the spot where
it had originally been found. Inspired by
this inexplicable happening, the
parishioners of Pandacan built a small
chapel and a fountain on that very spot.
As word about the miracle spread,
people with all kinds of diseases came
to the fountain to try its reputed healing
water.
Daniel was a frequent visitor to the
fountain. He, too, hoped for a miracle.
Anxious over his fate, the young
invalid saw a beautiful woman — the
most beautiful he had ever seen he told
family later. She was sweeping the floor
of the church. She was tall, almost five-
feet seven inches in height, with a
squarish patrician face, deep-set eyes,
and a high, nicely shaped nose. She was
fair complexioned and that immediately
told him she was mestiza, a half-breed,
part Filipina, part Spaniard with an aura
that set her apart from other women he
had met.
Her “apparition” seemed the very
miracle he had hoped for. He sought to
know her through his father confessor.
He told him that she was Trinidad
Lopez, a daughter of one of the Spanish
priests residing in the parish. This 19-
year-old beauty was schooled in Manila.
“I know that if I could but meet her I
will live a little longer,” he told the
priest. Apparently the priest made the
necessary arrangements for a meeting to
oblige the desperate invalid.
And soon it came to pass that Daniel
Romualdez y Arcilla, maestro and
cabeza de barangay (teacher and head
of the district) of Pandacan, Manila and
Trinidad Lopez y Crisostomo Talentin,
daughter of a Spanish friar of Burauen,
Leyte were married in 1872 on a date
now forgotten. The ceremony had as
principals an ecstatic groom and a
reluctant bride. On one hand, the groom
had eagerly sought marriage with the
hope that living with this beautiful
woman would help him recover from his
illness. On the other hand, the bride had
agreed to marry the tubercular lad only
because she had wished to follow her
confessor’s advice.
Her one wish was to become a nun
but the confessor candidly cautioned her
it would be difficult because she was the
daughter of a friar. She would need a
dispensation before she could be
admitted to the nunnery. At that time a
papal dispensation could take more than
a year to obtain, if at all. Her confessor
advised her instead to marry the sick
man and care for him instead of entering
the convent.
“Here is a sick man, Trinidad. You
can brighten his life. Take care of him
and make him happy. That is also
service to God. Why go through the
complication of becoming a nun when
your unselfish devotion is needed by this
man?” the priest reasoned.
Well, then, if she could not be a nun,
she would make a nunnery out of
marriage. And that was exactly what she
set out to do. She vowed to give her
marriage the same devotion and spirit of
sacrifice that religious life would have
demanded of her.
Unknown to her, the Romualdezes had
also sized her up and did not think much
of her and her sacrifice either. As the
Romualdezes of Pandacan, they liked to
believe that they had made something of
themselves in Manila and that Trinidad
was marrying well. The daughter of the
friar did not think so. She could not
understand why she should be impressed
with the Romualdezes who identified
themselves with the city. The unstated
resentments of the two families were
united to form the powerful Romualdez
clan it would become in the future. Who
did whom the favor of a good marriage,
the daughter of a friar or the tubercular
patient? Their marriage would last and
carry on to future generations. It was a
foreboding of events far into the future
but at the time Trinidad merely used her
gut feel and she decided they should
move to Burauen, Leyte.
She took her marriage seriously and
the duty that came with it. If she was to
restore Daniel’s health, she urged him
that they move to Burauen, Leyte where
her mother lived. “The rest, the sea-air,
and plenty of tuba will cure your
tuberculosis,” she coaxed him.
Daniel, the Romualdez of Pandacan,
too much in love with her and too sick to
protest, gave in.
Trinidad was the eldest of eight
children whom her father, Francisco
Lopez, a Franciscan friar, had brought to
Pandacan after a long assignment in
Burauen, Leyte. Father Lopez was then
an aging priest of 74 but he remained
lucid even at a late age. The family lore
of this Spanish friar who sired future
Romualdezes was that he was a scholar
of sorts and loved to read. One of his
hobbies was to design silver spoons
with the initials “F de L.” He gave the
silver spoons with his initials to each of
his sons and daughters, as a gift of
remembrance that although a Spanish
friar he did take care of them.
For many years, Father Lopez led an
active life as a parish priest of Burauen,
and as most of Spanish friars sent here
by Spain, he built the church of the
province. The church was the center of
both religious and secular affairs of the
community. The propagation of the
Catholic faith and civil government were
vested in him as the sole Spanish
authority in the backwater province. At
that time the town had about 6,000
inhabitants. When he arrived in the
Philippines from Granada, Spain, Father
Lopez was 40 years old. His first post
was Basey, Samar where he met
Concepcion Crisostomo Talentin. His
daughter, Trinidad, was born in Basey
on April 18, 1853. The rest of the
children were born in Burauen where he
was subsequently transferred.
When Father Lopez was ordered to
leave Burauen, he left Concepcion
among her relatives and took the
children along with him to Pandacan,
mindful they should get proper schooling
in the city.
The Pandacan assignment was the last
post for Father Lopez in the Philippines.
Trinidad knew that her father would not
live long and there was very little to
hope for in Pandacan if she had to
support all her brothers and sisters. It
would have been a simple matter if there
were only Daniel and her to think about.
Burauen, Leyte, was the answer to
both her problems: Daniel’s sickness
and the future of her own family. She
decided to settle in Leyte over the
objections of the Romualdezes who
regarded the move to Leyte as
backward. She assured them that her
mother and she were known among the
people of Burauen and they were
familiar with life there. After all, Father
Lopez had administered the town
capably for nearly twenty years.
Like other pioneering Spanish friars it
fell on Father Lopez to create a town out
of the patch of wilderness that was
Burauen. Under his supervision, the
residents painstakingly built a church, a
courthouse, and a school built with stone
that ultimately formed the hub of life in
the town. With the infrastructure in place
he was now able to freely go around
converting the people of Burauen and
persuading them to build their nipa
houses around the church. He told them
the move would enable them to be close
to their faith (the church) and learn how
to live peacefully with each other. After
he left Burauen, the population doubled;
it became a comparably large town for
its time.
Out of gratitude, the town treated the
family of Father Lopez with
considerable respect. Trinidad shrewdly
calculated it was precisely in Burauen’s
smallness, that their prominence in the
town would stand out, comparably better
than Daniel’s prominence as a cabeza de
barangay in a mere district of Manila’s
immensity. She thought rightly that the
social status the Romualdezes enjoyed in
Manila was not firmly grounded and
would diminish in time. Despite the
vagueness of their future in Leyte, the
daughter of the Spanish friar knew there
was greater promise in a distant
province even if it was a future she
could not predict.
Anyway that was not the deciding
factor. Daniel’s health and consequently
his incapacity to be the family
breadwinner was the immediate
consideration for moving south.
Thus did Trinidad and Daniel
Romualdez sail to Leyte with their
meager belongings in 1873, where they
hoped to start their new life.
Burauen was a struggling town. From
written accounts of Franciscan friars, we
know that in those days it was really a
small district of the bigger town of
Dulag.
Trinidad was right about her hunch
about Burauen. It was just the sort of
place that offered the opportunities she
needed and could manage. She could
teach, she could sing, she could
embroider. There was no doubt that the
city-bred girl occupied a prestigious
position in the backward town.
Besides, it was truly a paradise of
sunshine, fresh air and alcoholic tuba
distilled from coconuts she believed
would restore Daniel back to health.
Their future appeared rosy in Burauen.
When their first son, Norberto, was
born on June 6, 1875, the Romualdez
household celebrated with joy, but it
was shortlived. Soon after, the baby
developed high fevers in the afternoons,
a classic symptom of tuberculosis.
What Trinidad feared most, had come
true. The baby had weak lungs.
With this development, the
Romualdezes in far-off Pandacan,
heightened their campaign to bring the
family back to Manila. They continued to
bombard the implacability of this
daughter of a Spanish friar who brought
their promising relative to a hinterland.
They had despaired at the thought that
Daniel might have abandoned his
“promising” future in Manila for the
sake of love. The letters came
relentlessly urging him to return to his
post as cabeza de barangay in
Pandacan. A sister, Eulalia, wrote letters
to Trinidad. She did not spare harsh
words on what she thought of Leyte, and
what a big mistake Trinidad was making
by bringing her husband to a provincial
backwater.
Very likely, Trinidad ignored the
letters initially. For soon, the aunt,
possibly annoyed by the futility of her
written tirades, acted more drastically
and worked it out so the Manila
authorities would compel Daniel to
return to his post as cabeza de barangay
in Pandacan. She managed to get from
the authorities a written summons
specifying that unless he returned
immediately he would be charged with
desertion. A charge of civil
disobedience could put him in jail. This
time Aunt Eulalia won. Daniel had to
return to his post leaving his wife and
child behind until he could be settled. In
his unpublished memoirs, Norberto
Romualdez would write years later:
“My father told me that his heart almost
broke with sadness, seeing how hard my
mother tried to bring him back to health
and how small I was then, a mere baby,
to be left behind. The summons did not
mention the date when Daniel would be
united with his wife and child. It simply
said that he was to return immediately to
his post and arrangements were to be
made later for the rest of his family to
follow.
The separation lasted for a year.
Daniel sent a nephew, Severo
Romualdez, to fetch his wife and his
infant son. Trinidad, the obedient wife,
left her brothers and sisters and returned
to Pandacan. She finally decided to
leave Burauen for Pandacan, not because
she had given in to the wishes of
Daniel’s city relatives but because, as
she told her grandchildren years later, he
would need her soon and by then it
would be a matter of life and death.
“If they want him in Pandacan,” she
said, “then he will die in Pandacan.”
Daniel refused to involve himself in
the simmering controversy between the
women. Thinking himself fully
recovered, he resumed his tasks as
cabeza de barangay. Not very long
after, he suffered a serious relapse and
death threatened yet again.
Trinidad had anticipated the relapse.
But she was a strong-willed woman.
Her reaction to Daniel’s relapse was
simply to nurse him once more until he
was strong enough to return to Leyte.
Back in Burauen, she was relieved that
the snooty Romualdezes of Pandacan had
learned their lesson and would not
bother them again.
When she gave birth to a second son,
Miguel, on September 29, 1880 she
decided to move to the bigger and more
developed town of Dagami. Burauen had
limited opportunities and the family was
growing. Although a lovely town, it
could not offer more to catch up with
their needs. While Burauen was
beautiful and rustic, Dagami, was well,
ugly. It did not have the salubrious
climate that had been so good for
Daniel’s recovery.
But it was time to risk health and
beauty for practical reasons. Dagami
might be ugly but it had the opportunities
to earn more. Teachers then were paid a
fixed rate by students and the more
students one had the more one earned.
Dagami might have had the population
for the prospect of more students but
Trinidad did not reckon with the hard
work it would entail. She thought then
that all she needed was the
determination. The overriding
consideration of more money marked
their daily family life. It was a period
for crass practicality and ‘materialism’.
It was in the year 1885, when she was
so bent on making good in Leyte that she
became pregnant again. She bore her
third son, Vicente Orestes, who would
be the father of Imelda Marcos. Although
this significant detail has been glossed
over in the telling of her story, Trinidad
had a nervous breakdown under the
pressure of a new pregnancy and the
additional work she had taken up. In her
own words, she told Norberto, her
eldest son “I almost lost my mind.” She
would wake up nights screaming, unable
to bear the sound and the feel of wind.
When it rained she imagined their little
house being washed away.
 “Even little insects frightened me,”
she said. Years later, a doctor would
have diagnosed it as a nervous
breakdown.
In those days nervous disorders had
an “infallible cure” — “baths in the
sea.” The luxurious sea, its salty breezes
and the lulling of the wind and the wave
were palliatives for the troubled mind.
There is the story passed on as
Romualdez lore that when Trinidad took
her “baths in the sea” she would do so
under cover of a mosquito net. (At the
height of the controversy on The Untold
Story of Imelda Marcos, Imelda picked
out this episode of her grandmother’s
life as particularly demeaning.) “Does
the author mean, my grandmother was
crazy?” Imelda asked. Indeed, Imelda
would have her own nervous breakdown
years later when she realized what it
meant to be the wife of Marcos, then an
ambitious and aspiring politician.
Trinidad’s nervous breakdown led the
Romualdezes to Tolosa. It answered
their search for a town by the sea, an
idyllic spot that would shelter them from
the harshness of their life. Tolosa is on
the eastern coast of Leyte and its shores
washed by the Pacific Ocean. It became
a famous resort when Imelda, as First
Lady of the Philippines, built an
impressive resthouse for the world’s
super-rich, among them the Agnellis,
Gina Lollobrigida and others from the
world’s jet set. The story of how the
Romualdezes moved to Tolosa has been
so mangled by Imelda’s image-makers to
justify her origins as wealthy and
powerful.
Over enthusiastic reporters in the
early days of the Marcos administration
wrote extensively about Tolosa as the
“town founded by the early Romualdezes
of Leyte.” This, of course was not true.
Cursory research describes it as a little
town by the sea founded in 1851 by the
Spanish civil administrators and was
named as such on February 12, 1863,
after the home city in Spain of the
founders, the same name that had been
given to the hill nearby. In French,
Tolosa is Toulouse and Imelda once
joked when asked by Western journalists
why she knew a lot about art. “Because I
am from Toulouse.”
This period of relative stability in
Daniel’s family in Tolosa is worth noting
because it was also the year that
Imelda’s father was born. His birthdate
was July 3,1885 and by sheer
coincidence Imelda was born on July 2,
1929 just a day before, many years later.
Trinidad admitted that soon after they
moved to Tolosa, she recovered from
her nervous breakdown. She was more
relaxed, no longer the intense woman
burdened by a scrupulous sense of
responsibility. Daniel’s recovery had a
calming influence on her. Because she no
longer had to earn, and could now rely
on Daniel as breadwinner, she gradually
became more domestic. She had time for
the house and the new baby.
“It was in this town by the sea that our
family life blossomed,” Norberto wrote
of Tolosa. With Daniel as breadwinner
the family’s finances improved.
Trinidad’s brothers (all Lopezes)
organized a family orchestra called
Orquesta Lopez. The young Norberto
alternated as flutist and violinist in this
orchestra, thus supplementing the family
income whenever the orchestra was
asked to perform in fiestas and private
celebrations.
Daniel, meanwhile, took on his role
as breadwinner with with a vengeance
after years of depending on Trinidad.
When he fully recovered his health, he
set out to prove himself a man and in full
authority to the extent of overdoing it.
His sons recalled how fearsome he was
whenever they heard “the thunder of his
voice.”
He was often in the streets and
frequented the plaza where the menfolk
gathered. Because of his popularity with
Tolosa residents, he was appointed
capitan del barrio by the Spanish
government, a post he was to hold for
many years until 1896.
Undeniably, Daniel Rornualdez was a
capable leader of sorts; but how the
Romualdez name gained its fame reveals
it was not he who laid the foundations
but his eldest son, Norberto. The
position of capitan del barrio was not
enough to make a name of national
prominence.
As for Vicente Orestes, Imelda’s
father, he was the apple of his mother’s
eye. He was indisputably the handsomest
baby and it was not surprising that she
should lavish the most attention on this
child. He was petted, waited on, treated
with tender-loving care. He was
spoiled.
She often shook her head and said,
with a theatrical tone of voice, “Ah, my
sons are so different from each other
they might have been shaped from
different wombs.”
Here, then, was the first seed of
disaster, which would ultimately cause
the poverty that his “important child,”
Imelda Romualdez, would suffer all
throughout her childhood and early
youth. Ironically, it was Trinidad who
used to say that her youngest son would
grow up to be weak. Like his mother, he
would so love the sea in his adult years,
he would keep coming back to it for the
comfort it gave his mother when he was
born. Life for him was “La dulce vida”
(the good life). It would mean a long
vacation by the sea — a hankering for
“baths in the sea.”
Trinidad lived to see her three sons
grow up and have families of their own.
Times had changed and the family that
flourished in Leyte was soon to find
their niche in the city where they
returned to build the prominent
Romualdez name.
This perspective from the lives of
three sons, born in different periods in
the life of the strong-willed daughter of a
Spanish friar tells how Imelda’s persona
was shaped.
Each of Trinidad’s sons was born in a
distinctive period of her life and it
would affect what they would later make
of themselves. The eldest, Norberto,
was the first offspring of her heroic
attempt to bring a sick husband back to
health. She once said of her gifted
firstborn, “He will be famous.” At the
time of her death, he was an eminent
scholar and jurist.
Miguel was born in search of stability
and material comfort in an ugly town.
After his tenure as mayor of Manila, he
grew to be wealthiest of the three sons.
Vicente Orestes came at the time of
her “nervous breakdown,” at the end of a
long struggle to support a family. She
once said of her youngest son, “Vicente
Orestes will have to be looked after. He
does not have his brothers’ vigor and
ambition.” By 1932, his small law office
was floundering and he was unable to
strike roots in the city.
This may seem remote and
unconnected to the making of Imelda’s
notorious personality but it was an
important factor in the making of her
extaordinarlily acquisitive character.
She was the daughter of the weakest son
of Trinidad, Vicente Orestes, who, in
time would also become the poorest of
the three brothers. The result was a
difficult life for Imelda. As she would
later admit, “you don’t know what it is
to be a poor relative.”
But that was yet to be. At this point,
the Romualdezes from the three sons
enjoyed equal status in Manila society.
Loreto Romualdez’s recollection of
her deathbed is extraordinarily vivid.
“When her grandmother died she was no
less theatrical than she had been when
alive. She had been sick and bedridden
for a long time. Her eyes were closed,
but her lips moved with fervor as she
recited the Ave Marias. Her fingers
fumbled over the beads of the rosary
when she said, “Now it is time. Let me
lie down. (Unaware that she was in fact
lying down, she had meant a final lying
down, her death.) Light the candle by the
altar. Remove this pillow. Remove this
blanket. Call the priest.”
She grew restless gasping for breath.
All the while, she continued to give
orders.
“My hair,” she commanded. “It has to
be combed.”
Then she straightened her body and
extended her hands in a beckoning
gesture.
“Come now, Norberto, Miguel, and
Vicente Orestes, I am dying,” she said.
Not one of the three dared to come near
her. To the three sons her imminent death
could have been fearful. Miguel locked
himself in an adjacent room. Norberto
stood on top of the stairs, his back turned
on her. Vicente Orestes was farthest
from the deathbed — on the ground
floor. Their children and their wives
were delegated to keep watch in the
death room on the second floor.
As she called their names, she laid
her hands on her breast, closed her eyes,
and died.
The year was 1932. Ironically, she
died in Manila in a house that once
belonged to a Romualdez of Pandacan,
about 23 years after her husband, Daniel,
died in Tolosa, Leyte on April 5,1909.
Trinidad, daughter of a Spanish friar,
was the first Romualdez of the South. If
she had not lived, there would have been
no powerful “political dynasty of
Romualdezes from the South.” They
would still be known as the
Romualdezes of Pandacan, as many of
them still are.
Only one Romualdez moved south —
because of a woman, a pioneer who
abandoned the dubious comforts of the
city and, with exemplary courage,
moved from town to town in search of a
better life.
Imelda hardly knew this woman, her
grandmother, whose sheer determination
to succeed against overwhelming odds
borders on the fabulous. She stands out
as an archetypal figure, a woman of
uncommon courage that other
Romualdezes, men and women, could
have emulated. When the Untold Story
of Imelda Marcos was written and it
became known that her ancestor was a
Spanish friar, Imelda made fun of the
discovery of a well-kept family secret.
She said that seeing his picture in one of
her cousins’ houses, she thought it was
the picture of a saint and that she often
made the sign of the cross when she
passed by as a child.
 Fr. Francisco Lopez of Granada, Spain,
Imelda’s early forebear. She laughed and
said she thought he was a saint and
genuflected each time she passed by his
picture.
Doña Trinidad Lopez-Romualdez was the
grand matriarch of the clan.
 The three Romualdez brothers — Norberto,
Vicente Orestes and Miguel shortly after their
arrival in Manila as students at the Ateneo
de Municipal.
CHAPTER III

How Imelda
Became A Poor
Relation
HAVING SUCCEEDED IN FINDING A
RELATIVELY stable life in Leyte,
Trinidad was now ready to accept it was
time to look to the future of her three
sons. And that future would have to be in
Manila, the capital city of the
Philippines.
 Manila was unquestionably the center
of culture and gracious living; it offered
opportunities for the fullest possible
development of talent. Then and now,
Filipinos suffer from this concentration
of goods and services in the capital city.
Trinidad knew that times had changed.
She may have rightfully thought little of
it at an earlier stage of her marriage but
it was for very special reasons. She
believed her family was ready now to
confront the challenges of city life. She
was sure of one thing — it would not be
by waiting at the fringes of society as a
cabeza de barangay in Pandacan.
The contemporary route at the time to
upward social mobility was through
Manila’s exclusive Catholic schools. It
would be no different for the Romualdez
boys even if the obstacles were daunting
for Trinidad’s family. But she did not
shirk from the challenge.
Trinidad lived long enough to see her
two talented sons, Norberto and Miguel,
raise families of their own and prosper.
Even her son Vicente Orestes, who had
less talent, seemed to be going well on
his own, at least in the beginning,
although he was the weakest of the three
Romualdez sons.
Had she lived through the 1930s, she
would not have been surprised at the
widening gap between the mounting
successes of Norberto and Miguel in
their professions and the steadily
declining fortunes of Vicente Orestes in
his law practice. In 1938 Vicente
Orestes was compelled to give up
Manila and return to Tolosa, something
that was not foreseen even by Trinidad
in the worst of times. It was a step
backward but as Vicente Orestes told
relatives it was also the only way he
could continue supporting his family.
Thus did Imelda become a poor
relation of the rich Romualdezes,
children of Norberto and Miguel, who
stayed on in Manila, moved in the
proper circles in society and came to be
known as the wealthy and powerful
Romualdezes.
The contrast between the fortunes of
the ill-fated Vicente Orestes and his two
elder brothers is crucial in
understanding the character development
of Imelda. Her family’s poverty, brought
about by a combination of unforeseen
circumstances and heredity pushed her to
strive harder for prestige, fame, and
fortune. At first she was not conscious of
this ambition and had she not gone to
Manila she might have married quietly in
Tacloban and lived an ordinary
provincial life. But fate intervened, and
what began as a craving for stability and
a simple life gave way to something
more malevolent. Indeed, it could be
said that she did so with considerable
determination and vengeance.
The Romualdez name as it came to be
known in national circles owes much to
the eldest son, Norberto. He was the
most talented son of Daniel and
Trinidad. While Trinidad battled for a
few pesos in the outside world, father
and son each morning and afternoon
huddled in a quiet corner in their modest
home and read together both Spanish and
Latin poems.
He made up for his inability to be the
family breadwinner during the early part
of his marriage by educating his eldest
son. Although he was not an exceptional
scholar himself, Daniel taught his eldest
son the importance of literacy and
culture. He knew, as most Filipinos at
that time did, that education was their
only hope against Spanish tyranny.
Physically, Norberto was not much to
look at. He was thin and frail; it was
often said that he got the worst features
of both his handsome parents. But looks
hardly mattered. He had other assets. He
was talented and aware that he was.
From an early age he displayed a liking
and talent for fine music. He possessed a
prodigious memory as well as a
remarkably sharp capacity for probing
and learning. Then, finally and most
importantly, he had a generous heart and
a sense of noblesse oblige.
In 1887, with a small sum of savings,
they had put away through years,
Trinidad and Daniel decided it was time
to send their promising son to Manila
hoping that, in due time, their two other
sons could follow him.
That year, Norberto sailed for the city
to enroll in the “Clase Infima,” or the
first year of formal education, at the
Ateneo Municipal de Manila. As a poor
student coming from the province,
Norberto appeared in the exclusive
school for the rich with threadbare
clothes but unbounded confidence at the
school.
Daniel told him to look up his
relatives in Pandacan who would make
arrangements for his lodgings. For
pocket money, his father instructed him
to look up the encargado of a sacatehan
in Pandacan (now part of the
Malacañang Park). This was a tract of
land Daniel had inherited from his
parents.
The Ateneo Municipal, the first
school founded by the Jesuits in Manila,
admitted boys, mostly from the city,
whose families were prosperous.
Because the Romualdez boys were
enrolled in a school for children of
prominent families, it gave them the
cache associated with wealth even if
they did not have it at this time. It was
simply assumed that the family of a
student in Ateneo must have money.
Norberto relates the embarrassing irony
of it all in his memoirs. He writes that he
had only two changes of clothes. When
the buttons of his shirt fell, instead of
buying a new one, he would get ting-
ting (broom sticks) and insert them
through the holes as fasteners.
Despite the physical discomforts and
embarrassments that poverty in Ateneo
brought with it, Norberto excelled in his
studies.
He liked to recall that it was his
poverty that compelled him to
distinction. What he could not have from
wealth, he was determined to have by
brilliant performance in school.
Within the same school year, that is,
1887, soon after enrolling for the “Clase
Infima,” he was promoted three times
and accelerated to the “Clase Superior”.
There were times, he writes, when he
would feel so exhausted after walking
the long distance from Pandacan to
Intramuros where Ateneo was, that only
the confidence in maintaining his
excellent scholastic record kept his
spirits up.
When Miguel arrived in Manila to
join him in 1892, Norberto decided to
transfer to a boarding house owned by
the Solises in Intramuros. It was a few
blocks away from the Ateneo, which
meant less wear on the shoes, an
expensive item the Romualdez brothers
could not afford to buy often. Norberto
describes the boarding house as a “little
expensive for our means.” He was able
to cope with new expenses taking up odd
jobs at the Ateneo, which included
singing in a church and tutoring dull
students.
But when Vicente Orestes arrived in
1894, Norberto notes down in his
memoirs, they had to move to a cheaper
boarding house, one owned by another
Leyteño, a Pastor Navarro, who later
became governor of Leyte. By this time,
with all three of them in Manila,
financial stresses worsened.
The pain of being snubbed by the rich
and the privileged had never been more
acute than at this time of Norberto’s life.
Once during the feast of the Immaculate
Conception at the Ateneo, Norberto was
asked by the Jesuits to sing during the
solemn High Mass. As long as he
remained in the sidelines, his
schoolmates paid no attention to his
poverty. But during the rehearsals for the
Mass, the shabby Romualdez stood at the
center of the choir. Imagine the sight of a
boy in shabby clothes at the center of a
celebration in an aristocratic school.
Everybody, however, tried to be civil
to the poor boy — except one student
who called the attention of the
supervising priest and said: “Father,
why do you make him sing? The ill-clad
boy is a disgrace to the Ateneo!”
Norberto heard of the complaint and felt
ashamed. He told the priest that he
preferred to be relieved of the duty of
singing in the grand celebration.
The priest admired Norberto’s
humility and took pity on the poor
scholar. At the same time, he must have
realized that the Romualdez boy’s
performance was at that stage of the
rehearsals indispensable. He ordered a
new suit for him.
 The incident left a deep mark in
Norberto’s memory, for many years
later, as a distinguished jurist, it is a
story he recounted often enough as a
turning point in his growth to manhood.
It made him intensely aware of what it
was to be deprived of the means to
satisfy bare necessities. But the incident
ennobled, rather than embittered him.
When the Revolution broke out in
1896, Norberto and his brothers, like
hundreds of students from the provinces
who had come to Manila for study, were
forced to return home with the issuance
of the Spanish edict closing all schools
in the city. There is no record that the
Romualdez boys took part in
revolutionary activity or if they had any
opinion on a politically momentous
period in Philippine history. Norberto’s
concerns, as it appears in his memoirs,
were how to survive and get on with
life.
It was about this time that Norberto
and his brothers were invited to stay at
the home of a Eugenio Kilayko of Silay,
Negros Occidental, whose family was
prominent in education. During their
dinner conversations, the topic of
“schools run by Filipinos” was a
favorite one. Norberto grew fascinated
by the idea of opening such a school. But
he had put the idea aside until after the
Revolution and hoped he could take it up
again when the Spanish-American War
was over. As soon as peace was
restored, before the turn of the century,
he established a school in Tanauan, then
the busiest and most prosperous town of
Leyte. Many students from as far as
Samar, Masbate, and Bohol came to
enroll at the school.
By 1900, Norberto saw the need for
transferring the school to Tacloban,
which had become the capital of Leyte,
and later made the Colegio adscrito,
securing an affiliate with the Liceo de
Manila to safeguard the quality of its
standards.
While his school progressed,
Norberto continued to further his
knowledge. At that time, law was the
favorite course of study for young, gifted
Filipinos. So it comes as no surprise that
Norberto should take up law after he
was appointed a Clerk of Court by the
American government.
He remained Director of the Colegio
despite the many tasks involved in his
new post. Later notations also said that it
was also during this time that he was
able to afford the purchase of a house in
Gran Capitan, the main street of
Tacloban, where all the prominent
Spaniards and later American officials
had their houses.
The Colegio de San Jose received an
award for educational excellence at the
St. Louis Exposition in the United States
in 1903.
Oddly enough, despite the success of
the school, Norberto closed it in 1903 to
set up a law office after passing the bar
examinations. Many prominent Leyteños
offered to buy the school, but Norberto
decided that it better be closed forever if
the high quality and standard of
instruction could not be maintained.
When Norberto had the means to
acquire real estate properties he did
something unusual. Loreto narrates that
to show his gratitude to his parents and
their past sacrifices, he acquired tracts
of lands and had them registered in the
name of his parents, Daniel Romualdez
and Trinidad Lopez. In time he was able
to accumulate extensive land holdings
both in Tolosa and Tacloban. This would
be a source of family disputes many
years later. The only shadow that fell on
his growing fame and wealth as an
educator and lawyer was the death of his
wife, Maria Marquez in 1903.
On April 18, 1906, President William
H. Taft appointed Norberto provincial
fiscal of Leyte. It was at this time a
prestigious position. With this
appointment, he decided to marry again.
He married Beatriz Buz, who was,
ironically, again a descendant of a
Spanish friar, Fr. Salustiano Buz. This
friar supervised the religious activities
in the town of Dagami in the 1870s. She
was the first cousin of Norberto’s first
wife. Relieved of personal grief and
married to a generous woman, Norberto
continued his move upward not just as a
civil servant but also as a scholar.
 Indeed, it is in his scholarly works
that he is most remembered. A keen
grammarian and philologist, he
published Notes on Bisayan Rhetoric
and Poetry and Filipino Dialectology
and Bisayan Grammar in 1908. The
next year, 1909, he published in the
fortnightly magazine Noli Me Tangere a
series of articles on the etymology of the
names of all the towns of Leyte.
In 1906 he was elected member of the
Society of International Law of
Washington, a distinct honor making him
a national figure. On December 15,
1910, Norberto brought his family —
wife and two daughters, Milagros and
Carmen — to Manila, upon his
appointment as Assistant City Attorney
of Manila.
On this return to Manila, the city no
longer dazzled him as it had fifteen years
ago. Although he was not very wealthy,
he had enough and had become more
confident. He wanted to do his best for
his family with the future of his children
in mind. Even before he reached Manila
he asked around about real property that
could be bought on an installment plan.
He found and bought a small piece of
land of about 250 square meters. It was
situated at the corner of Arquiza and
Calle Real, now called A. Mabini in
Ermita.
This was a lucky find because Ermita
at the time was known as a posh district
where many wealthy families lived.
Again it was presumed that the
Romualdezes were wealthy because they
owned this lot in Ermita. But that was
not the case. Norberto told his children
that he thought it would not be hard since
he was buying it on an installment plan
but in fact, it bore on his financial
resources.
There were times he said when he
wished had never bought the lot. But no
matter what the initial difficulties were,
Norberto was convinced his decision to
buy a lot in Ermita was a good one. They
would eventually build a house on the
lot. In many years to come, the Ermita
house, as well as the Gran Capitan house
in Tacloban, would be tangible proof
that the Romualdez clan had arrived.
They were socially prominent.
More honors were heaped on
Norberto. He served as judge of the
court of land registration for Pampanga,
Tarlac, Pangasinan, Leyte, Samar, Rizal,
Bulacan, Batangas, Nueva Ecija,
Laguna, Iloilo, Negros Occidental,
Mindoro, and Tayabas from 1911 to
1912. In the early part of 1913, he was
appointed judge of the Court of First
Instance in Capiz and Bacolod, a post he
held for seven years and where he was
esteemed by the wealthy Visayan sugar
barons. And for a while he was tempted
to settle down in Bacolod. He could still
continue his scholarly work. He wrote
the Tagbanwa alphabet in 1914 and
Philippine Orthography in 1918 both of
which were known by scholars abroad.
He could have stayed on in Bacolod
as a successful jurist-scholar, but like
his mother he looked to Manila. The city
might have snubbed him in his youth but
it could also be the place to seek the
national prominence he so desired for
his children. He writes in his notebooks
that despite his contentment and
happiness with the conditions of life in
Bacolod, he was determined that his
children be schooled in Manila.
In May 1919, he returned to the
Ermita house.
Two years later, in 1921, after his
return from Madrid as a delegate to an
international postal convention,
Norberto was appointed associate
justice of the Supreme Court. He had
reached the apex of his career in law.
True to character and the teaching of
Trinidad, the first thing he thought about
now that he was a justice of the Supreme
Court was how to help his brothers,
Miguel and Vicente Orestes. Both had
passed the bar examinations in 1914 and
1917, respectively.
Just as his father, Daniel, had
instructed him when he first came to
Manila as a young man that after he had
settled, he should call for his brothers.
He did as he was told by his father and
helped his younger brothers. Having
found fame, success, and relative
wealth, he called for Miguel and Vicente
Orestes to man the Romualdez Law
Offices in his residence in Ermita. As a
justice he could not continue to run the
law office.
Norberto always felt obliged to help
his brothers. When Trinidad wrote him
to help his two brothers with the bar
examinations, the dutiful son sent them
the money he had saved in separate bank
accounts for his six children. He
rationalized that it was more important
that with those savings Miguel and
Vicente Orestes should improve their
positions in life.
Following the example of his mother,
Norberto had a special tenderness for
the young Vicente Orestes. For a long
time, even after his marriage to Juanita
Acereda in 1908, Vicente Orestes lived
with Norberto and Beatriz. While
Miguel was able to make it on his own
in a relatively short time, Vicente
Orestes could not. Norberto saw to it
that this younger brother was always
provided for.
To accommodate Vicente Orestes’s
family and the law offices, Norberto
bought another house adjacent to his
Ermita house. Norberto moved his
family to this new house, while Vicente
Orestes stayed in the old one, which was
now divided into living quarters and the
Romualdez Law offices.
The families of Norberto and Vicente
Orestes lived in happy harmony, the
children all going to a prestigious
school, the St. Paul’s College on Herran
Street. No Romualdez child envied nor
resented Norberto’s advantage; rather,
every one, so long as he or she bore the
name Romualdez, was proud of the
glamor the name evoked. Unlike their
parents who had been snubbed as
provincianos, the new generation of
Romualdezes was regarded as Manilans,
bearing a prominent name and living in
respectable districts.
They were not provincianos anymore.
They were heirs to the name of a
distinguished jurist and author. Even
when he was already a Justice of the
Supreme Court, Norberto pursued his
work as a scholar. He published
Psychology of the Filipinos (1924),
Legal Forms (1933) Filipino Airs and
Music of Long Ago (1925), Legal
Ethics (1939), and the Progressive
Music Series (1939), a compilation of
Filipino folk songs, still used by school
children all over the Philippines to this
day.
In education, thousands of Filipino
students remember him as Dean of the
College of Law in the National Law
College and as a professor in University
of Sto. Tomas, the University of the
Philippines, the Philippine Law School
and the University of Manila.
As a politician and nationalist, he was
a delegate to the Constitutional
Convention in 1934 and Assemblyman
for the 4th District of Leyte from 1936 to
1941.
 He went about his work with the
thoroughness of a perfectionist. As a
renaissance man, he wished to embrace
all knowledge. Almost at the end of his
career, he wrote the official Visayan
translation of the Constitution.
When he died on November 4, 1941,
President Manuel L. Quezon paid tribute
to him in generous terms: “He was truly
a great man, for he could truthfully say,
‘I am the master of my soul.’ I know of
no man in public service who was more
devoted to duty as he saw it than the late
Assemblyman and former Justice
Romualdez.”
To compare the phenomenally
successful life of Norberto Romualdez
to the story of Vicente Orestes, Imelda’s
father, is like contrasting a blazing sun
beside a pale, thin shadow.
No one knew of Vicente Orestes’s
weaknesses and limitations more than
Norberto did. Sometime before Doña
Trinidad died, Norberto turned over
tracts of land he had purchased in Leyte
to his mother, for her to divide among
members of the family any way she
liked. It was an unusually gallant gesture
of a son’s gratitude.
But only a few of the members of the
Romualdez clan were privileged to
know of this covenant between mother
and son; it was to be one of Norberto’s
fondest and dearest secrets. There seems
to be no more plausible explanation than
that Norberto had wished to make it
appear that the Romualdezes were a
propertied and substantial family from
the time of his parents.
When he made the offer to his mother,
Trinidad said calmly and
philosophically, “My only request is that
the best of the properties should be
given to Vicente Orestes, who is really
the weakest among you.”
This favoritism, however, did him
little good: a succession of misfortunes
would fall upon Vicente Orestes
throughout his life.
Romualdez sisters-in-law, Beatriz Buz,
Norberto Romualdez’s wife and Juanita
Acereda, Vicente Romualdez’s first wife.
Imelda’s father Vicente Orestes Romualdez
Imelda’s mother Remedios Trinidad
CHAPTER IV

How Vicente
Orestes Brought
Home a Second
Wife
DURING THE FIRST YEARS IN MANILA,
Vicente Orestes handled the cases of
Norberto’s clients with some success.
What he earned from the Romualdez
Law firm was enough to enable him to
build his own house. Like Norberto, he
also bought a lot on an installment plan
and later mortgaged the house to pay for
the construction. The house, which still
stands today, was in San Miguel and
built like most of the houses in the
district in those times. The house’s
façade had decorative woodwork and
graceful iron grills. It was a fairly large
house, high ceilinged and distinctive in a
posh residential district only a few
meters from the Malacañang Palace.
At one time the entire neighborhood of
Imelda’s childhood had rows and rows
of houses like this. Today, only a few
still stand, having survived war,
earthquake, fire, flood, and the vagaries
of taste. One of these houses is the house
Vicente Orestes built for his family
during the good years in Manila.
Relatives say that it took many months to
build. It was while this house was being
constructed that Juanita Acereda, his
first wife, became gravely ill.
Her eldest daughter, Lourdes,
remembers those days. She said that
there was no hint that her mother, Juanita
was fatally ill. In fact, she remembers
her as looking well. She was then a
student of medicine and knew what she
talked about when recalling the last days
of her mother, the first wife of Vicente
Orestes.
But on August 3, 1926, just three
months after the family moved into the
newly built house in San Miguel, the
first house the family could call their
own, her mother died. “She quietly
died”. Her death certificate reads she
died from ‘blood poisoning’ that
Lourdes, in hindsight, thinks must have
been leukemia.
She was interred in the San Miguel
Church, just across the Romualdez house
in a crypt in the church where they had
gone to Mass every Sunday. This small
detail of Juanita’s burial across the San
Miguel house would be significant later
on in Imelda’s childhood. Church
assistants in San Miguel remember her
visiting the crypt of a woman she never
knew in later years.
Very little is known about her other
than that Vicente Orestes first met her in
barrio Tanghas, Tolosa, that she had dark
Moorish features, and that she was, like
Norberto’s wife and Doña Trinidad,
also a daughter of a friar. Whatever she
was and no matter how great the sorrow
that came upon the young family of
Vicente Orestes, her death would affect
all those who lived in the house across
the street. Indeed she would haunt all
those who lived in the house on General
Solano, San Miguel, a house that she
should have enjoyed living in if she had
not become fatally ill.
With her death, Juanita left an
emotionally burdened man and five
children, the eldest of which was 17 and
the youngest nine. When their mother
died, the children made up for the loss
by an obsessive attentiveness to their
father’s needs and wishes.
Vicente Orestes’s children were too
young to fully understand the meaning of
death. And because they were too young
to understand, they could not accept that
their love as his children was not
enough: he was lonely without a woman.
At this time there was a marked
change in his moods. He had lost his zest
for life in the city. He may have been
successful during the first years in
Manila but he refused to go further than
that. Vicente Orestes had never been
inclined to fight it out in the city. He
longed for the peace, the tranquil
monotony of the simple life of Tolosa
where he was born.
 The death of his wife and his lack of
success as a lawyer began to take its toll
on him. His personal difficulties were
aggravated by the changes taking place
all around the country when the
Americans came to take over from the
Spaniards as the new colonizers of the
Philippines. Again adjustments had to be
made — to a new language, a new form
of government, a new system of
education, new ideas of progress and
efficiency. The new conquerors insisted
they were in the country to bring more
enlightened attitudes of freedom and
democracy. The challenge of change was
everywhere.
There were some Filipinos too
entrenched in the old ways who could
not catch up with the changes. In the
Romualdez family, Norberto and Miguel
could, but Vicente Orestes could not.
With a promising legal profession,
Imelda’s father should have learned
English and faced up to the future by
seeking new clients. But he did not. The
city’s exciting challenges were not for
him. He had no taste for success and
remained unmoved by the rise in fame
and prestige of his elder brothers.
He was essentially a self-satisfied
loner.
If he continued to stay in the city
despite the grief over the death of his
wife, it was only because his children
were enrolled in the city’s schools. But
he knew that his stay in Manila would
not be for very long.
He stayed on for a little while more
because the city was a shelter. Manila’s
vastness and complexity became a
hiding place for the widower. But soon
his escapades caught up with him. He
wanted to stay free and independent but
before long he had his woman in the
house. Her name was Trining and she
offered to fill the void left by his first
wife. She was a willing, generous
woman who cared nothing about social
convention. She came and went, to and
from the San Miguel house, cleaning it,
cooking for the children, and offering
companionship to Vicente Orestes, but
never really staying nor asking that she
be allowed to stay.
 His children accepted her for being
just that. She took care of them without
usurping the memory of their mother.
Meanwhile, Doña Trinidad, already a
widow, had moved to Manila. She
divided her time living in the houses of
her sons. Every month she stayed for ten
days in Norberto’s house, the next ten in
Miguel’s, and the last ten in Vicente
Orestes’s.
It was on one of those monthly visits
that she noticed something very wrong
about arrangements in Vicente Orestes’s
household. She had imagined that
“Trining” was a housekeeper of some
sort who lived out. But when she
discovered what was going on, she
thundered with all the vehemence of her
Spanish temper. “At kapangalan ko pa
naman! (And she is my namesake!)”
Doña Trinidad exploded.
She did not mince words in
castigating her youngest son, talking to
him as if he were a young boy rather than
the young widower that he had become.
She said he was mismanaging his life
and that if he needed a wife, then there
was a proper way to do it.
“Look for someone reputable,
someone who will give honor to your
name. Not like this. Not these tonterias,
(foolishness)” she flayed at him.
“I have no time to look for a reputable
wife,” Vicente Orestes answered.
“Then I’ll look for one,” was Doña
Trinidad’s final answer. Thus was
Imelda’s mother chosen as the worthy
bride for Vicente Orestes.
In fact, rather than be annoyed by his
mother’s accusations, Vicente Orestes
was relieved. She had made a decision
he did not have the energy to make. He
wanted a wife badly, but he shirked the
effort, feared he may be frustrated before
he could find a woman who would
finally consent to marry him. Despite his
good looks, he was, after all, a widower
with five grown-up children. Only a
woman of exceptional character would
be willing to accept the responsibility.
So he had resigned himself to a life
consorting with women without marrying
them and would have been content for
his life to drift by.
 And where was he to find that
woman? He had not really given it much
thought. As with most of his problems,
he had the attitude that fate would solve
his problems. He relied on his mother a
lot and viewed her overprotectiveness
as both an advantage and a disadvantage.
In this search for a wife for him, he saw
it to his advantage. It was to his
advantage when Norberto offered all his
properties to his mother for her to divide
among the members of the family. She
gave Vicente Orestes the choicest, a 10-
hectare lot on Calle Real in Tacloban
City.
“He is the tenderest, the weakest, my
youngest boy Vicente Orestes,” Doña
Trinidad would say many times. And so
he was. Vicente Orestes was coddled as
a child because he had the prettiest
curls, the chubbiest cheeks.
“Muy guapo! (How handsome he
is!)” his relatives would exclaim. He
had the good looks of a Castillian
aristocrat, tall, with classic features. He
was silent most of the time, and that
added to the aura of mysteriousness
about him.
“Yes,” co-parishioners in San Miguel
Church recalled, “he was an attractive
figure with the aloof bearing of a noble
gentleman.”
It never occurred to people that his
“aloofness” was a defense mechanism, a
form of withdrawal from public attention
and the world of competition in which
his two brothers were well equipped to
succeed and flourish. He shied away
from the demands of professional
competition and ambition of scholarly
Norberto and the politically astute
Miguel. The latter would later become
Mayor of Manila.
As time went by, Vicente Orestes was
slowly “left behind” because of his
family problems and his lack of will to
fight and overcome them.
In a way those who loved him most
could be partly blamed. There was
Norberto, who drove himself to tutor
after school hours and yet pitied his
young brother for having to wake up too
early and walk the distance from
Pandacan to Intramuros.
 There was Doña Trinidad, his mother,
ensuring his future by giving him the best
property. Unwittingly, by loving him
most they deprived him of the challenges
he needed to develop on his own.
Fate was not exactly kind to him
either. Juanita, his first wife, died at the
time when he might have just made it —
a promising legal practice, a wholesome
family life and a new home of their own.
Her death dealt not only the pain of
loss but marked a physical discontinuity
in the other aspects of his life. A
disorganized home with restless,
growing children did not help him gain a
new confidence.
The day she scolded Vicente Orestes
and urged him to get married again, she
knew what lay behind his reluctance. He
made no effort to look for a respectable
wife because he was afraid to risk
disappointment. That was his character.
When Norberto’s car drove to San
Miguel that day to fetch the old lady, she
was unusually silent. Norberto, of
course, sensed something was wrong
and that although in deep thought, she
would ultimately say what was bothering
her.
Sure enough, as soon as they reached
home she told her eldest son how
anxious she was about Vicente Orestes.
“What shall we do with Orestes? He
needs a wife. Let’s help him look for
one,” she said.
Norberto was not surprised. As a
man, he knew that the question of
remarriage for his younger brother was
bound to come up. He did not think his
brother’s behavior was as his mother
described it “odd.” He understood his
brother’s loneliness and took up the
problem as his own.
Norberto wrote later how he mapped
out a plan and how this would be carried
out. During those days convents that ran
orphanages accepted intern students who
paid their board and lodging by helping
in the convent —teaching, cooking,
embroidering, or whatever task the nuns
assigned to them. Most of them had their
motherhouses in Spain and what was
taught in those schools reflected the
educational attitudes and conventions of
the Old World.
Not all the girls were orphans; most
of them had families of their own in the
provinces. In the convent they were
trained and disciplined in the virtues of
being a housewife. Preparation for being
a good housewife was simply to be good
at domestic skills like cooking and
sewing.
Accustomed to living with nuns and
their dedication of perfect obedience,
voluntary poverty and perpetual chastity
— the intern students were highly
regarded and known for their “sweetness
and light.” While most of them
eventually became nuns, a few did get
married. The training at the convent
made them ideal girls for marriage and
desired by reputable families who were
in search of “good wives for their sons.”
So Norberto did not hesitate to look
for a good wife for Vicente Orestes from
the convent orphanages. He organized a
committee of three women, the grand
matriarch herself, Doña Trinidad Lopez-
Romualdez, his wife, Mrs. Beatriz Buz-
Romualdez, and a cousin, Mrs.
Mariquita Lopez-Mota. He had faith in
the good sense of these “committee
members” for the delicate mission of
finding a second wife for Vicente
Orestes.
First in the list of convents was La
Concordia, being the Alma Mater of
Beatriz. They were received cordially,
but the nuns shook their heads, saying,
“Student boarders were no longer being
accepted at the Concordia. But perhaps
next year, we may reopen the system.”
Doña Trinidad, impatient, was
adamant.
“No, of course not, we certainly
cannot wait,” she told her younger
companions. The urgency of the problem
unnerved her as she imagined her
youngest son taking to light escapades to
forget his loneliness.
The search continued.
At Santa Rosa, the second stop, the
answer was also negative. Finally, the
Asilo de San Vicente de Paul was
suggested.
“Yes,” exclaimed Norberto’s wife,
“the orphanage in Looban may be the
answer.”
This time, the answer was yes. The
kind superior, then Sor Modesta
Zubillaga, ushered the three guests into
the convent’s parlor.
Doña Trinidad did the explaining,
citing the delicate nature of their
mission. Arranged marriages then were
nothing extraordinary. It was rare to find
one that ended in failure. And because of
its proven reliability, it was accepted
even in the upper and educated crust of
Filipino society. But there were
unwritten laws of taste that had to be
observed. The sum of those unwritten
laws of taste is known in Spanish-
Filipino tradition as delicadeza. To line
up girls for a probable marriage might
seem a bit vulgar, but not when it is
approached in a discreet manner.
When the mother superior replied, “I
have just the right girls for you,” she
meant rather, “What a happy coincidence
that the girls you are looking for are in
our convent.”
It was Beatriz’s turn to tell the kindly
nun that this was merely a look-see,
nothing definite. They had first to look
up the girls and decide whether there
was in fact one among them who could
be chosen.
“It does not matter,” the nun replied.
She obviously was a master of this sort
of negotiation. The girls need never
know that they were being looked over
as prospects for marriage.
 She rang a tiny bell and a little girl
came in. She then asked her to call one
of the girls in question to give her the
key to the pantry.
When the girl came to hand the key,
Sor Zubillaga then turned to her guests,
gave them the pertinent information
about the “candidate’s” family, general
behavior, and so forth. Another girl was
called to bring in some drinks, another a
mantle, another a pitcher. By the end of
the survey, a total of five girls had made
an appearance. To the superior’s delight,
the guests were pleased, more than
pleased when they announced after
mutual consultations that they had chosen
two from the five.
One was Alice Burcher, who had the
dark Moorish looks of Vicente Orestes’s
first wife, Juanita Acereda. Doña
Trinidad chose her, mindful of her son’s
grief over the loss of his wife. She had
imagined that one who looked like
Juanita might just solve the problem.
The other, Remedios Trinidad, was a
typically Filipina girl, the very gentle
type, tall, with angular features and
golden brown complexion. Though not
exceptionally beautiful, she had an
attractive grace about her.
On their way home, the three ladies
were unanimous that the girl with the
dark mestiza looks had a slight edge. But
still they were not in a position to
decide. Vicente Orestes would
ultimately decide, they agreed, but it
must be with the consensus of the rest of
the members of the clan, most of all the
members of the committee.
Sor Zubillaga promised them that she
would work out a solution without
embarrassing either of the two girls.
The next Sunday, a merienda was
prepared in the Romualdez home in
Arquiza. It was a grand feast with
Filipino fare: ensaimada, tamales, thick
chocolate on the table, but only adults
were allowed in the living room. The
younger Romualdezes (daughters of
Norberto and Miguel and some
houseguests) sat on the stairs peeping
through the bannisters.
Sor Zubillaga sent the two girls
Remedios and Alice to the Romualdez
house. She instructed them to handcarry
a note to Señor Norberto Romualdez. An
important note, she told them. They had
to wait for his reply if there was going to
be one. Although the note was, in fact, a
blank piece of paper, the envelope was
tightly sealed.
The girls happily prepared for the
errand and appeared before the superior
in their casual uniforms.
“No, no, no, that cannot be. Sunday is
a special day and the family may expect
you to be dressed,” Sor Zubillaga said.
Alice donned a pretty party dress but
Remedios decided to wear a saya (the
native Filipina costume) that all the
more emphasized her delicate Filipina
looks.
 At the Romualdez house, after handing
the note, they were asked to take
merienda. It was a family reunion, the
elder Romualdezes told the visitors, and
the children chorused for a program.
From the stairs came the clapping and
cries of “Program! Program! Program!”
Every talented Romualdez had a
chance to show off — a song, a violin
piece, a piano rendition. Norberto,
acting as the toastmaster, turned to the
guests and requested Alice Burcher to
sing. She demurely declined, saying she
did not know how to sing.
The revelation stunned the audience.
Music was an integral part of the
education of Filipino young girls and
more so at the time. Someone who did
not know how to sing could be said to
be, well, not good enough. Every
Romualdez knew how to sing or play an
instrument.
When Norberto turned to Remedios
Trinidad, she hesitated a bit, then, seeing
there was no way out, she casually
gathered her flowing skirt, stood up and
sang “Ako’y Ibong Sawi,” (a metaphor
in Pilipino for the misfortune of a
person) — a performance still
memorable to all those who heard her on
that day. She sang with such deep pathos.
Her audience, the elder Romualdezes
who had come to the convent in search
of a bride for Vicente Orestes, was
enthralled. She won their hearts. No one
then could foretell then that the song
would be prophetic. By means of song,
she had communicated to her audience
the essence of sadness.
When it was all over she bowed and
there followed tremendous clapping
from all the Romualdezes, including the
audience on the stairs of the house to the
upper floor. She did not sing again. Little
did she know that she had won a contest
in which she had not intended to
compete. The members of the committee
exchanged approving glances. The party
continued until it was time for the girls
to go home. A reply from Don Norberto
was sent back to Sor Zubillaga — it was
the same blank piece of paper.
Remedios Trinidad returned to the
Asilo, with the same peace of mind she
had displayed at the two encounters with
the Romualdezes. A contemporary in the
orphanage, Magdalena Dacanay,
remembers that her disposition was one
of joy and serenity. She was industrious
and did her work without much fuss,
working, cleaning, cooking, and
embroidering.
She also writes her remembrance of
Sor Modesta Zubillaga, the cunning nun
who maneuvered the Romualdez-
Trinidad match. Of her she says: “Sor
Modesta Zubillaga was well-known and
appreciated by the wealthy as well as
the poor of Manila. She befriended the
rich so she could solicit their help for
the poor.”
One of her friends, she adds, was
Mrs. Aurora Quezon, wife of then
President Manuel L. Quezon. Other
friends were families bearing such
prominent names as the Zobels, Roxases,
Elizaldes and Mapas.
These rich women frequented the
Asilo to buy embroidered clothes
exquisitely handmade by the interns and
nuns. There was a special demand for
needlework in gold chasubles for
wedding dresses, first communion
dresses, and beautiful canastillas for
babies. The girls did the embroidery
under the supervision of Sor Eliza
Reyes.
Miss Dacanay, especially recalls
Virginia Lino and Remedios Trinidad as
the best “embroiderers” in the group.
 “Remedios did everything well. She
also cooked delicious sausages and
galantina (meat loaf),” she said.
But her singing voice was her most
precious talent. Customers who came to
buy embroidered clothes and sausages
often begged her to sing.
“Meding, as we called her lovingly in
school, was a lady of good height,
simpatica, of jolly character, simple,
hardworking and intelligent in
needlework and music. The Asilo was
very happy with her. She was a young
lady worthy of esteem, and the nuns and
the girls loved her very much. We had
lovely moments with her beautiful
singing,” Miss Dacanay further recalls.
This was the sort of life Remedios
lived when the Romualdezes, in search
of a wife for Vicente Orestes, came upon
her at the Asilo. Although she lived in an
orphanage, she was not, contrary to
rumors, an orphan.
Marciana de Guzman vda. de
Trinidad, (Aling Sianang), Remedios’s
mother, was in the jewelry business. She
had to travel from town to town, city to
city, for her livelihood. It is tempting to
speculate it was from her that Imelda got
what would become an insatiable love
for jewelry.
Remedios had a brother in Manila,
Ricardo, but he was then a soltero
(bachelor) so she could not stay with
him. Whatever the reasons were, it was
more convenient for Remedios to board
with the nuns in the Asilo. It was the
most acceptable arrangement for a girl
living alone in the city, if she could not
live with one’s own family.
She had another sister, Itchay, but she,
too, was a travelling vendor. She sold
mostly foodstuffs from Capiz. Ricardo
later married an Aling Veray, who ran a
meat shop in Quiapo market up to the
day Imelda became First Lady.
This was Imelda’s mother.
Malacañang’s image-makers have
painstakingly tried to hide her origins as
if being poor and modest were secret
sins to be ashamed about. But this
attitude was cultivated in postcolonial
Manila society when honest, hard work
or the poverty that drove people to it
was regarded as shameful and therefore
hidden from sight.
Who was to object that doing work
with one’s hands was not incompatible
with developing her artistic talents? If
that was society’s judgment so be it.
While she lived at Asilo, Remedios took
lessons in the conservatory of music of
the University of the Philippines, then on
nearby Padre Faura. Among her close
friends in Manila were the Eulogio
Ricaforts, who lived on Evangelista
Street in Quiapo, a residential district
for middle and upper middle-class
Manilans.
The Ricaforts had many prominent
friends. Remedios would spend
weekends at the Ricafort house where
she met prominent people, among them
the Tinios and the Gabaldons, some of
whom would later be part of Imelda’s
Blue Ladies, a kind of kitchen cabinet of
women from Manila’s wealthy families.
When she returned that Sunday from
the Romualdez merienda, Remedios
Trinidad did not know that her serene
life at the convent was about to end. She
knew she would not stay in the convent
forever. Only the summer before, she
had nearly married a scion of the rich
Tinios of Nueva Ecija, until his family
got wind of the romance. They
vehemently opposed the engagement and
sent the lovelorn Tinio son to the United
States on the pretext that he had to study
first before thinking of settling down.
 Remedios was hurt because she was
aware what the difficulty really was.
This was a deliberate snub. Her family
was neither wealthy nor prominent. And
in Manila elite society, to be poor was a
terrible stigma then as now.
Nevertheless, love’s gentle ways
soothed the pain of the snub. The rich
lover promised to return. For a few
months he wrote from the States,
reiterated that he would come back and
only then would they pick up the plans
they had made as sweethearts.
The letters came infrequently, and then
no more. But Remedios did not lose
hope.
Meanwhile Vicente Orestes was
visiting her at the Asilo regularly. After
the look-see trip of the Romualdez group
at the Asilo he was now on his own to
do the wooing. He had to win the woman
whom the rest of his clan deemed
honorable enough to be his wife.
It was not an easy task.
Remedios told him frankly that she
was engaged to Tinio. She had not heard
from him for a long time, true, but she
assured herself that the last word they
had with each other would still hold
good. It was infinitely more romantic to
wait, if in vain, for a young, promising
man and idealistic lover, than to marry a
widower of 44 who had five children.
She was unaware that Sor Zubillaga
was watching the progress of the
courtship. The kindly nun was disturbed
that the match they had carefully planned
might end in failure.
She talked to Remedios perhaps much
in the same way that the priest of
Pandacan talked to the matriarch of the
family, Trinidad Lopez de Romualdez
about the nobility of a life of sacrifice.
She must have told her how foolish
Remedios would be to pass this
opportunity to serve God in a most
unselfish fashion — to take care of five
motherless children. She must have
convinced her of how a simple yes to
this man would give her the chance to
give happiness to orphans denied of
maternal love and devotion they needed
badly.
After a year of courtship, Remedios
Trinidad consented to marry Vicente
Orestes. Unlike other brides, she did not
rush to prepare her trousseau, but rather
went about making household articles
for his five children. She embroidered
sets of clothes for all of them, plus
pillowcases and sheets. It was all, she
told her in-laws later on, a labor of love
and delight. She was eager to please the
children whom she imagined to be
waiting and wanting a mother.
The Romualdez clan was just as
excited. The singer of the family, Loreto
Romualdez, was told to prepare her
songs for the nuptials. Remedios’ dress
was to be of fine piña and she was to
carry a large bouquet of roses. Only
close relatives and the other interns of
the Asilo de San Vicente de Paul would
be invited. After the ceremonies it the
San Marcelino Church, scheduled for
6:30 in the morning of May 21, 1928, the
couple would then give a banquet at the
Asilo.
Remedios, friends recall, behaved
like any other bride, fussy, nervous and
excited. Everything must work as
planned.
But on the appointed day, she was
roused from her sleep at 3 o’clock in the
morning. She thought it was some
mistake, but she was told not to ask
questions but to do simply as told. What
had happened? Would there or would
there not be a wedding? On the contrary,
she was told, the wedding was not being
cancelled or postponed. It was being
moved ahead of schedule. She could
understand a difference of 30 minutes in
schedule, but three hours! She sensed
something definitely had gone wrong and
she was not being told what it was
about. Nevertheless, she quickly dressed
in her wedding gown and proceeded to
the church.
At 3 o’clock it was still dark, very
dark.
The windows of the church were shut.
The Romualdez clan was there clustered
about the priest. As soon as she arrived,
the ceremony began, and in a few
minutes, it was over. But no matter what
the haste was about, Remedios accepted
it. What good would it do if she were to
brood over the unseemly haste? The
important thing was that on the day she
marries this man, she vows to live with
him and to love him, in sickness, and in
pain, in suffering and in joy, till death
parted them.
As a woman brought up in the strict
ways of a Catholic convent she was
preoccupied with the vows of marriage.
These were more important than the
reason for the extraordinary events of
that morning. The Spanish Catholic nuns
had taught her that marriage vows were
divinely ordained and therefore absolute
and inflexible.
It was only later that she discovered
the reason for the hushed and hurried
wedding. A few days before the
wedding, Trining, Vicente Orestes’s
housekeeper and mistress heard the
news of Vicente’s coming marriage. She
was furious. She threatened that Vicente
Orestes would get married only “over
her dead body”. The neighbors in San
Miguel heard of the wrath of the scorned
woman and told the Romualdezes about
it. That was how Don Norberto decided
to move the time of the ceremony ahead
of schedule.
Vicente Orestes Romualdez and Remedios
Trinidad — a tragic second marriage
CHAPTER FIVE

A Marriage That
Was Not Written
Exactly In Heaven
BEFORE ENTERING THE HOUSE ON
GENERAL Solano, Remedios knew that
she had to win her stepchildren’s
sympathy if the marriage was to succeed
at all.
She knew that her relationship with
them was almost as important as hers
would be with her husband. Apart from
that touchy problem, she had everything
to look forward to. The Romualdezes
had become prominent in Manila, known
to be a staunch Catholic family, wealthy
and socially eminent. Don Norberto
pioneered the Catholic Action in the
Philippines, while Doña Trinidad
frequently visited and generously
donated to the Asilo where Remedios
lived. If she had abandoned the hope of
ever seeing the Tinio scion again, it was
because she had also looked forward to
the task of giving love and comfort to the
widower and his children.
During the first few months of
marriage, the Trinidad-Romualdez union
was filled with honeymoon bliss.
Vicente Orestes tried his best to please
his young wife. Remedios immediately
went to work as a fastidious
housekeeper. Remedios told Beatriz,
who became her closest confidante next
to Norberto, that when she arrived in the
San Miguel house she wanted to cry at
the sight of the filth and squalor.
“Garbage, wastepaper and cans and
assorted litter were swept under the
beds and the chairs. The floor must have
been unscrubbed for weeks. Dirty plates
were stacked up together with clean
plates in the pantry.”
In a well-meaning way, she taught the
eldest girl, Lourdes, how to keep house
but now that she was there, they would
do it together to make the house as clean
and orderly as possible. Unfortunately,
the girl took it as an affront. That would
begin the hostility toward her
stepmother, Imelda’s mother, in the years
to come until her death. Lourdes told an
aunt that she was hurt because her father
had not consulted them (his children)
about the marriage.
The stepchildren did not accept the
nicely embroidered clothes she had
carefully made for them. They criticized
her cooking. They scoffed at her
housecleaning and did what they could
to make things as untidy as they could.
They ridiculed her each time she made
suggestions on how to improve
household chores. Remedios’
differences with her stepchildren,
particularly Lourdes, grew increasingly
trying.
But the new bride was not
discouraged. She knew too well the
classic antipathy, even contempt children
sometimes had for a stepmother. She
would prove to them that some
stepmothers could be like real mothers,
kind, gentle, and generous. She knew it
would take time to prove that, but she
would try.
Whatever the troubles were between
her stepchildren and her were
compensated for by her new life as a
wife and adjusting to living with her
husband. There was still so much to
know about each other, so much to do
together.
 She never told him about her
difficulties with Lourdes. The less said
about it the better she thought.
Besides, the troubles paled with the
symptoms of pregnancy. A few months
after their marriage, she had dizzy spells
and nausea. No matter how reluctant she
was to marry him as soon as she felt the
first signs of life within her, she glowed
with happiness and love, those who saw
her in those days remember.
In the early part of their marriage, the
Romualdez Law Offices did well.
Remedios, on her own admission, could
not bring herself to complain to her
husband how unpleasant the arguments
were becoming with her stepdaughter.
She hoped that things would change for
the better when the baby came. A baby
always brought happiness and unity to a
home. She believed in the age-old
superstition, as with the rest of the
Romualdez women, Trinidad and
Beatriz, that an expectant mother should
be happy and feel beautiful so she would
bear a happy and beautiful child. That
baby was Imelda.
With Imelda’s birth, Remedios
Trinidad Romualdez hopefully and
anxiously waited for a turn of events in
the troubled home in General Solano.
But she was to be disappointed. The
fights, increasingly bitter, between her
stepchildren and herself, continued.
Lourdes, who survived those bitter
quarrels, was reluctant to recall those
years. “Our quarrels were differences
which naturally occur between
stepmother and stepchildren,” she said.
But relatives’ accounts saw it differently.
They think that Vicente Orestes eldest
daughter of his previous marriage was
never able to recover from the initial
shock of the day her father brought home
a wife.
“Had we known her,” she continued,
“had we been given a chance to get
acquainted, things might have turned out
differently. But what happened was the
opposite. We, my brothers and sisters,
and myself, were stunned to see her just
appear in the house,” she confessed.
Apparently none of Vicente Orestes’s
children by Juanita were present at the
wedding.
Those who know Remedios better say
that to make up for this poor start she
tried hard to be thoughtful toward her
stepchildren. She believed that the girls,
Lourdes, Victoria, and Dulce, lacked a
lively social life.
They had few male friends of their
age. Vicente Orestes was too strict with
them, she thought. On one occasion she
brought them to her hometown in
Bulacan to witness the Barasoain Church
festivities. Because the event brought
many young people together, Remedios
had hoped her stepdaughters would meet
some of them and develop healthy
friendships.
When the third girl, Victoria, suffered
a nervous breakdown, Remedios brought
her to a friend’s house in Cavite and
nursed her until she grew strong enough
to return to the city.
Lourdes has no recollection of those
kindnesses of Remedios. She has always
maintained that her stepmother hardly
made any effort to win their affection.
Her sudden appearance in the house
continued to gnaw at Lourdes as a bad
dream she could not shake off. She was
not aware of the improbable
circumstances under which her father’s
marriage had been arranged and to
whom until the marriage ceremony was
over and done with. On Remedios’ part,
she felt it would have been unseemly to
cultivate and win the children’s affection
before the marriage. It had not been a
long-drawn courtship. She had continued
to resist marriage to the widower even
when it was about to take place.
Two persons are qualified witnesses
to the conditions of life in the
Romualdez household during the early
days of Vicente Orestes’s second
marriage and the early childhood of
Imelda: Marcelo Carpio Cinco, and his
wife, Estrella Cumpas. Both lived
closely with the family for almost ten
years, and their memories of those days
were remarkably vivid.
As domestic help, they have been
witness to the fights between the
members of the family although were not
always privy to what these were about.
They remember vividly hearing loud
voices exchanged in anger, doors banged
violently and muffled crying from
Remedios that sometimes lasted through
the late hours of the night.
Marcelo, called “Siloy” by members
of the household, came to Manila on
June 12, 1929, on board the boat
Churucca. He was to have been
employed in the house of Don Norberto
Romualdez, who had promised to help
him continue his schooling in Manila.
But when he arrived in “Señor
Nonoy’s” (the affectionate name given
by all to Don Norberto) home, he was
told that he would be of greater help to
Señor Vicente Orestes, who needed a
servant boy in his house. And that was
how he came into the San Miguel
household.
“I was 17 years old when I came to
Manila,” relates Siloy. My first
impression of the city was that it was
big, challenging, and full of promise. I
also felt important, knowing I was going
to live with the Romualdezes. They
struck me as a very rich and prominent
family. I did not mind with whom I
worked, whether with Señor Nonoy or
Señor Orestes. The house on General
Solano, San Miguel, was huge and the
Señor and Señora Orestes looked
prosperous. There were other members
of the household beside myself. When I
came, my employer immediately
enrolled me for the second year high
school at the University of Manila.”
It would turn to be the first and only
formal schooling he would get during his
employment with the Romualdezes.
Estrella’s also recalled how she came
into the house on General Solano. “I was
only 10 years old,” Estrella relates. “My
father was the encargado of the
Romualdez properties in Tolosa. I
remember that Señora Remedios had
seen me while I was playing in my
father’s yard. They were talking about
the conditions of the property. At 10, I
didn’t think I would be of much help to
her. I had curls then, she later told me,
and she took a ‘fancy’ to me. She told my
father that she would bring me to Manila
and take care of me as one of her own.”
 In the first months of Siloy and
Estrella life in San Miguel, she did not
know that the household would undergo
such terrible misfortunes. They were not
aware of the depth of the hostility
between Lourdes and Remedios.
According to their testimony, what
stepdaughter and mistress of the house
fought about were mostly trivialities, but
these piled up and headed for serious
differences. Estrella says she was
shocked when one day, Vicente Orestes
brought Lourdes to the movies without
bringing Remedios along.
Imelda was about five months old
when Remedios, back from Leyte, took
Estrella home with her to General
Solano.
 “What I remember distinctly was that
Señora Remedios was a fastidious
housekeeper. She wanted the floors
scrubbed with soap, waxed and brushed
until they these were sparkling shiny.
When the laundrywoman (lavandera)
finished ironing the clothes at the end of
the day, she would go up and fix up each
of the children’s closets. She would put
aside underwear neatly in a row,
housedresses in another row and
sleeping clothes in still another row. All
dresses for going out were put on
hangers in a cabinet. When the children
left for school in the morning, she would
teach the maids how to do the beds. She
would count the towels, pillowcases,
and bedsheets and keep a list to know
how many could still be used. When they
became worn, she would order bolts of
cloth and make new sets since she knew
how to sew,” Estrella continues.
Although she may not have belonged
to a prominent family, Remedios had an
aristocratic sense of order, having lived
a long time in the convent where life
was strictly organized. She had been
taught how to live in a group, how to
help, how to be neat in order to make
life pleasant for others. She spoke fluent
Spanish, elegant, and impeccably
mannered. No matter what anyone said
about her poverty and her being the mere
daughter of a jewel merchant, she had
been trained in the ways of Spanish nuns
for whom the epitome of a woman’s
education was to learn to perform
domestic skills to perfection.
Ironically, it was Remedios who
became a victim of wild and untrue
rumors when Imelda became the First
Lady. It was Vicente Orestes’s first wife,
Juanita Acereda, who was in fact an
indigent, unschooled barrio woman.
More ironically, Remedios’s elegance,
her knowledge of Spanish, and her
acquaintance with prominent families in
Manila were a constant source of
irritation to her stepdaughters.
Vicente Orestes’s children were also
convent-bred, but no longer of the old
school. The emancipation of women had
reached the cloisters and the Holy Ghost
College was among the progressive
schools interested in the development of
a woman’s intellect; Lourdes was taking
up medicine, Victoria, Law, and Dulce,
education.
On the other hand, their upbringing
with their mother was a step removed
from Remedios’ own education. Juanita
Acereda being a farm girl from Barrio
Tanghas knew very little of the
sophistication of caring for a home in the
city. After all, life in the barrio made
relatively simple demands. When she
married Vicente Orestes, they lived for a
long time with Norberto and Beatriz in
the house on Gran Capitan, in Tacloban.
Because things were done for her, she
never really had a chance to take care of
a household.
 When she came to Manila with
Vicente Orestes, again they lived in
Norberto’s house in Ermita. Because
domestic help was cheap and business at
the Romualdez Law Offices was
booming, there were many maids to wait
on her and her children and do the
cooking. Beds were fixed for them,
clothes were sewn for them, and food
was served on the table. Juanita would
have had the chance to manage and learn
to run her own household when the
house on San Miguel was built, but she
had died before she had a chance to live
in it.
Thus Vicente Orestes’s children could
never quite understand why Remedios
fussed so much about the order of the
house. They had not seen their own
mother worried that way. That kind of
worry was only for muchachas (maids).
They accused her as having the mentality
of one. When she called to teach them to
fix their own beds, they would run, hide,
and giggle to make her feel ridiculous.
Such conditions, however, were
tolerable for a while, so long as there
were maids and plenty of money to keep
things going.
There were some happy moments to
make up for these “small” clashes. Siloy
remembers one in particular.
“Since Imelda’s birthday is on July 2,
Señor Vicente Orestes’s July 3, and mine
on July 4, they decided on one grand
celebration for the week,” he recalls.
 Vicente Orestes was especially happy
on such occasions. He was fond of
celebrations. On July 3, which was his
birthday, the whole family attended
Mass together. After a sumptuous lunch,
they had a “family concert.” He played
the piano, Remedios sang, and Victoria
did the violin accompaniment. “Señor
Vicente Orestes also loved picnics. He
liked bringing the entire brood and
Señora Remedios to swim and eat lunch
by the sea,” Siloy continues.
Such a life was an idyll for Vicente
Orestes — money to spend and time to
enjoy leisurely. He had said many times
that if it were only possible, he
preferred “to stay by the sea all his life
and to enjoy its breeze.” That he was in
Manila was not entirely by his wish or
desire. He was brought to Manila by the
tide of success of his elder brothers.
Imelda was barely two years old, a
pretty baby, cared for and loved during
this time of plenty in the Vicente Orestes
Romualdez household.
“She was the only one for whom Tia
Medy made a bassinet and a beautiful
layette,” Lourdes recalls. She did not
say why it was so. Why should a mother
who had given lavish attention on one
child fail to give it to the rest of her
children?
If Imelda had received the most love
and attention from Remedios as her
eldest child, it was also she who saw
and shared much of the sufferings of her
mother.
Remedios’ second child, Benjamin
(nicknamed Kokoy) was born on
September 24, 1930. He, too, witnessed
his mother’s sufferings, but less than
Imelda had had.
Soon after, in Siloy’s estimate,
between 1931 and 1932, financial
conditions in the San Miguel house
began to decline.
Siloy says: “Maids began to leave one
by one until there were only Estrella and
me. Señor Vicente Orestes told me that I
would have to stop schooling and help in
the house. Estrella took care of Imelda
and Kokoy. I had to do the marketing and
cleaning. Señora Remedios did the
cooking and Estrella the washing.
 In 1930, the Bar Questions Leak
scandal broke out in the newspapers
involving Estela Romualdez, the eldest
daughter of Miguel. The trial became a
long-drawn court battle that forced
Justice Norberto Romualdez to resign
from the Supreme Court. In that year and
well into the next year, the matter was
printed daily in the newspapers.
Most of the cases handled by the
Romualdez Law Offices were carry-
overs from clients of Justice Norberto
Romualdez. Some of them had been
solved by this time. If the law office
were to continue it had to get new
clients. But the bar scandal made that
difficult. The public lost confidence in
the law firm.
 For Don Norberto, the matter had
become a question of delicadeza
(customs of taste). Since a niece of his
was involved in the case, delicadeza
compelled him to give up the post of
Supreme Court Justice. His integrity
remained unquestioned; the scandal
hardly affected him socially or
financially. Miguel by then was also
relatively prosperous.
But not Vicente Orestes. He came to
Manila to inherit the law offices of
Norberto in a partnership with Miguel.
To realize this, he depended on the good
will of new clients. If there was anything
he could not afford, it was the scandal
brought about by his niece, Estela. When
he built the house in San Miguel, he had
bought the lot on installment; thereafter
he mortgaged the lot to the Franciscans
for about P6,000; three months later
raised the mortgage to P8,000. His
children’s education grew more
expensive, and his new family created
more financial problems.
By 1932, poverty lay at Vicente
Orestes’s doorstep. The severe stress of
being poor showed the true colors of
characters in the house on General
Solano. Where it had been previously a
case of teaching the children to be neat
even if there were maids, it now became
a matter of necessity that each one
should pitch in the work to keep things
going in the house. Remedios first
thought that the children would be able
to adjust to the stresses of poverty as
well as understand why they would have
to pick up the work of the maids. They
were not. Instead, the children made
matters more wretched for her. They
resented being taught to do house work.
That was for the maids, and doing the
work of maids was degrading.
Remedios also thought it would be
possible to talk to Lourdes but she
turned her face away from her suffering
stepmother. Conversations deteriorated
into heated arguments and arguments
exploded into bitter, insulting remarks.
Remedios then fully realized what she
was headed for if she continued to
impose her authority on the children.
She tried all she could to avoid the
clashes with her stepdaughter. After
Vicente Orestes left for the office, she
would gather Imelda and Kokoy and go
to Norberto’s house in Ermita to spend
the rest of the day there. It was to
Beatriz, her eldest sister-in-law, that she
revealed the difficulties of living with
her stepchildren.
Beatriz, the well-bred wife of
Norberto, was a lovably naive woman.
Her immediate reaction to Remedios’
litany of complaints was one of disbelief
— she could not even understand why
Remedios had to tell her about these
problems when she could bring them to
Vicente Orestes.
To Beatriz, all her problems in
marriage could be solved only with the
knowledge of both parties. In her own
marriage, an intimate and happy one,
every problem, even the slightest
misunderstanding was solved together.
She had faith in Norberto, because she
had intimately shared with him moments
of crisis. Indeed, Norberto treated
Beatriz affectionately as a child to be
sheltered and protected from pain.
“Tell Vicente Orestes, and I’m sure
that he will find a solution to your
problems,” Beatriz counselled.
To Remedios the well-meaning advice
was nothing new. She had thought about
talking the problem over with Vicente
Orestes but she was not sure how he
would react if she told him. She needed
the assurance of an outsider like Beatriz
to be convinced that she had every right
as a wife to confide her problems to
Vicente. Remedios would stay in the
Ermita house until late afternoon,
comforted and assured that there was a
course of action still open to her to solve
the problems of her marriage.
One night she told Vicente Orestes
about her problems with Lourdes and the
rest of the children. But she could not
bring herself to speak frankly about the
problem fearful it would just make
matters worse. Instead she found herself
toning down the gravity of the hostility
between her and her stepdaughters. She
told him but placed no ultimatums. She
chose to weaken her case by saying that,
given more time, the difficulties would
be smoothened out. All in all she
expressed herself so vaguely, he did not
think much of what had been such a
difficult step for her to take.
To those she had confided, she said
she expected Vicente Orestes to see
through the vagueness and would
comprehend there was a problem and
sympathize with her feelings.
But he was not sensitive enough to
look beyond the surface or probe into
what was wrong with the relationship
between his children and his new wife.
He knew something was wrong, but he
would not confront the problem, much
less attempt to solve it.
“Whatever unhappiness Tia Meding
had was her own doing,” Lourdes says.
And she is not entirely wrong about the
harsh judgment.
Remedios was a gentle woman, too
gentle for the battle of survival. She did
not know what it was to be forthright,
cunning, and candid. She was content to
suffer and just let her difficulties run
their course.
The situation reached its crisis point.
One night, Estrella recalls, she heard
raised voices in the master’s bedroom
and the loud thuds of clenched fists
hitting against the walls. She could not
tell what was going on. She heard
Vicente Orestes’s voice first, then
Remedios’ crying.
“The children, Imelda and Kokoy,
were restless, that is why I was still
awake and I heard their noises,” she
said.
The next morning, Remedios told
Estrella to pack up the children’s things.
They went first to the Norberto
Romualdezes in Ermita. That night,
Remedios, her two children, and
Estrella stayed in the house in
Mandaluyong, then a suburban vacation
house owned by Norberto.
The cause of that first estrangement is
now difficult to trace. Beatriz’s children,
who overheard some conversations of
the adults, remember that it was about
“pictures.”
It appears that Remedios had put her
picture on top of the desk of Vicente
Orestes in his study, and a furious
Lourdes insulted her for doing that.
Lourdes claims that her own mother did
not display any picture in the house. So
why should she? Estrella, who cleaned
the house everyday, claims that there
were four pictures of Juanita Acereda,
but they were all upstairs — two
lifesized photographs and two portraits.
“Those pictures frightened Remedios
because they acted like sentinels
guarding Juanita’s memory.” adds
Estrella. Despite Juanita being dead and
interred peacefully in the church across
the street, she seemed more alive than
ever as far as her children were
concerned. No matter what part of the
house Remedios went to, all she needed
to do was to look out of the window and
see the San Miguel Pro-cathedral across
the street that housed Juanita’s remains.
Vicente Orestes’s character was
shaped for a special need for a strong,
dominant woman as his mother had been
to him. By accounts of relatives, that
could have been why that Vicente
Orestes was partial to his daughter, who
was said to be headstrong. To the dismay
of Remedios even after their marriage,
he continued to leave to Lourdes the
final accounting of expenses of the
household. On many occasions, Estrella
also recalls, her master preferred the
company of his daughter and would often
bring her to the movies without taking
along his wife.
It was his open partiality for Lourdes
that finally estranged husband and wife.
“Your children and I cannot live in the
same house. They stay. I have to go.
Things would be better that way,” she
told her husband quietly one evening.
This was an admission of defeat. It
jolted Vicente Orestes. In those days
when staying within a marriage despite
its misery was dictated by social and
religious mores, Remedios was thinking
of a drastic step not easy for her to take
because of her training in a Catholic
convent. It was unheard of. But she knew
she had reached the end of her struggle
in trying to make her marriage to Vicente
Orestes succeed. Remedios had become
desperate.
Lourdes recalls that even
sardonically. “If she went away, that was
her own fault. Nobody sent her away.”
Remedios stayed in Norberto’s
Mandaluyong house for three months.
Her mother, Aling Sianang, visited her at
that time. She too counselled her not to
rush to a permanent separation. As head
of the family, Norberto talked to Vicente
Orestes. Consequently, he and Remedios
were reconciled.
But the reconciliation lasted only for a
short while. Throughout this period of
reconciliation, Remedios painfully
realized that her marriage was not
exactly written in heaven. Because he
clearly showed he was on the side of the
children, she finally realized there
would be no use trying to make it work.
As long as she stayed in Manila, she
would still hear of him from his
relatives. So this time she went to Capiz,
to her sister Itchay, who was married to
Attorney Pedro Escolin. She stayed there
for three whole months with her
children.
“Señora Meding was always crying
and she did not want her children to feel
the pain of her sufferings so she
preferred that they sleep with me. I
could hear her until early in the morning
quietly sobbing,” Estrella recalls.
After her flight to faraway Capiz,
Remedios returned to Manila, brave
enough to settle in an apartment not far
from the General Solano house. The first
apartment they rented was located at
Sanchez Barcaiztequi Street in San
Miguel. It was not long before Vicente
Orestes found them. From time to time
he visited Remedios, and even coaxed
her to share the apartment with a girl
clerk in his office and her father to cut
down the cost of the rent. But after four
or five months, with too many visitors of
the girl coming in and out of the
apartment, Remedios decided to move
her little family into a smaller
accessoria close by, in San Miguel
Privado Street.
“It was not difficult to transfer. The
only real piece of furniture we had was
a huge narra aparador which Señora
Meding bought in Capiz. We had a sala
set and a table with a few chairs bought
from a sidewalk vendor. We had no
bed,” Estrella recalls.
By this time, Estrella had become
very close to Remedios. The young girl
whom she had taken and meant to adopt
and care for had become her constant
companion and confidante. Remedios
asked the young girl not to call her
“Señora” but “Tia Meding.” Together
they thought of ways to become
financially sufficient.
Remedios went to visit the nuns at the
Asilo de San Vincente de Paul, tearfully
recounting the failure of her marriage.
She asked them to help her find ways to
support her children. The nuns assured
her that there would be many customers
who would buy longaniza and
embutidos as well as embroidered
dresses and canastillas. Remedios had
been one of the best cooks at the
orphanage and also had a deft hand for
embroidery. With the help of the nuns,
rich customers were soon placing orders
especially for baby dresses. Before long
Remedios was able to secure a steady
income for her family.
On one occasion, a cousin-in-law,
Cecilia Romualdez, visited her and saw
how beautiful her embroidered baby
dresses were. The orders coming
through the convent were steady, but
Cecilia told Remedios that she should
show her handiwork to department
stores. They placed huge orders. This
cousin-in-law knew the owner of one
such department store and brought
Remedios to this store. In due time, she
was making six centavos on each
embroidered baby dress; moreover, her
best work was soon being displayed in
the store’s show window
“Tia Meding let me handle the money,
the budget for housekeeping, and the
care of the children so she could devote
her entire time to the business,” Estrella
relates.
After nine months, their bank account
showed a substantial amount of savings.
Despite her estrangement from her
husband, Remedios was beginning to
feel a new lease on life; at least she was
no longer helpless.
But one afternoon she was surprised
by the arrival of Vicente Orestes
accompanied by her brother Candong
(Ricardo Trinidad). Vicente Orestes had
not seen her for a long time. It was
strange that he should suddenly visit.
“I don’t know what it was they talked
about. Tia Meding was tearful. Señor
Vicente Orestes looked sorrowful and
Candong made motions of trying to bring
the two together. After a while Candong
left the house and Tia Meding dressed
up, Estrella recounts. “I waited almost
until midnight for her to arrive home.”
The following day Remedios told
Estrella to pack their things again.
“We are returning to General Solano.
All our things will be moved back this
afternoon,” she said casually. She also
asked Estrella to give her an estimate of
their savings in the bank and some
jewelry she had bought recently.
When they reached the house, they
found that the electric lights had been
cut. Siloy was the only servant around.
The house was dirty. The occupants
looked distraught. Among the
disbursements made from their savings
were payments for electric bills, water,
and matriculation fees for Vicente
Orestes’s children.
Vicente Orestes and Remedios
Trinidad were reconciled, but it would
be for the last time. During this
reconciliation, Remedios bore three
children, Alita, on January 3, 1933,
Alfredo on July 16, 1935, and Armando
on March 6, 1936.
Of all her children, Remedios
lavished her affection on Imelda. She
brought her everywhere she went in her
escape from the ordeal of her marriage,
to her friends, to her relatives, to the
nuns. All of them recall the child who
came along. They coddled her while
they listened to her mother’s tales of
woe. The Abellas. The Ricaforts. In the
Asilo de San Vicente de Paul, they
remember Imelda as “Meding’s cute
child,” clapping her hands when her
mother brought the chorizos and
embroidered baby clothes to sell.
“Tia Meding always dolled up Imelda
before they left the house,” Estrella
recalls. “She would heat a piece of iron
metal, test its heat on paper, then roll
Imelda’s tresses until it curled. It was a
tedious process, but she never failed to
do it each time they went out. She made
all of Imelda’s pretty lace dresses. You
see, she was very proud of her pretty
child.”
Of the six children she bore, Imelda
occupied a special place in her heart.
Postcard of Imelda’s First Holy Communion
in a dress her mother made for her.
 A bright and happy moment in Imelda’s
childhood with Lourdes, the stepsister who
did not accept her mother Remedios. She
wrote the inscription, Imelda and Me - 1935.
Imposed image: Back of the Postcard of
Imelda’s First Communion (see previous
page)
Imelda lived the early years of her life in a
garage
CHAPTER VI

Dying In A Garage
ON THEIR RETURN TO THE GENERAL
Solano house, Imelda was enrolled in
Grade One in Holy Ghost, where her
stepsisters also studied. Estrella brought
her and Kokoy to school everyday
because their stepsisters would not take
them along. Holy Ghost College was
only a short walk away from the house,
but it was a great effort for the young
children.
Remedios knew that she could earn
and help Vicente Orestes with their
finances, but her husband found it
unthinkable for the wife of a Romualdez
to vend food and clothes. Remedios
understood her husband’s reluctance,
although she would have been more than
willing to go on earning. She came from
a family of vendors, of people
accustomed to hard realities and hard
work. Her own mother supported them
by vending and never felt ashamed of it.
But as a wife, she had no recourse but to
respect her husband’s attitude about it.
“We, Estrella and myself, knew that
the family was having financial
difficulties,” Siloy relates. “In Estrella’s
case, she was not given any salary.
Señora Meding’s treatment of her more
than made up for that lack. In my case, I
did not mind the hardship because Señor
Vicente Orestes could not even afford to
hire a clerk in the office and I had to do
some of the office work. I said to myself
that the experience in his office would
help me find some employment in the
future.” Siloy relates.
In the schoolyear 1936-1937,
registration records in Holy Ghost
College show that neither Imelda nor
Kokoy enrolled again. That
disappearance is easily accounted for by
two sets of pictures of Imelda taken after
she received First Communion at the
Holy Infant Academy in Tacloban, Leyte.
When Imelda received her First
Communion in the Holy Infant Academy
on December 8 of that year, she was
enrolled in the second grade.
“That year Señor Vicente Orestes
received notices from Tacloban, that his
properties would be foreclosed if he
continued ignoring the mortgage dues,”
Estrella said. “Since he could not leave
his work, he sent Tia Meding and the
children. It turned out that the rents from
the lands collected by the encargado
were not being paid to the mortgage.”
Specifically, the property about to be
foreclosed was the 10-hectare property
on Calle Real, bequeathed by Doña
Trinidad to his youngest son in an
arrangement with her eldest son,
Norberto. There was a cluster of small
houses on the property and each family
paid rents ranging from 50 centavos to
several pesos a month, depending on the
size of the area occupied by the house.
The rent was only a nominal fee the
tenants paid to assure the ownership of
the land by Vicente Orestes Romualdez.
A woman had been in charge of
collecting the small rents but she had
unscrupulously used the money in
purchasing properties of her own.
The notice of foreclosure came
abruptly. When Remedios was asked by
Vicente Orestes to go to Leyte, there had
not been time even to determine where
they should stay.
“We lived in an empty nipa hut among
the houses in the Real property. Tia
Meding wanted to save the property so
much she decided to live close by the
tenants. The house looked like a cage for
pigeons. It was drab, cold and almost
without facilities for decent living,”
Estrella recalls.
Whatever conditions were, Remedios
made the most of their stay in Tacloban.
She saw to it that Imelda and Kokoy
continued going to school.
Sister Albina, O.S.B., her teacher,
believes that Imelda must have been
seven years old at that time. Now in St.
Scholastica’s Summer House in Baguio,
her Benedictine teacher writes:
“I can only remember that she was
quiet and a very well-behaved child.
One day I had expressed my wish that
the children should wear a long white
dress for their First Holy Communion. I
asked Imelda to have hers made first as
a sample. Not very long after, she
brought her outfit to the delight of the
other children. All wished to have their
mothers see to it that the same be made
for them.”
Despite the difficult circumstances
Remedios was determined that a
milestone in her eldest daughter’s life
should be fittingly observed. She would
make for her the best dress she could
afford and one that she would make
herself. After the ceremonies, she
brought Imelda to the studio and had two
pictures with different poses taken, one
kneeling down and the other standing up.
Remedios sent one to Beatriz with the
dedication: “Sinceramente dedicado a
mi Mama Beatriz — Meldy.”
When the Tacloban authorities assured
her that the land would not be
foreclosed, Remedios returned to
Manila. It was early 1937 and there was
considerable excitement in the city for
the preparations of the International
Eucharistic Congress. Remedios was
anxious that Imelda and Kokoy should
see the grand rites of that historical
church celebration.
“We were in Luneta which was the
site of the Congress almost every day,”
recalls Siloy.
Upon the return of Remedios and her
children to the big house in General
Solano, Estrella and Siloy could sense
an uneasy peace hover over Remedios,
her husband, and her stepchildren. There
was, they said, a calm of resignation
about her. By this time, having gone
through so much suffering, Remedios had
ceased to believe that the life she had
was worth living nor the love she
thought her husband had for her was
worth keeping. Rather, she lived, no
longer for herself or for her desires, but
for the people around her.
Foremost in her mind was her
children. She could very well have run
away and say to Estrella as she had done
many times in past crises, “Send the
children to Beatriz.” But she felt that if
she should die, the children had better be
near their father.
 It was then not a surprise that when
trouble erupted once more between
herself and the stepchildren, she did not
bother to leave the house. To avoid
further trouble, she simply asked Vicente
Orestes that she and her children should
be allowed to live in the garage, and be
left in peace separated from her
stepchildren in “the big house.”
The garage was bare with none of the
amenities for living. It was a carport
with roof, posts, and cement flooring.
The walls were added when it served as
living quarters for the maids who left
when Vicente Orestes’s fortunes
dwindled. This was the garage that
Remedios chose to live in. The flooring
was barely a foot from the ground. The
place was terribly humid. But Remedios
moved in with complete indifference
according to Estrella. During those last
months, Estrella noticed she acted
strangely. Her acceptance of her fate
made her happy in a way that irritated
Lourdes. “If she lived in the garage, that
was her own doing,” Remedios’
stepdaughter asserts.
True, it was Remedios’ idea. She must
have tired of her husband’s constant
reminder to the damage that a separation
would inflict on the name Romualdez. At
the same time she wanted peace. There
was no escape for her.
The garage was located in front of the
house and many neighbors saw them
living there. At times, neighbors would
pass food over the wall for Remedios’
children. While Vicente Orestes allowed
his wife and children to live there, he
visited them from time to time before he
went to work and before retiring in the
evening.
“After dinner in the big house with
Lourdes and the rest of her brothers and
sisters, Señor Orestes would go down to
the garage and chat a while with his
wife,” Estrella says.
It was in that garage that the last of
their children, Conchita, was conceived.
In the garage, she proved herself to be a
perfect bride, true to her marriage vows
as she was taught to be by the nuns. It
bordered on masochism. But it seemed
the inevitable end of her training as a
sacrificial lamb, for the supreme
sacrifice that makes self-destruction
appear to be beautiful.
Estrella is puzzled by her behavior in
those last months: “I don’t know what
happened to her. We could have picked
up our sewing again. But I did not ask
because she did not seem to care. She
kept to herself, not wanting to go out and
visit friends.”
Early each morning, she would send
Imelda up to the big house, to ask for her
family’s daily allowance, which was
never much. From 1932 up to this time,
late 1937, Vicente Orestes’s finances
had grown from bad to worse. Soon the
General Solano house was on the brink
of foreclosure by the creditors.
 “During our stay in the garage, Tia
Meding insisted that all the children
sleep with me. We had no beds in the
garage. And the children and I slept
together on long boards propped by
milkboxes while she slept on the long
table,” Estrella recalls. “In the middle of
the night, I could sometimes hear her
muffled sobs and I could understand why
she did not at this stage want the
children to be near her.”
Siloy adds: “We felt so sorry for her. I
had left the house in 1935 and found a
job at the Silver Dollar Cafe which was
owned by an American, Mr. Thomas,
and frequented by Americans. I was a
waiter and I earned as much as P30 on a
very good day because of the dollar tips
— a big amount in those times. I used to
visit Estrella and bring foodstuffs for the
children and Tia Meding. Once I bought
a new pair of shoes for Imelda. Her old
pair was so worn and torn. Like her
grandmother’s vending of jewelry, the
shoes from Siloy would live on in
Imelda’s mind as a memory of her
deprivation.
We coaxed Tia Meding to forget her
troubles, to cheer up and walk around.
“One evening, it rained so hard that
the cafe was under water. I heard
customers say that the entire city of
Manila and the suburbs were flooded. I
quickly left my work and hurried to
General Solano. If Manila was flooded,
I thought, the children must have been
shivering in the garage that would be
almost certainly under water. My guess
was correct. The water in the garage
was knee-deep but no one asleep in the
big house had bothered to find out. So I
knocked and knocked until Señor
Orestes woke up to let Tia Meding and
the children in.”
Some time after that storm, following
Estrella and Siloy’s advice, Remedios
started to break out of her self-imposed
seclusion in the garage. She cut her hair
and went visiting friends. Instead of
talking about her sad marriage, she was
pretending now to be happy to friends
like the Eulogio Ricaforts at their house
on Evangelista Street. The Ricaforts
would later buy the house to avoid its
foreclosure. She even allowed the
children to go up and play with their
stepsisters and brothers although she
herself would not.
Estrella cannot forget one particular
occasion. “Tia Meding went up to the
big house again when her former ardent
suitor, the Tinio scion, came to see
Señor Vicente Orestes and asked if he
could see Meding’s children. Señor
Orestes called Tia Meding, who had
mixed feelings about seeing her former
lover again. But she did go up to see
him.”
It was a cold encounter between the
former sweethearts. This was not the
time to regret or to wish that she should
have waited. She was there to present
her children to a former suitor whom she
had once loved and thought loved her in
return. The meeting was polite and brief.
After presenting her children to the
former suitor, she went down again to
the garage.
Estrella claims that despite the long
separation, both seemed to have retained
some affection for each other, but at the
same time the couple was resigned there
was nothing they could do to alter what
fate had brought about. There had been
no room for any other feeling but
acceptance.
Shortly after her former suitor’s visit,
Remedios gave birth to her sixth child.
“On December 1, 1937, at around 9
o’clock in the evening, Tia Meding felt
her labor pains. She dressed up and
walked towards a corner, hailed a taxi,
and was gone.” This is how Estrella
recounts the incident of Conchita’s birth.
When Vicente Orestes arrived and
found that Remedios had gone without
waiting for him, he was furious. She had
acted to spite him, he said. He called the
maid and asked her to stand by the
window and point what kind of taxi
Remedios rode in. The maid could not
answer. Every taxi looked the same to
her.
“It was just a taxi,” she said.
By then Vicente Orestes had reached
the edge of his patience. He wanted to
know where she was. He sent Lourdes
and Francisco, his youngest son by his
first wife, to look for her in all the
hospitals in Manila. In an interview,
Lourdes said if they did not find her it
must have been because she hid herself
when they came to Philippine General
Hospital.
From General Solano, Remedios told
the cab driver to bring her to Padre
Faura, where her sister Itchay
temporarily resided. From there she
proceeded to the Philippine General
hospital and registered in the free ward.
She stayed there for three days.
It was early dawn, 4 o’clock of
December 4, when she came back,
knocking at the garage.
Remedios did not want to see Vicente
Orestes before nor after Conchita’s
birth. Nothing more was said of the
matter. Remedios’ recuperation from her
last delivery was slow and painful. She
grew thinner and thinner. Her face was
worn with despondency, but her face had
a strange glow as if in anticipation that
her sufferings would soon end.
After Conchita’s birth, she wore the
saya almost every time she went out
visiting friends. At this time a friend
suggested that she would do very well as
a singer over the radio. Remedios shook
her head. It was not possible, she said,
because she had a prominent name that
she would compromise if she accepted.
One afternoon, as she was stepping
out of the garage, Alice Burcher, her
companion during the merienda that
would determine the bride of Vicente
Orestes Romualdez, happened to pass
by. She greeted her, and was shocked to
find that her friend was living in the
garage.
When the torrid month of April set in,
the little garage became stiflingly hot.
Remedios’ children tossed about in their
beds at night. Sometimes they could not
sleep until almost 10 o’clock. “After the
children were put to sleep, Remedios
and Estrella would walk around the
block to get some fresh air.” They would
talk about Estrella’s forthcoming
marriage to Siloy.
In the evening of April 5, 1938,
Remedios was especially restless. She
kept pacing back and forth, telling
Estrella to put the children to bed as
soon as she could. The day before, final
preparations were made for the wedding
of Siloy and Estrella. It was decided it
would take place on May 9. The plans
were made during a picnic.
“When the children were asleep, Tia
Meding and I took our usual walk, but
this time she acted strangely. She began
to talk about her life, her sorrows, her
disappointments, and her regret over her
marriage. I cannot remember any more
how she expressed them. What I
remember vividly to this day is how she
clutched my hand to thank me for my
loyalty and service. She said she was
sorry that I was not able to study and I
had not been receiving pay from her for
some time.”
She also remembers Remedios telling
her, “But what is really important is to
take care of my children, for they will
not be as unfortunate as I am. They will
be important some day, and they will
look back with gratitude for what you
have done for them.”
They crossed the street, returned
home, and turned off the lights. After an
hour, Estrella noticed her fitfully tossing
back and forth, and when Estrella
touched her she was burning with high
fever. Estrella went up to call for Señor
Vicente Orestes, who came down
immediately.
“I am not feeling well,” Remedios
said calmly to him. That night she was
brought to the Singian Clinic, where she
was diagnosed with double pneumonia
and it had progressed to a near fatal
condition. At around 6 o’clock on April
7, 1938, after she was given all the
emergency treatment possible, she
gasped for a final time and died.
Records at the Singian Clinic reveal
that Remedios Romualdez died less than
24 hours after admission. Hospital
attendants who saw her enter the
hospital noted that she was more dead
than alive. Although Dr. Pedro Lantin’s
diagnosis was that she fell victim to
double pneumonia, those who knew
about her sufferings believed what killed
her were beyond science to cure. “She
died of a broken heart,” a niece remarks.
 Her own children, Imelda, Kokoy,
Alita, Alfredo, Armando, and Conchita,
barely four months old, were not at her
deathbed. Only the adults, the whole
clan of Romualdezes, were there to go
through the motions of grief and
consolation.
The elder Romualdezes, when the
hour of death was near, motioned to
Lourdes to lead the rest of her sisters
and brothers to ask pardon from the
dying stepmother. She had winced at
first but from all sides came the coaxing.
“Sige na, (go ahead) ask pardon from
her. She’s almost dying. You may never
have another chance,” they said.
So Lourdes moved finally to perform
an act so futile. As she lifted her hand to
touch her stepmother’s hand, Remedios
turned her head away and collapsed into
coma.
“I dressed up the children for the
funeral which was held on April 9, after
a day of vigil at the San Miguel Church.
Conchita, who was a baby, and I were
left at home. The rest of them witnessed
the burial of their mother,” says Estrella.
When Imelda walked for the burial in
La Loma cemetery with a handful of
relatives to see her mother buried, she
was about to turn nine years old. It was a
sensitive age to experience death for the
first time in her life and of someone so
close to her.
Strangely, after the Presidential
inauguration of 1965, Imelda laid
wreaths on her father’s and Speaker
Daniel Romualdez’s (her uncle’s) tomb.
When asked why she did not lay any on
her mother’s tomb, she was said to have
merely shrugged her shoulders. Many
people have misinterpreted Imelda’s
seeming lack of respect for her mother’s
memory. It seemed deliberate on her part
to ignore this side of her origins. Apart
from the fact that she did have a mother
legitimately married, almost nothing else
is said in newspaper accounts and
official notes about Remedios Trinidad
when she became First Lady of the
Philippines. Indeed, the rumors that first
came out when she became the First
Lady were that her mother had dubious
origins or that she may have wanted to
hide that she was a plain laundry woman
(a lavandera).
People who knew more could not
understand how Imelda should have
been a party to neglect the memory of
her mother. A likely explanation is that
after her mother’s death, she had to live
with her father, with Lourdes, and the
rest of her stepbrothers and stepsisters
when they returned to Tacloban. No
matter how much she must have loved
her mother and the cruel life they lived
in the garage in General Solano, she now
had to live with her stepsisters and
stepbrothers and had to forget Remedios
Trinidad to begin a new life together
with them. For the young Imelda that task
was difficult. But more relevant is to ask
the question how those buried hurts
damaged her psychological make-up, the
effects of which would not to show until
later in life. The solution to the problem
was simple to the grieving ten year old:
to accept and love her father and
stepsisters, she would have to forget the
bitter moments of her life with her
mother and cherish only happy ones.
As for criticisms why Imelda has not
laid a wreath on her mother’s tomb on
All Saints’ Day when Filipinos pay
tribute to their forebears, Remedios
Trinidad’s remains are nowhere to be
found. By the time she became the
powerful First Lady of the Philippines,
her mother had neither tomb nor marker.
This made people wonder.
 This is the story from those who knew
what happened to her remains. As it was
the custom of those days, the body was
first interred in the La Loma parish
church. After five years, the tomb was
supposed to have been reopened and the
bones re-interred in a final resting place
in La Loma cemetery.
After Remedios died, Vicente Orestes
sold the home on General Solano and
brought the entire family to Tacloban,
Leyte.
In 1943, while the Pacific War was
raging, Vicente Orestes wrote Siloy,
who was still in Manila, to transfer his
wife’s bones to a final resting place.
Siloy had meant to write his former
employer that every month since
Remedios’ died they had paid a guard to
watch over the tomb. On one such day of
the month when they had intended to pay
the guard, they found him dead. Her
remains, as were those in other niches in
the same section of the cemetery, were
gone. At the height of the War, Japanese
soldiers had emptied niches and made
use of them as foxholes and hiding
places for weapons.
Today, Remedios Trinidad, mother of
most powerful First Lady in the
Philippine history, is a woman nobody
knows. Call it fate, say it is the design of
unseen powers, but circumstances made
any rememberance of her life difficult
for the only ones who really should have
cared for her — Imelda, her pretty eldest
daughter and her brothers and sisters.
Time and again, Estrella wished she
could talk to Imelda about putting up a
marker on the spot where her mother’s
remains had once been.
“It seems a shame that she, who had
been the wife of a prominent man and
mother of prominent children today, who
bears the famous name Romualdez,
should have nothing to be remembered
by,” Estrella said.
Every All Saints’ Day, when Filipinos
remember the dead, the parish records
keeper of San Miguel Church says that
Imelda, together with Lourdes and her
other stepsisters, visit a crypt in the
church. He had thought it was the tomb
of their grandmother. It was not. It was
Juanita Acereda’s, the woman from
Barrio Tanghas, Vicente Orestes’s first
wife, Lourdes’ mother, whom Imelda
never knew.
After Remedios’s death, a remorseful
Lourdes took over the task of being
mother to her six stepbrothers and
stepsisters. She was 26 at that time and
had a career before her, but she accepted
the responsibility of taking care of the
children of the woman she once hated.
The cares of motherhood are difficult
enough even when children are one’s
own flesh and blood, but to take up
motherhood of six children of a woman
one disliked in life, rightly or wrongly,
is also a kind of martyrdom.
As for Vicente Orestes who had
thought about it for a long time, he
finally decided to return to Tacloban.
Manila gave him nothing but heartaches
and disappointments. He would never be
happy in Manila and decided it was time
to give up the dream. After Remedios’
death it was time to do what he had
wanted all along — to live by the sea
and live out his days in tranquil
surroundings.
The young Imelda
CHAPTER VII

The Rose Of
Tacloban
BY NOVEMBER 1938, ALMOST SEVEN
MONTHS after Remedios’ death, the
house on 278 General Solano, San
Miguel was up for sale. The bank gave
the last notice before foreclosure. The
extreme measure of selling the house had
to be taken or else whatever money had
gone to the property would be lost.
Ironically, the buyers were the
Eulogio Ricaforts, the closest friends of
Remedios Trinidad, to whom she had
run from time to time to confide about
the misery of her marriage.
The owners and sellers were named
as the following: Vicente Romualdez,
Sr., widower, 5/10; Vicente Romualdez,
Jr., married to Jovita P. Romualdez,
1/10; Lourdes A. Romualdez, single
1/10; Dulce A. Romualdez, single 1/10;
Victoria A. Romualdez, single 1/10; and
Francisco A. Romualdez, single, 1/10.
Imelda’s part of the family were too
young to be part of the transaction. They
sold the property for P12, 000. The
contract of sale was consummated on
November 25, 1938, at 9:45 in the
morning, before Narciso Peña with the
buyers assuming the remaining unpaid
amount of the original mortgage of P8,
000.
The present owners of the property,
the Antonio Ricaforts, heirs of the
original buyers, have expressed their
desire to sell both house and lot to
Imelda at the appraised value of P250,
000. Surely, they said, for the memories
alone, it should be a good buy for
Imelda.
The furniture, except a long narra
table, was put up for sale as well. The
brand-new Berlina limousine, when
Imelda was born, was also foreclosed
by Estrella del Norte. Vicente Orestes
stopped paying the installments when the
family became hard up. “Estrella del
Norte had to pull the car out because it
no longer had tires and its end parts
were missing from the engine. For a long
time it had been in disrepair,” Estrella
recalls.
Preparations were made for the trip to
Tacloban. It was arranged that Armando,
who had become attached to Estrella,
would stay behind for a time. Estrella,
by then married to Siloy, would live in
the apartment in San Miguel Privado
where she and Remedios had prospered
selling canastillas (baby layette).
Vicente Orestes tidied up his papers
at the Romualdez Law Offices and left
them to the care of his junior partner,
Miguel’s son, Daniel (or Danieling, as
he was more popularly called), who
later became Speaker of the House of
Representatives.
“The city is not for me,” he confessed
to Norberto as he gathered his children
of two marriages. He uttered for the first
time what had gnawed at him during the
years when he tried to adjust to city life.
Norberto, Miguel, and their children
were by then safely entrenched in
Manila society, but not Vicente
Orestes’s. He found neither wealth nor
prestige. He had not found fulfillment or
happiness. Instead he found constant
pressure, stiff competition,
disappointment, and failure.
Had he been left alone to do as he
wished, a solitary man without the cares
of family, he would have preferred to
spend the rest of his days in picnics by
the sea and live like some contented
beachcomber. What had been unfortunate
was social convention and the demands
of his family that pushed him to remarry
and have more children, pushed to catch
up with his successful brothers when the
cost of living had gone up beyond his
capacity.
Life in Tacloban would be less
demanding, simpler, more agreeable to
his temperament.
Norberto’s house on 21 Gran Capitan,
Tacloban was vacant and it only seemed
natural for Vicente Orestes to move in
and for Norberto to graciously offer its
use to his youngest brother, which he
did.
 Vicente Orestes intended to live in
semi-retirement and oversee the
Romualdez properties and live on the
harvests of the coconut farms. No matter
how large the properties in Leyte were,
the yield of the land was not enough and
became even less after each typhoon
season. It needed hands-on supervision
but he left its care completely to
unproductive, uncaring tenant farmers.
Back in Leyte, Vicente Orestes’s
retreat to a simpler life did not solve his
problems either. He soon realized that
production of coconut was not enough to
feed his huge family of two marriages.
Those who knew him say he probably
waited for the coconuts to fall, as the
saying goes. Whatever it was he did or
did not do as an overseer or
businessman, the result was that while
families in Tacloban grew steadily
prosperous from various commercial
ventures during the burgeoning times of
the American period, Vicente Orestes’s
luck hardly improved.
In 1938, when they first returned to
Tacloban, he had the consolation of
living in Norberto’s elegant house in
Gran Capitan, the main street where
stood huge Spanish-type mansions which
once belonged to Spanish governors and
American landowners. The big old
structure, which used to house the
examiners from the Liceo de Manila, had
been torn in 1935 and in its place stood
a smaller one, a chalet. This was the
house where Vicente Orestes moved his
family when they arrived from Manila.
Within a period of about 10 years, he
would keep his family moving. Right
after the Pearl Harbor bombing, like
other Taclobeños, he evacuated his
family to the fields of Guinarona. Within
a few months he brought them back to
Tacloban, this time to live in another
house owned by Norberto on Calle Real.
When this house collapsed from a
typhoon, the family moved to an adjacent
vacant nipa on Calle Real. They lived
there during the Japanese Occupation
until about the liberation of Leyte in
1944, when they returned to the Gran
Capitan chalet. Sometime in 1946 they
moved to Calle Real.
 The last time they moved out of the
Gran Capitan house bears special notice.
Shortly before the war broke out in
1941, Norberto died of a heart attack in
Palapag, Samar. Vicente Orestes
realized that the house on Gran Capitan
had to to be returned to his brother’s
widow. He wrote her to say that he was
willing to pay a small sum, as some kind
of token rent, even if only to cover the
taxes accruing the property, just so that
his family could remain living there.
Apparently his request was granted. But
then he never bothered to explain to his
children that the house really and
rightfully belonged to the beneficiaries
of Norberto.
When Norberto, Jr. wrote his mother
in 1946 about his intention to move his
family from Bacolod to Tacloban to
build his future in Leyte (he was to
become governor of the province),
Beatriz Romualdez lost no time in
writing Vicente Orestes of his son’s
plans so that he would have sufficient
time to vacate the house. Vicente Orestes
was stunned.
He had not expected this to happen
and had to face the prospect of
homelessness. He had thought Norberto
Jr.’s plans of moving was just talk and
hoped that the plans would not pull
through. Unfortunately, Norberto Jr. was
serious. But Vicente Orestes did nothing
to move out. When Norberto Jr. arrived
with his family, the small two-bedroom
chalet was suddenly packed with the
noise and discomfort of two large
families. Life had become impossible.
But with no means to do better,
Vicente Orestes had to move back to
Calle Real, to an abandoned ramshackle
hut.
A resident of Tacloban bears witness
to the life of the Vicente Oresteses on
Calle Real. His name is Teodoro Abella,
known to his neighbors as Manong Osoy.
A carpenter by profession, Manong
Osoy has lived on Calle Real for many
years and has outlived wars and wives.
He glows with pride to be able to say
that he saw Imelda grow up on the same
street where he lived.
“During the war, Vicente Orestes and
his family occupied a twostory house of
Norberto on Calle Real. A big typhoon
hit Tacloban and it had brought the
dilapidated two-story house down. It
became completely unlivable. Luckily,
there was a vacated house nearby, the
usual wooden structure with nipa
shingles which most houses on Calle
Real are made of to this day,” Manong
Osoy relates with a long face.
His face returned abruptly to a merry
mood. “But what a sight Imelda made
then! She wore dresses that reached
down to her ankles. Those dresses must
have been her mother’s because they
were four to five sizes too big for her.
She was a happy young girl, always in
the streets, with her hair all rumpled, her
cheeks made ruddy by the sun. She
climbed guava trees and played boy’s
games as would any young girl growing
in the province.
“Even as a child she was energetic. It
was a sight to see her walk to and from
the school. How different she was from
her elder stepsisters. They were snooty
and did not want to talk or mix with their
poorer neighbors. But not Imelda, she
was a friendly kid,” he recalls.
He feels richer and better blessed
with the possession of such memories
than most people with lots of money. He
has seen Imelda again as First Lady. He
has seen her in her magnificent clothes,
her jewelry, her retinue of security
guards and the wealthy and the powerful
who come with her when she visits
Tacloban. He is aware of her
importance. It is inevitable, he says, for
him to draw comparisons between what
she was then and what she is now
everytime he sees her on her visits.
To Manong Osoy, Imelda’s progress
from rags to riches was “a dream — a
beautiful dream.”
Imelda’s teenaged photo while in Leyte

Imelda’s High School Yearbook photo

 But he adds: “She might be offended
if she is told that I had known her when
she was poor.”
Every day for about 10 years, Imelda
passed by his house on her way to
school. School was the Holy Infant
Academy, then run by the Benedictine
Sisters. It was about four blocks away
from Imelda’s house. The old wooden
structure of the school with the typical
Spanish barandillas still stands today.
“The school was big enough for the
students, but the yard was too small, so
for their calisthenics the children had to
go to the town plaza,” Sister Felix,
0.S.B., recalls.
Imelda studied with the Sisters from
1938 to 1948, the year she graduated
from high school. As a student, her
scholastic record shows that she had a
general average of 80% throughout her
primary and high school.
Sister Bernarda, 0.S.B., finds it
difficult to give a detailed memory of
her life as a student. “She was an
inconspicuous student, almost never
standing out in a crowd. She came in and
out of school in a most unobtrusive
manner. We all knew, of course, that she
had a beautiful voice and was invariably
called upon to sing solo numbers. In
spite of her popularity as a singer, she
seemed to be a social outsider among the
hard core of brilliant, active students,”
the sisters relate.
The teachers could sense that
something was troubling the girl, but
they had no way of telling what it was.
And then it came about that Alita,
Imelda’s younger sister, was absent for
almost a week, and Sister Bernarda
decided to pay the family a visit.
“As soon as the door opened, I could
feel instantly a mutual embarrassment. I
could not believe that this was where the
Romualdez girls lived. Imelda did not
ask me to come in, and I understood,”
Sister Bernarda relates. “The house was
a poor man’s quonset hut.”
“Throughout the entire Japanese
Occupation, this was where Vicente
Orestes’s family lived,” Manong Osoy
says. It was a shabby, rickety house with
a “primitive” toilet system and only a
shed for a bathroom. On Calle Real
Street, such a house was typical.
Manong Osoy recalls that one could
count with the fingers of one hand the
houses built of stronger materials.
Because the Romualdez name signified
wealth and power after Norberto and
Miguel had made their mark, the
condition of Vicente Orestes’s family
always came as a shock to people in
Tacloban.
“Vicente Orestes was the president
and I was the vice-president of the
Neighborhood Association during the
war. After we had rationed out the
essential provisions of rice, sugar, and
salt to the different families, Vicente
Orestes would plead for the leftovers,”
Manong Osoy continues his recollection
of those years.
“I have a big family, Osoy,” Imelda’s
father was wont to say when he asked
for the ‘extras.’
Even the children were used to asking
favors. There was a small store a few
meters away from their house. Like most
food stores in Tacloban, there were
stores still prevalent today that sell
cooked viands during the lunch and
dinner hours to families who had no time
to cook.
It was Imelda who was invariably
sent to one such store that belonged to
Aling Itray. Every time Imelda visits
Tacloban as First Lady, Aling Itray runs
to the streets to catch a glimpse of her
and wonder at the regal beauty she had
become, so far removed from the Imelda
she knew many years ago. Aling Itray
never tires telling friends: “She carried
a tarnished lunchbox. Each time she
came and bought food, she always
pleaded, “Please put a little more
because we are such a big family. Even
only the soup.”
“Itray is a generous woman,” Manong
Osoy observes, “always accommodating
to all. Vicente Orestes and many others
who lived in town had accounts with
her.”
The Japanese occupation spared no
one from the difficulties of the war, but
those with cunning and initiative found
ways of bettering themselves. Teodoro
Abella was one of them. He secretly
helped guerrillas and managed to get
bottles of whisky that he then traded for
rice. One just had to scrounge around for
food. But Vicente Orestes found it
demeaning for a Romualdez to scrounge
around as much as his neighbors did.
“He sat leisurely reading throughout
the Japanese Occupation. But because of
his legal calling and name, it was natural
for us to make him our honorary leader,”
Abella comments.
Tacloban was relatively unscarred by
the war. Mass evacuation from the city
occurred only at the time of the Pearl
Harbor bombing in early December
1941. Almost everyone then, fearful of
bombing or invasion of cities, retreated
to the fields. Imelda’s family ran
towards Guinarona, near Dagami, and
stayed there until May of 1942.
When the heavy American tanks and
artillery rumbled along the streets of
Tacloban in 1944, the Taclobeños felt
particularly proud that theirs was the
first city liberated from the Japanese.
“But those tanks and artillery also
ruined the asphalted streets of the town,”
Mang Osoy sourly remarks.
General Douglas MacArthur’s landing
thrust Leyte into the limelight of
international current events. The huge
mansion on Gran Capitan owned by the
Price family, American oldtimers,
displays a marker to indicate that
MacArthur slept there. Liberated,
Tacloban put on a festive atmosphere.
American soldiers spilled into the city,
and where American soldiers were,
there also flowed dollars, and dollars
meant plenty of business.
The Liberation also meant, of course,
going back to school for Imelda and
Alita at the Benedictine sisters’ Holy
Infant Academy. It was a place of many
happy memories for its young students,
but not always for Imelda.
Sister Avelina, Registrar of the
School at the time, narrates of when
Imelda was a high-school student there:
“I distinctly recall that Imelda would
always be among the students coming up
to me to apologize for her and her sister
Alita’s late payments. The Registrar’s
Office was located in a hall through
which students passed to reach the patio
of the schoolyard. At the end of each
semester, Imelda’s name was often in the
list of students tardy in the payment of
school fees.”
The sisters were too involved in the
administration of a school with a student
population of 500 girls to attend
sympathetically to each case. But after
Sister Bernarda’s visit to the Romualdez
house on Real Street, she realized
Imelda’s embarrassment to have been
“found out.”
After this visit, the sisters understood
why Imelda appeared always to be an
outsider to group activities of the school.
That may have been why she did not
participate in extra-curricular activities
they said. It would have cost money that
her family did not have or had too little
to spare. Those who knew her then say
she avoided friendships that would have
forced her to apologize for her poverty.
“I don’t think she ever really had
close friends among the wealthier
students,” both Sister Bernarda and
Sister Avelina echoed.
But however difficult life was for
Imelda as a young girl, there were happy
moments and she lived a normal, if
limited, social life. For in this city by the
sea, the young love to sing and frolic in
happy groups, especially when the soft
light of early evening came in. That sort
of happiness was free, and Imelda had
the most of it.
Mary Chapman, daughter of a
Filipino-American family living in Leyte
long before the war and a schoolmate of
Imelda’s, remembers those happy days.
She is married and lives in San
Francisco, and she looks back to those
days with nostalgia. She wrote Sister
Renata, another Benedictine nun at Holy
Infant during Imelda’s student days.
“I will try my very best to recall!
Gosh, you are complaining about not
being able to remember. You are 67 and
I’m 40 — but I’m having troubles with
my memory.
“During 1945-1947 Imelda was not in
my junior nor senior classes. I presume
she was one year behind thus making her
a sophomore during the 1945-1946
schoolyear.
We all called her “Meldy.” She was
soft-spoken and very feminine. I think
she did come along with the many
American army camps we visited. She
sang and was very popular among the
Tacloban music lovers. I do not
remember names of camps. But I recall
an American chaplain named “Father
Masante” who chaperoned our group.
One event I remember very well was
the anniversary parade on October 20,
1946 of the liberation of the Philippines
— the landing at Leyte of the U.S.
forces. Imelda was “Miss Philippines”
and I was “Miss America”. We rode
together on the float.
 Meldy looked radiant as “Miss
Philippines.” Little did I imagine she
would become the future “ First Lady of
the Philippines.”
One thing that is so clear in my mind
was Meldy’s beauty. Her skin was silky
white and I always envied her because
of that (me with my freckles!) Also she
had a striking quality of the truly
beautiful woman — simplicity. With her
features, she did not need any make-up.
Her face was “serenely lovely”. I don’t
know now if she still avoids make-up,
but I remember that I wished I had
beauty like she had because I really hate
make-up. All this is making me
homesick.”
At 16, Imelda enthralled battle-weary
American GI’s with her singing. The
camps were located along the northern
extremity of Tacloban, a district now
called Quarry. Not long after Liberation,
Vicente Orestes, accompanied by
Imelda, visited the Quonset hut offices of
the American armed forces in Tolosa
which were being torn down. They
requested for surplus materials, which
would have been thrown away to rot, to
refurbish their small hut on Calle Real.
The request was granted and Vicente
Orestes brought these materials all the
way back to Tacloban.
What was once a one-room house was
soon partitioned with plywood. The
roofing was changed to galvanized iron.
The kitchen floor was laid out with
landing mats. A neighbor also narrates
that he once saw there was a pig being
raised in that kitchen and that the toilet
was outside the house. The American
surplus materials might not have made
the remodelled house look very
presentable but they contributed much to
make things more comfortable for
Vicente Orestes’s family.
Despite the want of material
prosperity, Imelda never lost her good
humor. She may not have been an
exceptionally bright student but her
lovely singing voice made up for it.
Amid the burdens of her impoverished
home life during those postwar years in
Tacloban, her beauty and singing talent
were consolations.
 In an autograph book of a friend
named Polly, Imelda reveals in one of its
pages (dated February 8, 1946) that
although she was a typical fun-loving
teenager, her sorrow would slip to the
surface once in a while.
First, she filled the blanks. Her
favorite motto? “To try is to succeed.”
She gave her address as 21 Gran
Capitan Street, Tacloban, Leyte. Of her’
ambition she wrote, “Any desk work or
to be a — — — — ehem!” Presumably
the four-letter word spelled out is to be
a “wife.” Her hobbies were singing,
reading, going to the movies, letter
writing. Her favorites were: actress —
Ingrid Bergman; song — “You Belong to
My Heart”; dance — Rhumba; music
piece —Rhapsody in Blue; subject —
Lovemaking; (?) dish — Fried chicken
and ice cream; flower — Gardenia;
colors — Pink and blue.
On the opposite page she wrote the
dedication:
Dearest Polly,
Keep that smile on your lips, but always
keep that tears (sic) in your heart!
Love, Meldy

The signature has not changed. Her

penmanship, now familiar to millions of
Filipinos, has the same curves and
dashes and would later be identified as
the signatory to millions of dollars in
Swiss and American bank accounts.
Lourdes took up the burden of keeping
the family’s finances in order since
Vicente Orestes was not inclined to do
so. She worked as a government health
officer, which took her from town to
town. During the war years there had
been hardly anything except the money
the family had from the sale of the San
Miguel house. There were times, Imelda
herself recounts to relatives, when her
mouth would water whenever she saw
neighbors who had margarine with their
bread for breakfast.
Many years later, Alfredo, her
younger brother, visiting Estrella and
Siloy in Tacloban where they had later
also returned, related to them that
breakfast in the morning consisted of one
bread (pan de sal) each and black
coffee, which made his stomach churn
violently. What was worse was that, if
he failed to wake up on time, there
would be no pan de sal left on the table.
Imelda recalls that her father used to
save his coins in a bamboo pole so that
when Christmas came there would be a
leg of ham. “If we had a slice of ham,
then it was a feast,” she says.
Despite the poverty life at home for
the Vicente Orestes’s family was not
entirely unhappy. “On the contrary,”
Conchita recalls, “I remember how Papa
loved picnics. Almost every weekend,
we would take a jeep and go to the
family beach in Tolosa. We were always
a big group of girls who inevitably
brought along a train of admirers. Papa
would ask the encargado to broil fish.
We would swim all day and feast on the
fish, palawan (a tuber), and slot (young
coconuts). Imelda’s friends and all of us
would sing our voices hoarse. We loved
to stay and sleep in a small nipa hut by
the beach and return home the following
day.”
Even on weekdays, Conchita says,
Vicente Orestes would regret that he had
to stay in Tacloban. He never tired of
going to Tolosa, back to the place of
peace where his mother had recuperated
while she bore him. He never lost his
fondness for the sea because it meant
peace and contentment to him. He loved
it with the ardor of a poet. Had he been a
poet, he might have written odes exalting
the sea and making it his dominant
symbol.
As long as he lived, the city for him
would always be a place of exile. For
him life should be an idyll. The ruthless
competition and acquisition of wealth
that the city signified seemed to him utter
folly. Vicente Orestes’s lack of ambition
for worldly things seems to be the
answer to Imelda’s often-asked question,
“Why did we have to be so poor if we
owned all that land?”
The liberation after World War II
brought relative prosperity to Tacloban
as it did to the Vicente Orestes
Romualdezes. Lourdes opened a clinic.
Vicente Orestes got the law deanship of
St. Paul’s College, with a salary of P100
a month. Imelda was a working student
and an assistant in the school library.
Alita, was also a working student, and
she worked as a clerk in the Rector’s
office. Victoria taught Spanish.
The deanship of Imelda’s father was
mainly honorary and his teaching post in
the school of law was made under a
special arrangement. (He taught only two
subjects each semester, Legal History
and Legal Bibliography). The medium of
instruction in the entire school was
English, but Vicente Orestes conducted
his classes in Spanish while the students
memorized whole pages of English text,
a situation that caused no small linguistic
confusion among the students. Students
remember how tough the classes were
because they never could quite
communicate with their distinguished-
looking professor.
Imelda helped in cataloguing the
books in the library. Between classes
she would sit by a desk with a pile of
books and index cards. Her friends
remember that she was fond of removing
her shoes once she had begun to work
and male friends would playfully hide
her shoes. “She would be frantic when
the bell rang and her shoes were
nowhere to be found,” they recalled with
laughter at the fun they had with their
prank on Imelda.
Lourdes was a strict administrator of
the family’s finances, but it was well
taken by the rest of her sisters and
brothers. They knew that despite
occasional harshness, her strictness was
for their own good — at least they were
assured of food on the table. Armando
related to Estrella how once, when he
wanted more meat, Lourdes had
reprimanded him: “Only those who work
should have meat.”
In those days of hardship, Imelda and
her exceptional beauty were admired by
the Leyteños. There was hardly any town
fiesta, civic parade or fundraising
benefit in which she was not asked to
participate. In weddings, families of the
prospective bride and groom would
plead with Vicente Orestes to allow his
daughter to sing.
When politicians or dignitaries came
to visit Tacloban, “Meldy” was the girl
chosen to represent the townspeople and
place the lei. She was the much sought-
after “Rose of Tacloban.”
In 1949, when President Elpidio
Quirino came to Tacloban, he was
honored with a banquet and a program at
he Divine Word University. Special
numbers of the programme were songs to
be sung by Imelda. Guests during the
occasion remember the light in the
President’s eye as he watched the
“Rose” perform. At 18, Imelda was at
the height of youthful beauty.
Even without make-up, the slightly
slanted eyes, finely chiselled nose,
blushing cheeks and her lovely figure
did not escape the fancy of the President,
who was of course the most powerful
man of the land.
When Imelda finished her numbers,
President Quirino facetiously asked her,
“Will your father put me in prison if I
took you away with me?”
To which his finance secretary, Pio
Pedrosa, a Leyteño from Palo, replied,
“He may not, but I will!”
When he assumed the Presidency,
Quirino was a widower, and ambitious
women flirted with him. But he
dismissed flirtations notwithstanding his
obvious loneliness. He held the Office
of the Presidency with such a high
regard that he took care not to provide
any basis for people to suspect he could
use it to further any woman’s ambition.
He was truly enchanted by Imelda,
however, and on his return to Manila, he
brought the matter up again with
Secretary Pedrosa. He told him that he
had seriously meant what he said to
Imelda, but that he could not bring
himself, as President of the Philippines,
to pay court to a very young girl.
“People would laugh and the prestige
of the office of the Presidency would
suffer,” he said. So Marcos was not the
first president to have been smitten with
the Rose of Tacloban.
In 1949, Imelda’s popularity in
Tacloban was an asset which her cousin
Danieling saw with the shrewd eye of a
politician. When he came to Leyte on a
campaign, he brought her everywhere
with him, to homes of political leaders
and to barges left by the Americans
which served as platforms on which she
sang, since it was prohibited to use the
town plaza for political campaigns.
“She was shy, but when she went up
on the stage to sing, she captured the
audience instantly,” Francisco Pedrosa,
a contemporary and rival for the
presidency of the Student Council of St.
Paul’s College, recalls.
Imelda had to be pushed to appear in
public, but once she had made up her
mind to do so, she performed with
admirable grace and composure just like
her mother would have.
When Imelda ran for presidency of the
Student Council of St. Paul’s College,
she was about to graduate with a
Bachelor of Science in Education. That
was in the schoolyear 1950-1951. She
was put up as the candidate of the
Department of Education, which had an
enrollment of 800 students. Even during
the nomination, her victory was assured,
but the school authorities insisted that
another candidate be put up to make the
elections more democratic. That was
how the College of Law, with 200
students, put up Francisco Pedrosa.
“I was made the scapegoat, but it was
all in clean fun. We even hired a combo
to play during the counting of ballots,”
Francisco recalls.
Despite the “mock competition” the
College of Law put a good fight with
noisy politicking. On the eve of election,
the candidates were made to give an
outline of their programs on a common
platform.
“You can imagine the disparity
between Imelda and myself,” Francisco
relates.
Imelda was then the most popular
figure in the campus because she played
important roles in the school plays,
crowned beauty queens, met visiting
dignitaries.
The school had riotous fun during the
election. After Imelda was elected, one
of her first “achievements” was to hold
part of the three-day College Day
celebration in Tolosa, a few kilometers
away from Tacloban, a “first” in the
school’s history, since all such
celebrations had previously been held
within the campus.
After the College Day celebration in
Tolosa, the student body returned to the
campus to hold dances for three
successive nights.
“Imelda had, as usual, the longest line
of Taclobeños who wanted to dance
with her,” Francisco narrated. But
surrounding her was her usual squad of
chaperons led by Lourdes and Victoria,
whose presence in these dances
emphasized all the more Imelda’s
Cinderella beauty: both stepsisters
looked homely by comparison.
Despite Imelda’s popularity with the
young and eligible bachelors of
Tacloban, most of them could sense that
she did not take any of the proposals
from her admirers seriously. Though
gratified by flattery and admiration, she
kept a certain distance from those around
her.
While it is true that she had no “best
friend” in the sense of one to whom she
could pour out her secrets in confidence,
she did prefer the companionship of one
of her classmates, Lourdes de la Cruz
(now Ferrares), more than the others.
“We first hit it off as friends when I
met her in the Holy Infant Academy. I
remember distinctly that she was eager
to make friends with me because she
found out that I spoke Tagalog and that I
had really come from Manila,” Lourdes
observes. Very few of the girls in the
school then spoke anything but Waray
and the little English taught in school. To
speak Tagalog and to come from Manila
was a novelty and an attraction.
Lourdes (nicknamed Lulu) was
always invited by the Romualdezes on
weekend trips to Tolosa. “Meldy, as I
recall, had so many suitors, but I don’t
think she ever took anyone seriously. I
do know that she kept advising me about
using my head, that love was not all, that
security was important.”
Imelda impressed her as one who
dreamed of a better life. The question of
marriage would be weighed soberly
against the question of security. Life for
her had been such a struggle, and
certainly the need of butter on bread was
more important than vague romantic
illusions that other young girls around
her could indulge in.
Imelda was different from them
because she knew she had some talent
but could not do anything about it as long
as her family remained poor. Her
father’s lackadaisical, passive spirit and
the parochial atmosphere of the town
restricted her development. She wanted
challenge — of change that would prove
her true worth, but the only challenge she
saw from day to day was the lack of
money, good food, and a decent home.
There were, to be sure, suitors in
Tacloban who could offer her a degree
of security. One of them was Victoriano
Chan, a son of the owner of the Tacloban
Electric and Ice Plant. The Chinese lad
was enamored with Imelda’s beauty and
he brought gifts of food and clothing to
the Romualdez Quonset house. It was
Lourdes, the eldest sister, who often
received the gifts while Imelda would
politely receive him.
If there was no other man in the
world, she might have succumbed to his
offers of material comfort. But
somehow, Victoriano, no matter how
wealthy he was, belonged as much to
this narrow world of Tacloban as the
rest of her admirers.
Then, of course, the Chans were
Chinese. His parents had nothing against
Imelda. On the contrary, the families
were on the best of terms since Vicente
Orestes had helped the Chans get their
naturalization. But still, Chinese
tradition demanded that a Chinese marry
also a Chinese. Not very long after,
Victoriano was sent to Nueva Ecija
where he met a Chinese girl who was
equally wealthy, and returned to
Tacloban, married in the ways of his
ancestors.
“I remember a visitor from Manila, a
member of a land-surveying team, who
paid court to her,” Lulu recalls. “Once
while speaking over the phone he
apparently proposed. But Imelda did not
hear the words correctly and had blurted
out “Yes”. It was only when she heard
him say how happy she had made him
that she realized the contretemps she had
brought about. Not knowing what to do
next, she asked for my help. She did not
want to hurt the man by telling him the
plain truth. So we devised a scheme.”
The scheme, it turned out, was to pick
a quarrel and ostensibly break the
“engagement.” When one day the man
who had promised to visit at 4 o’clock
in the afternoon turned up an hour late,
Imelda refused to see him, saying that he
had committed a breach of promise.
Thus the quarrel arose according to plan.
The “engagement” was “broken”.
Imelda, no doubt, was conscious of
her beauty. Even as a little girl, relatives
narrate, she often bowed and curtsied
before the mirror. Her mother,
Remedios, used to pinch her in the upper
thigh and say, “Naku, napakalandi ang
batang ito! (Oh, my daughter is too
flirtatious!)” She carried that vanity well
into her teens as the belle and the voice
of Tacloban. She would constantly
practice singing before the mirror
studying each facial expression and
gesture.
It disturbed her when visitors from
Manila would tell her how beautiful and
gifted she was and that Manila had many
opportunities to offer a girl of her
qualities and talents. One such visitor
from Manila was Senator Ambrosio
Padilla, who was then an up-and-coming
lawyer. When he first met and heard her
sing, he quickly told her it was a pity she
was wasting her time in Tacloban.
“You should go to Manila,” he
advised her.
The mention of Manila excited her.
Just what was it really like? What could
the city really offer? She knew very well
about the Romualdezes of Manila. They
were her cousins, children of Norberto
and Miguel, who had money and
prestige. She, too, was a Romualdez.
Such thoughts crossed the young
Imelda’s mind for as she said so often to
her many friends it was her ambition to
develop herself and her singing talent.
Such friends, especially marriageable
girls of Imelda’s age, found it hard to
understand why Imelda should be so
ambitious when there was marriage to
think about at her age.
Of the many suitors of Imelda, one
appeared to have caught her fancy —
Justo Zibala. He was a student doctor at
the Bethany Hospital, a few blocks away
from Imelda’s house on Calle Real.
Oddly enough, he was not rich, but he
was handsome and was Meldy’s type,
Lulu said. And what was Imelda’s type?
According to Lulu, he must be tall, have
dark, sunkissed skin, and soulful eyes.
That, Justo Zibala was. He was perfect,
everything Imelda wanted. They would
have made a handsome pair — a tall
dashing doctor and a lovely, innocent-
looking Filipina with the charming ways
of provincial belles.
Justo did not have to bring gifts of
food or clothes. Imelda knew that he was
neither rich nor as yet successful. If
Imelda considered him, it was probably
because there was also a part of her that
ached for stability and status. A
handsome doctor in Tacloban for a
husband could give her that.
He was ideal but for one thing: he
was a Protestant and for a Romualdez to
marry a Protestant was unthinkable. But
the Zibalas were equally against the
match, particularly Justo’s mother for
whom marriage to a Catholic was out of
the question.
After his daily duties as an intern
were over at the hospital, he would find
his way to the little Quonset hut on Calle
Real. To the ire of Imelda’s father, the
lovers would sit at the foot of the stairs
and talk about the future of their romance
and religion. Imelda tried hard to
convert Justo to become a Catholic, but
he would not be persuaded. Instead, he
worked at converting Imelda into
Protestantism. So while Imelda
considered marrying Justo on one hand,
she also continued to think of other ways
in which she might escape drab
Tacloban and how to develop her
musical talent.
Imelda’s cousin Loreto, daughter of
Norberto and Beatriz, came to visit
Tacloban in March 1947. Loreto brought
her husband, Justiniano Ramos, her
children and maids for a prolonged visit
to their hometown.
 The Romualdezes loved to gather as a
clan and the celebration of two birthdays
in one day was certainly good reason for
such a gathering. A banquet was
prepared at the Gran Capitan house. As
usual, during family reunions, a program
was held. Such occasions were
considered as “the chance to shine”
among the members of the clan. After
each member had done his part, Loreto
turned to her uncle Vicente Orestes and
told him that Leyteños had been talking
about Imelda’s wonderful voice as far as
Manila.
“Well, then, let’s hear Meldy sing,”
Loreto said clapping followed by the
rest of the Romualdez clan that evening.
Everyone in the room chorused, “Let’s
hear Meldy sing.” But she was not
around.
“Bilnga hi Meldy (Look for Meldy!)”
Vicente Orestes commanded.
They found her at the foot of the stairs
with the handsome doctor. Vicente
Orestes fumed: “Hombre antipatico!”
(Wretched fellow!) I don’t like that man.
I don’t care if he were a chauffeur. But a
Protestant — no!
“But that’s not such a problem,
convert him” Loreto answered.
“He refuses to be converted. You
know how Protestants are. They’re more
difficult to convert than Catholics,”
Vicente Orestes replied.
“Then send her to Manila to study,”
Loreto declared triumphantly. It had
been tactless but the idea came out
spontaneously when she made the
suggestion. She knew how her uncle
despised the city. The mention of Manila
never failed to sour his spirits. To him,
Manila suggested a violent ogre that
devoured people’s finer instincts.
Although he feared for his daughter,
he was, however, willing to consider the
suggestion. But there was the question of
finances again and it would be
impossible at this time when the family
was having such a hard time. It
presented an insurmountable obstacle.
“Study again! I can’t afford to let her
study again with other children to
support.” he thundered.
Loreto, completely convinced of the
wisdom of her suggestion, put the
pressure on him. “Danieling is a
congressman. He can easily find work
for her, I’m sure I can find her a
scholarship,” she suggested.
With that assurance, Vicente Orestes
was willing to consider the proposal.
Loreto returned to Manila. Vicente
Orestes went back to his teaching.
Imelda watched and waited for her
doctor to change his mind and become a
Catholic.
Not very long after, the staunch
Protestant made his visits to the
Romualdez home less and less frequent.
The romance cooled off. An obedient
son, he married a Protestant teacher.
Imelda’s reaction to all this, relatives
said, was nonchalant and matter-of-fact.
The break-up did not demoralize her
because she was beginning to be
indifferent about her future — if she got
married, fine; if she didn’t, that was
equally fine.
Meanwhile, Imelda had a silent
admirer — a man who could not express
himself by conventional methods. He
would not date, visit, or tell a girl about
his feelings for her. He was a retiring
fellow, several years older than Imelda.
He owned the Dagami Saw Mills.
Among his sisters and brothers, he stuck
out as the wealthiest. He was
Dominador Pacho — and he could not
muster enough courage to approach
Imelda directly! He had to use a go-
between to convey his affections.
Since the prominent Chapmans were
good friends of Pacho, he asked Mary to
help him “talk” to Imelda.
“Doming loved Meldy and so, on her
graduation day, he ordered a beautiful
corsage from Manila. Being a good
friend of the family, Doming asked me to
pin the corsage after she received her
diploma. He was madly in love with
her,” Mary recalls.
But mutual friends often joked they
could not say whom he really liked in
the family because he sent gifts to
Lourdes and Victoria. He tried to please
the whole family, even sending lumber to
Lourdes to renovate her clinic. He
thought it was enough for him to send
gifts to members of Imelda’s family for
her to know it was she whom he desired.
He even proposed to build a house for
them, thinking all along that this, surely,
would capture Imelda’s heart. He
ordered his contractor to ask her what
sort of kitchen she wanted. Imelda was
aghast. She lost no time telling him that
there had never been anything between
them!
Doming’s reaction was reportedly
violent. He had convinced himself all
along that the third-person
communications system had “reached”
Imelda and that the acceptance of his
gifts meant an acceptance of his
courtship. Why, he was a friend of
Lourdes and Victoria. Even Danieling
never failed to call on him to solicit
financial help for his political campaign!
Imelda’s rebuff angered Doming. For
a week Imelda saw him waiting for her
at the gate of the Chinese school where
she had been teaching after graduation.
He did not confront her but merely
watched her as she walked by. Imelda
became apprehensive and told this to her
father, who feared he might do something
unpleasant.
Luckily, Danieling was on one of his
trips to Leyte. Father and daughter
brought up the plan that Loreto suggested
in May for Imelda to work and apply for
a scholarship in “voice culture” in
Manila.
Vicente Orestes might have seen the
benefit to Imelda if she studied in
Manila but he also never lost his distrust
of the city. He asked for more time to
think about it and would talk again to
Danieling when he was convinced this
would be a wise thing to do.
He did not hesitate to say openly to
his wealthy cousin about an important
caveat for allowing her to go to Manila.
It was important, he emphasized, that
Imelda find a job immediately. He
would not want his daughter stranded in
the city without money of her own. Since
he could not afford to support her, he
would like to be assured that she would
have a decent job when she was in
Manila. Danieling gave him that
assurance.
 A clever politician, he thought
Imelda’s talent for singing would be
useful in his political campaign as she
had helped him in Leyte. Moreover he
insisted that Imelda stay in their house.
His wife, the former Paz Gueco, was a
Pampangueña. She could not speak
Waray and she was not interested in
politics. She found it difficult to cope
with Danieling’s Leyte ward leaders.
Imelda was the practical answer to
Danieling’s need for a gracious hostess.
As for the scholarship in “voice
culture”, Loreto had kept her promise,
having already talked to Mrs. Adoracion
Reyes, then a reputable voice teacher at
the Philippine Women’s University,
about Imelda. She told her “she does not
only have a beautiful voice but also a
magnetic stage presence. As a diva, she
would make her mark in Manila’s
musical and theatrical world.”
Loreto also told Adoracion that
Imelda would not be able to afford the
tuition but that she would help her even
with a small amount.
But Adoracion turned down Loreto’s
offer saying they should instead make a
deal. They would swap favors.
Adoracion would send any relative or
friend of hers to take violin lessons from
Loreto, who was an accomplished
violinist.
As with most artists, Adoracion was
excited by the prospect of developing a
new talent. Loreto lost no time to write
Vicente Orestes about the “deal”.
As for Imelda’s fare to Manila,
Danieling offered to pay for it. Imelda
later recalled that the decision for her to
go to Manila was made in such a rush
she had only P5 in her purse. She told
relatives and friends later that she felt
wealthy enough at the thought that she
would be living with Danieling, her
congressman-cousin in Manila. She did
not regret leaving behind the pastoral
loveliness and simplicity of Leyte; the
quiet blue seas of Tolosa and the endless
green of the pastures of Tacloban as the
plane lifted her into the skies.
Like an impressionable schoolgirl,
she was excited and looked forward to
seeing the blazing lights of Manila that
she had known only from those who
came to visit Tacloban.
Escolta during the 1950s. Somewhere in this
exact area is where Imelda had her first job
in Manila.
CHAPTER VIII

Imelda In Manila
WHEN IMELDA ROMUALDEZ
BOARDED THE PAL afternoon flight for
Manila, she was 23, an age when
Filipino girls were more concerned
about getting married soon or be left
behind. But with Imelda, marriage
would not come as easily as it did with
other girls. Her home life had been
miserable and she retained the insecurity
of her family life first in a garage in
General Solano and later in a Quonset
hut in Tacloban.
She could not think of marriage
without thinking how she would be able
to help her father, brothers, and sisters in
the future. Some of her stepsisters and
stepbrothers had gone ahead of her and
were now settled in the city. Francisco,
for instance, was working in the legal
department of the P. E. Domingo music
store. It was her younger sisters and
brothers, the children of the second
marriage, that she worried about. So
long as they suffered, even if she were to
find a better life of her own, she could
not forget them and that she would have
to bring them up to a better life as well.
If it worked out for her and she became
successful in Manila, she would send for
her brothers and sisters.
When Imelda stepped down from the
airplane that took her from Tacloban to
Manila domestic airport in 1952, she
was an outsider, far from the buzz of
what Manila life was all about. Like
thousands of other ambitious young men
and women who came from the
provinces, she had come to Manila eager
for adventure.
At that time, politics in the
Philippines revolved around such
powerful politicians like President
Elpidio Quirino, Mayor Arsenio Lacson,
and Senator Justiniano Montano. The hot
topic of the day was a scandal
implicating Senator Montano in the rash
of political vendettas in Cavite. The
colorful Lacson had vetoed the
ordinance allowing the establishment of
cockpits in Manila.
The news of politicians did not
interest the young Imelda. What
interested her was life in Manila’s high
society. What was it like? The
glamorous names of high society that
were constantly in the newspapers’
society pages were ladies from Manila’s
perfumed circle — Leila Benitez, Emma
Araneta, Vicky Quirino, Millie
Mendoza, and others. As the First Lady,
Vicky Quirino’s friends led the swirl of
balls and parties. The Kahirup, the
exclusive circle of affluent Visayans,
inactive during the war years, resumed
its annual revelries. Teddy Lopez,
Teresita Ganzon, Gloria Jimenez, Maria
Rose Cacho, Teresita Gemperle, Remy
de la Rama often made the society page
columns.
The loveliest debutante of the year
was a Miss Telly Co, of the rich
mestizo-Chinese family. On the cultural
scene, music was at its heyday with
President Quirino gracing operas and
recitals. Diva Conchita Gaston shone as
the leading luminary of Filipino singers.
The president of the Rotary Club then
was Hans Menzi, who years later would
be the military aide of President
Ferdinand Marcos. But at that time, who
could foretell the future?
The Danieling Romualdez of the third
generation rose to become a formidable
politician. As congressman of one of the
most populous districts of the country,
the fourth district that included Tacloban,
his name projected political power.
Labelled by newsmen as an astute
politician, he had been brought up in a
home that believed in austere discipline.
His parents, Miguel and Brigida,
believed that children had to know
hardships to fight well in life.
When Danieling’s father, Don Miguel,
died, he had left a considerable number
of properties both in Manila and Leyte.
In Manila he had purchased a property in
Pandacan that once belonged to an uncle,
and others in Ermita, Quezon City, and
Pasay. But he was shrewd enough not to
place the properties in the name of his
children. On the contrary, he taught them
to work on their own and for their
children.
There is a story told among members
of the clan that Miguel, the second of the
original three Romualdez boys, wanted
so much to be a millionaire. During the
Japanese Occupation he sold a valuable
property in Pandacan for Japanese notes
that amounted to a million. After the war
when the post-Liberation government
declared the war notes worthless, the
poor man suffered a heart attack.
The discipline of his children was
such that his own sons paid rent for the
use of any of his apartments. On one
occasion, when a son was not able to
pay his rent, he promptly put up a “For
Rent” sign.
His severity made its mark on his
sons. At about the time of Imelda’s
arrival in Manila, the Romualdezes in
the limelight were Danieling, who as
Congressman, was politically powerful;
and Eduardo, appointed Chairman of the
Rehabilitation Finance Corporation, was
a wellknown figure in Manila’s financial
circles.
It was then a great advantage to
Imelda that Danieling had asked her to
live in his house rather than with her
other cousin, Loreto, the violinist who
was not affluent. Life with the Danieling
Romualdezes meant being at the center
of Manila’s active social and political
life.
 The house was on 48 Dapitan Street,
Santa Mesa Heights, just beyond the
border between Manila and suburban
Quezon City. It was a huge mansion and
although it was new, its traditional
architecture stood for old wealth. It was
always bristling with political activity.
People from all social classes walked in
and out of the house continuously
throughout the day.
To Imelda, who was in Manila for the
first time since she was ten years old,
living in the Dapitan mansion and being
close to the prominent and wealthy
owners was to be at the center of life in
the city. She was excited and happy to
mingle at last with important people she
had only heard or read about.
 She had heard stories about Manila,
all about the prominent Romualdezes to
whom, despite her poverty, she, after all,
belonged. Now she was finally in the
midst of it all, and there was great
promise in Manila as so many visitors in
Tacloban told her. She knew that from
the first moment she stepped into the
house on Dapitan Street. She told friends
that coming to Manila and living with
Danieling was the first big step she was
waiting for to realize her dream of fame
and fortune.
Danieling had no children of his own,
but he had adopted three orphaned girls.
A relative of his wife acted as
mayordoma (chief caretaker of the
house) and nurse to the children.
 On Imelda’s arrival, Paz, who
belonged to the rich Guecos of
Pampanga, ushered her into the room she
was to occupy. She was to share the
room with this relative who was both
caretaker and nurse, which was the
source of malicious rumors circulated to
this day that Imelda had been a maid in
the house of her relatives. The rumor, of
course, was not true.
Naturally, as poor relatives, the
position Imelda and the caretaker had in
the household was a notch higher than
the servants but at the same time it was
lower than being a member of the family.
Certain privileges like the use of the
family car and accepting visitors into the
house required permission from the
master and mistress of the house. The
house rules were set according to the
wishes of the Danieling Romualdezes.
At this time Imelda did not mind. As
friends and relatives have said, she had
a basically sweet and uncomplaining
nature. She was willing to suffer any
inconvenience to fulfill her dream of a
better future. She kept the hurt of being a
poor relative only to herself and would
reveal this years later when she became
the First Lady.
She would tell her cousin Loreto that
when Paz showed her the room, a most
interesting conversation took place
between them.
“This is your room, Meldy. The
cabinets are a little too narrow. But if
you have more clothes you can use some
of the space in the children’s cabinets,”
Paz said.
Imelda looked around wondering
what clothes she was referring to since
she had brought with her only a small
tampipi (a native suitcase), which
contained her entire wardrobe of
blouses and skirts.
“Then if you have any jewelry or
money, you can give them to me. I will
place them in my drawers for safe-
keeping,” her hostess generously
offered.
Imelda did not know whether she
would burst out laughing or crying.
“Instead, I kept my dignity. I smiled,
waved my hand, and nodded. Alam mo
na, kahit na paano, Romualdez yata
ako. (Despite my poverty, I was still a
Romualdez). Imelda told the story in
humorous banter.”
She twirled the ring on her finger. It
was a worthless piece of ornament she
had gotten as a “free gift” — compliment
of an apa (ice cream cone). Her mother
used to own good pieces of jewelry,
Estrella said, but these were turned over
to Vicente Orestes and neither she nor
Imelda ever knew what became of them.
Imelda could not bring herself to tell
her rich cousin-in-law that she had only
five pesos in her purse. It was bad
enough to be poor, but for a beautiful girl
to come to the city without money — and
a Romualdez at that — was too pitiful
for words.
Once more she thought of her brothers
and sisters. What little money she had
earned as a teacher in the Chinese High
School in Tacloban she had diligently
turned over to the family’s monthly
budget. She even tutored after school
hours. But no matter how much she tried
to earn more, there seemed never to be
enough. Her younger brothers and sisters
were all going to school and the cost of
living, even in Tacloban, was affected
by the phenomenal economic changes
after the war. The thought that her family
would be denied of her little
contribution worried her more than her
sad situation to come to the city without
any money.
 She had dreams. These were wealth
enough. Here at last, in the big city, was
the challenge. The noise of the cars
outside, the beautiful upholstery of the
sofas in the living room, the importance
of the sound of doorbells and telephones
excited her. It was exhilarating — a kind
of liberation from the crowded, musty
Calle Real Quonset hut in Tacloban.
The next day she went with Danieling
to the office. He told her to wait while
he made several phone calls to look for
a job for her. He remembered that there
was a job opening at P. E. Domingo, a
music store on the Escolta, Manila’s
main shopping district. Francisco,
Imelda’s stepbrother, was working in the
legal department of the shop, and
Danieling suggested that it would be
good for Imelda to work in the same
store.
The opening turned out to be suitable
for Imelda. P.E. Domingo was located
almost at the foot of Jones Bridge, one of
the prestigious shops a stone’s throw
away from Plaza Cervantes. It was a
music store that sold not only pianos but
also musical pieces. It needed a
receptionist-sales girl with an interest in
music. Imelda with her beauty was more
than qualified for the job. In addition,
she could play the piano and she could
sing the music pieces that were on sale.
She took the job enthusiastically.
However modest the job was, she
needed it, and it was part of the
adventure of coming to the city.
Moreover, the PE Domingo musical
store was ideally located, being in
downtown Escolta, then the center, the
place to be if she were to experience the
throb of the country’s capital — Manila.
Escolta was a hive of banks, swanky
department stores, and prestigious
business offices. In that narrow street by
the Pasig River walked the city’s movers
and shakers. On the same street were the
classiest stores, among them Estrella del
Norte and Squires Bingham. At the
center of this narrow street was Botica
Boie, a two-story drug store with a
coffee shop on the second floor. It was
the meeting place of people who dubbed
themselves as the Escolta Walking
Corporation, that counted among its
members the top men and women in
commerce and industry. They made
deals and transacted business over cups
of coffee. And where they were, so too,
were newspapermen and politicians. In
the Manila of Imelda’s youthful days,
Escolta was the hub of power.
Parallel to Escolta was Dasmariñas
and the little sidestreets that traversed
these two main streets. There were also
the dingy restaurants for typists, clerks,
salesgirls, and secretaries. Six years
after the war, it could be truly said,
Escolta was the lifeline of Manila.
Escolta was Imelda’s first stage. She
stood inside P. E. Domingo music store
waiting for customers. From the store’s
glass panels, Imelda could be seen on
most days attending to customers looking
for musical pieces. She would sing the
lyrics for interested customers and
generally did her work well because she
sold the pieces that she had sung.
Pedestrians and window- shoppers
were said to crane their necks, not to
look at the pianos for these had always
been there, but at the new attraction —
the lovely girl who stood watch —
playing the piano and sometimes singing
at the same time.
On one such working day, at around 4
o’clock in the afternoon, as Imelda stood
smiling at the passersby, she saw a face
she immediately recognized. It was
Estrella.
 Estrella was not sure where Imelda
had found work except that she heard “it
was on the Escolta.” She scoured the
street peering through windows. The
only clue she had was that “it was near
the Estrella del Norte.”
More than ten years had passed since
they last saw each other. But what they
had shared was too deep for physical
change to blur. Estrella was 34 years
old. She should have looked younger, but
life had not been easy for her either. She
had six children and was expected to
bear more. Siloy lost his job at the
Silver Dollar Cafe. He was taking odd
jobs here and there with little pay. Both
had missed the chance to study while
serving in the Romualdez household in
San Miguel.
It was easier for Imelda to recognize
Estrella than it was for Estrella to
recognize Imelda. From 20 to 34, there
is very little change. Estrella had a
wrinkle or so, and had become darker,
thinner. But Imelda had changed into a
wholly different person at 23. She had
grown into a ravishing beauty, a far cry
from the Imelda of 10 years ago teased
by friend Francisco as charat (flat-
nosed).
Her nose was no longer flat. She was
beautiful, tall, and had a shapely figure.
She inherited the sweet smile, the
modest and humble disposition of her
mother as well as the light complexion
and some of the mestizo (mixed Spanish
features) from her father. It was an
affectionate reunion for Estrella and
Imelda.
Imelda told Estrella to sit on one of
the stools and wait until 5 o’clock when
she would finish her work. They would
go together and have a snack in one of
those small restaurants on the sidestreets
of the Escolta.
While they had their refreshments,
they talked of old times but Estrella
clammed up when the conversation
turned towards the bitter memories of
life with Imelda’s mother. They talked of
better things and better times and yet
both knew that sad and bitter memories
were what bound them inextricably to
each other. Imelda talked about life in
Tacloban after her mother’s death, about
Dominador Pacho’s courtship. What a
relief it was she said that she was now
in Manila. She told Estrella how
frightened she was when Pacho began
waiting for her every afternoon when
classes ended outside the Chinese High
School where she taught. They would
have gone on and on, telling stories and
reminiscing their shared days, had not
the dark set in.
“Imelda exclaimed and said she had
to go because she lived very far and had
to ride a jeepney twice to get to
Danieling’s,” Estrella recalls.
Whereupon, they parted ways as Imelda
headed for Quiapo to take the ride to
Dapitan.
 Estrella watched Imelda walk away
until she disappeared, engulfed by the
emerging crowd on the Escolta of office
workers on their way home. She did not
realize then that she was losing her
forever, and that the figure that slowly
vanished from her sight would never be
so near to her again. If she had known,
she would have seized her shoulders and
told her the stark details of her mother’s
sufferings, that she should be reminded
now that she was an adult. Estrella
would have told her what Imelda’s
mother had said the evening before she
died about the “gratitude of her
children”. But then, when Estrella saw
her on the Escolta, Imelda was neither
rich nor powerful. She was still
struggling and the only difference
between them was who was the poorer.
Still ringing in Estrella’s ear was
what Imelda had said about the
relatively simple life in Tacloban and
Tolosa. She understood because Siloy,
her husband, had also given up the rat
race in Manila. They, too, had decided
to return to Leyte where it was not as
miserable to be poor. At least they
would not starve in the province. In
Leyte’s richly endowed seas were plenty
of fish and they could plant rice in the
fields.
As for Imelda, she had hurried to get a
jeepney plying the Quiapo- Dapitan
route before it grew too dark.
Commuting was probably the hardest
part of her new life in the city,
especially during the rush hours when
jeepneys and buses were hopelessly
overcrowded. Estrella’s tales of
difficulties of life in the city could not
possibly daunt her. Everything would
have gone well at the music store and
Imelda would have stayed on working
there. But her work with them was cut
short. Vicente Orestes, eager to see for
himself exactly how his daughter was
making out in this “wonderful job”. He
decided to come to Manila. When he
dropped by the P. E. Domingo Store, the
usual crowd of customers was there and
Imelda was singing.
Vicente Orestes was flabbergasted.
Instead of waiting for her to finish the
song and talk it over calmly with her, he
went directly to his nephews Danieling
and Eduardo and blurted out his anger:
“Ano ba ka mo, iguinbabaligya ba niyo
an akon anak? (Are you trying to sell
my child?)”
The nephews quickly conferred with
each other to find a solution to the
problem. To calm him down, they
assured the old man that a better and
more “respectable” job would be found
for Imelda, at once, the next day.
Eduardo Romualdez was then
Chairman of the Rehabilitation Finance
Corporation, a position that carried with
it membership in the Monetary Board.
Danieling was Speaker Protempore of
the Lower House of Congress. Surely,
between the two of them, something
could be done to place Vicente Orestes’s
daughter in a government position.
True enough, the very next day, Imelda
reported for work at the Intelligence
Division of the Central Bank. “We knew
that she got the job through political pull.
She was not a civil-service eligible.
Neither did she have any knowledge of
law or accounting. When we learned
what her name was, we knew why she
got the job right away,” Braulio Hipuna,
then Chief Clerk of the Intelligence
Division, recalls. Imelda was directly
under his supervision. “But we did not
resent her. She was not snobbish. On the
contrary, she was very friendly.”
Her duties were largely clerical —
filing cards, indexing and recording. She
was a welcome addition to the rather
drab-looking offices of the Department.
The personnel were mostly lawyers and
accountants.
Sometimes her boss at the Intelligence
Division would send her to bring papers
to the office of the Governor (then
Miguel Cuaderno). She had been so used
to being the center of special attention in
Tacloban that she expected to be
similarly treated in Manila. But the
Governor was too busy at his desk to
notice her beauty. The most eligible
bachelor in the bank then was Benito
Legarda, Jr. But he was a snob and
Imelda was not introduced to him.
Her Central Bank workers confess
they were surprised that a Miss
Romualdez should have taken up a low-
paying job. They too were misled by her
name.
“But she seemed eager to be one of
us, and so we concluded she must have
been a poor relative of the Romualdezes
of Manila,” Hipuna further relates. When
they had become more acquainted, his
suspicions were confirmed. Imelda, he
remembered, asked him about employee
loans and how she could get them.
Imelda did not mind being asked to
sing during coffee breaks. She took it all
in good humor, and was more than
pleased, in fact, to be asked to sing.
Office mates often teased her about
giving her a free merienda (snack) if she
sang. Instead of resenting such offers,
she sang in earnest and eventually got
her merienda.
Manilans who sweated it out in the
most important bank in the city had fun at
what they supposed was the naivete of a
simple lass from Tacloban. They thought
themselves “superior” to the sweet,
unaffected girl.
Some mornings, Imelda would come
in breathless to make it on time to punch
her time card. When she was a few
minutes late, she would try to sneak past
the “terror” of Central Bank, Margarito
Dakila, a sergeant- at-arms who
grumbled at tardy employees.
It was different with Estrella. She
lived for almost 20 years to find out that
destiny had a face of steel and success
was for the headstrong in this city jungle.
That was Imelda. In just a few months in
the city, she had enough confidence and
the will to succeed.
She lost a showcase for her beauty
and natural talent for singing, when she
transferred from the music store to a
clerical job in the Central Bank. Despite
the modesty of her work as a salesgirl in
P. E. Domingo, she was able to express
her artistic talent. She was being paid to
do what she most liked to do — sing.
At the Central Bank, she was just one
of several clerks sweating it out for a
few pesos at the end of each month. And
worse, she worked among highly skilled
and important people who made her feel
insignificant in a world of highly
qualified technicians and professionals.
Happily by then she was attending
voice lessons with known and highly
respected Adoracion Reyes of the
Philippine Women’s University, as her
cousin Loreto promised. She looked
forward to these lessons after a weary
day at the Central Bank.
Imelda becomes Muse of Manila in a
controversial beauty contest
CHAPTER IX

How Imelda
Became Muse of
Manila
RICARDO AND ADORACION REYES,
LORETO’S FRIENDS, lived in a house on
Sta. Teresita Street, Sampaloc. It was
modest, situated in a lower-middle-class
neighborhood in Manila. It is an old
structure with only two bedrooms that
had seen better days. The little green
house needed a new paint job. Its
“garden” was a few pots of flowering
plants on the veranda. It had a red
wooden gate leading directly to the
stairs of the house. Since it was smack in
the middle of a busy street, it was not
possible to keep the house free from
dust, said the lady of the house. But
however modest the Reyeses’ house was
— it was once a haven to the nation’s
First Lady at a time when she was poor
and struggling and needed help. Indeed it
was a second home where Imelda often
slept on weekends.
“I liked her instantly when her cousin,
Loreto, introduced her to me at the
Escolta,” Adoracion, Imelda’s one-time
voice teacher, recalls. Loreto meant to
call Adoracion as soon as Imelda
arrived from Leyte. But she did not have
to. On one of Imelda’s very first days in
Manila, when she and her cousin
strolled along the Escolta, they met the
famous voice teacher.
Adoracion remembers vividly that
first encounter.
“She was so unaffected and so
beautiful, and I thought of her as an
unspoiled Filipina beauty from the
province. She wore her hair parted at the
back, then softly pulled into knots which
were ribboned,” Adoracion reminisces.
Even as they stood on the pavement of
a busy street, they talked enthusiastically
about Imelda’s future voice lessons. She
did not wear make-up, only a thin layer
of powder and a coat of barely
perceptible lipstick. Her naturally pink
complexion would have been ruined by
the lightest tint of rouge, Adoracion
figured. Her eyes tilted slightly and she
had high cheekbones.
“I was enchanted by her because it is
so rare to find someone so beautiful and
still be unaffected, almost unconscious
of her beauty. But more important I took
to her because she had a good voice,”
Adoracion says. The voice teacher had
immediately thought of Imelda as
someone performing on a concert stage,
and destined to become a successful
artist. That first impression was
prophetic, perhaps not in the way the
music teacher had hoped Imelda would
be. Imelda did have an eye for the stage.
To win public acclaim, she was willing
to pay the price in hard work and hours
of long voice exercises in the house in
Sampaloc. When they parted, Adoracion
assured Loreto that she would not charge
Imelda for the voice lessons.
As a voice teacher, Adoracion taught
in several schools, among them the
College of Music and Fine Arts of the
Philippine Women’s University. She also
conducted choral groups and gave voice
lessons at home. In the beginning,
Imelda, as Adoracion’s personal
scholar, took the voice lessons in the
Reyes home.
“Nothing much has changed in this
house. That piano has been there since
the time she used to come here to
practice the solfeggio. The table, the
chairs, even the curtains are as they
were when she used to be a familiar
visitor here,” Adoracion says.
After a few weeks of elementary
voice lessons Adoracion was convinced
of Imelda’s singing talent. She coaxed
her to enroll at the Philippine Women’s
University for higher voice lessons.
Adoracion was aware Imelda did not
have the money to afford the cost of
enrolling in the school. This, Loreto had
already told her. But the voice teacher
was undeterred and promised her she
would find a way. She assured Imelda
that it would be possible to arrange with
the Philippine Women’s University to
consider her as a special student.
Adoracion would continue to give her
voice lessons for free while Imelda paid
a minimal sum, a token fee, to the
university so that her name could be
registered in the College of Music and
Fine Arts.
“That is your only chance to get to
sing on stage,” Adoracion told her.
Although the participation in the
workshops was closed to special
students, Adoracion knew that sooner or
later, there would come a chance for
Imelda to be recruited even for a minor
part in an operetta.
As for Imelda, she took seriously her
voice lessons and remained hopeful she
would make her mark in her new world
as an opera singer.
At the PWU conservatory, very few
remember her as a special student except
those directly in touch with her during
her lessons. Susie Abadilla is one of the
few. She was the piano accompanist
when Adoracion gave Imelda her voice
lessons.
“It’s funny, but when I recall those
days and think of her, she did not strike
me as someone memorable. She was
very pretty but she seemed to be
colorless and unexciting. She was nice
to look at, but that was all,” Susie says.
That is only part of what Imelda was
at the conservatory of music. In her
recollection Susie failed to say that
Imelda hardly lingered to socialize after
her lessons so how could they know if
she was anything remarkable. She came
for her lessons straight from work at the
Central Bank, always almost exactly on
time or just a few minutes late. After her
lessons, it would be dark, and she would
rush out of school to take a bus or
jeepney. On top of this difficult
schedule, sometimes Danieling would
even send her on errands even after a
full day’s work at the Central Bank.
With no leisure time, Imelda had no
chance to be friendly with the girls
around her at the conservatory.
Ironically, after she became First Lady
of the Land, her publicists made a big
thing about her enrollment at the
conservatory.
 Imelda was conscious of the
extraordinary circumstances of her
enrollment in the school. This was
probably one of the reasons why she
was reluctant to make friends. Besides,
she was new in the city and unable to
connect with the worldly-wise chatter of
city girls. She had nothing in common
with them.
Sometimes she would come to school
with Norma Javier, a co-worker at the
Central Bank who also took voice
lessons at the PWU conservatory. But as
Norma confesses, “If we went together it
was almost by coincidence.”
In her early days in Manila, Imelda
was a shy, quiet person. Those who
knew her in the music school say she
seemed too engrossed in her own
thoughts. Curiously she talked very little
about her family back home, almost
nothing about Tacloban.
“The only relatives she wished to
discuss were the Daniel Romualdezes,”
Susie observes. When Imelda came
earlier than her scheduled time for voice
lessons, she would sit in a corner leafing
through a magazine or reading a book
“She seemed always to have something
to read. I don’t know if she did it on
purpose so she would have something to
do, instead of chat around. I really
thought then she was avoiding us.
She struck me as a very lonely and
repressed person. If Susie had known
her in Tacloban, she would have known
a different Imelda, who was frank and
spirited among her hometown friends. If
Imelda never talked about the members
of her family to newly-found friends, it
was precisely because her mind was
pre-occupied with thoughts about them.
One does not talk glibly of things one
feels and thinks deeply about
indiscriminately.
As for her reading, it was not merely
to escape girlish chatter. Imelda had
wanted to learn — not as yet for
intellectual stuff, as she had only popular
magazines and newspapers within her
reach. Her acquaintances at PWU were
probably right about her not being
exceptionally intelligent but they were
wrong in classifying her as another
classic case of beauty without brains.
“The very few conversations she had
with us,” continues Susie, “dealt with
impersonal topics, like ‘the news of the
day.’ Then out of the blue she would
declare that if she were to marry, she
would choose a very intelligent man.”
Like most provincial girls who come
to the city, Imelda was too eager to
please and impress. City girls don’t
usually announce their conversations
with the “news of the day.” Indeed, the
hallmark of an urbanite’s breeding is to
be at ease. And Imelda was not. She was
strained and paradoxically much too
eager. To the “privileged girls” in the
conservatory, Imelda’s attempt at “high-
falutin” conversations revealed all the
more her provincialism.
“We knew she came from the
province. She used to come in sandals
(sapatilyas) that looked more like
slippers. Her dresses were awkward.
Even if she had a glamorous name, we
knew she was not rich,” Susie adds.
No matter how superior the girls at
the conservatory thought they were, “the
girl from Tacloban” had something more
than any of them had — a strong will to
make the most of her talent and a latent
but fiercely competitive spirit. However
lost she must have seemed then to the
city’s sophistication, she was positive
she would achieve fame and fortune one
day.
She could improve herself — there
was her voice and the many things to
learn — to know how to live in Manila,
how to be secure and at ease with
Manilans, know what they wanted and
admired in a person. These were the
stuff Imelda saw and would certainly
have in mind while she watched the
chatting confident Manila girls from a
distance in the corridors of the PWU
Music Hall.
Since Imelda was only a “special
student”, she could not participate in the
PWU programs or musicales. Adoracion
scoured for announcements of auditions
for performances outside the school to
which she could recommend her pupil.
But when the chance finally came, it
was not Adoracion who gave Imelda the
opportunity to perform and show her
singing talent before a Manila audience.
It was a cousin from Holy Ghost College
who was giving a recital. She asked
Imelda to provide the intermission
numbers.
Adoracion remembers how excited
Imelda was. It did not matter if she sang
only in the intermission. It was good
enough to be on stage and be given a
chance to perform for the very first time
in Manila.
“I really admired her but at the same
time I pitied her,” Adoracion
remembers. “I felt sorry for her and see
this strong desire to be a success in such
a young and beautiful girl. I am, after all,
conservative at heart. When I looked at
Imelda, I thought that what she really
needed was to be loved and protected.
But the sort of ambition Imelda had was
frightfully serious — it should only be
for men, tough men.”
Despite such reservations, she was
moved by her pupil’s infectious desire to
be a success. Together they prepared
intensively for the intermission numbers
of the Holy Ghost recital. The songs
were “Calm is the Night,” “Sin Tu
Amor” and “False Prophet.”
The audience at the recital marveled
at the loveliness of the singer who did
the intermission numbers. She sang very
well, indeed. But people remembered
the face more than the voice. She had,
they said, unquestionably, a stage
presence.
This was to be the first and last time
Imelda would sing before an audience in
a concert hall. She was to sing again, but
as the star performer before audiences
as varied as heads of state and poor
people of the barrios.
Still, after the recital, Imelda began to
feel more at home and heartened by her
new life in the city. She was getting used
to its ways and given more time, she
would not merely know how, she would
master its “secrets.”
Fate appeared to be on her side. Not
long after, she told Loreto that while she
was walking along Aduana Street in
Intramuros, one afternoon of January
1953, a man approached her.
 She said he introduced himself to her
as Angel Anden, editor of This Week, the
magazine supplement of the Manila
Chronicle and an avowed lover of
beauty. Anden, always on the watch for
fresh subjects, asked Miss Romualdez if
she would like to be the cover girl of the
Valentine issue of the magazine.
The February 15, 1953 issue of This
Week (now Chronicle Magazine and
owned by the fabulously rich Lopezes)
was a high point in Imelda’s pursuit of
her vague ambition. She was on the
cover and the picture was captioned as a
fresh face of “the lass from Leyte —
Imelda Romualdez.”
In Anden’s opinion, Imelda’s face was
a subject worth reprinting a hundred
thousand times, an exuberant claim
which would be prophetic. As First
Lady, Imelda each time she sees Anden,
never fails to say to those around, “He
discovered me.”
The inside pages briefly described the
girl on the cover as the daughter of Dean
Vicente Romualdez of St. Paul’s College
of Tacloban. It also mentioned that she
was working at the Central Bank and
currently enrolled at the Philippine
Women’s University’s Conservatory of
Music. There were also more
photographs of Imelda in different poses.
In one photograph she is seen composing
a Valentine message. Her heart-shaped
lips and heart-shaped face served for a
day as symbol of love for thousands of
This Week readers.
 Her enthusiasm for that lucky break
was something she openly revealed only
to those dearest to her. In a letter she
wrote later to her younger sister
Conchita: “Imagine, taking a picture of
me, as though I were some prominent
person when I am only a provinciana
from Tacloban.”
After she appeared on the cover of the
Lopez-owned This Week Magazine, she
gained more confidence. After all,
appearing on the cover of a national
magazine was indeed a lucky break and
did not happen to everyone. She may
have had an unspoiled nature from her
provincial upbringing but she was
slowly getting over her shyness. Being
on the cover of This Week magazine
meant to her so much and as she told
friends she was now famous. She was
flattered as any provincial girl would
have been, that at last — she had
conquered the city. Imagine, being on the
cover of a national magazine! Was that
not proof enough that she had Manila
society in the palm of her hand?
After This Week put her face on its
cover, she was ready for the challenges
thrown her way in the coming days of
her life in Manila.
The Reyes couple keenly watched
Imelda’s development — “almost as if
she were our child.” Adoracion adds.
She became dear to them because she
was constantly in the “small green
house” on Sta. Teresita Street in
Sampaloc. No matter how modest it
was, it became her second home and
refuge as a stranger in a big city.
The impressions of the couple about
her were vivid and they speak about her
character before she became the First
Lady. “She was such a wonderful
person, simple and unaffected,” Mrs.
Reyes recalled. She was at home with us
eating whatever was on the table,
helping wash dishes, and playing with
the children,” Adoracion fondly recalls.
One morning, while Ricardo Reyes, a
member of the original troupe of the
famed Bayanihan Dance Company, was
absent-mindedly gazing at the
newspapers while drinking his morning
coffee when a short notice caught his
attention. “I was not reading. It seemed
rather as if the print was staring at me,”
Ricardo describes that moment.
The notice was an announcement that
the Miss Manila Contest was now open
for candidates. The winner would
represent the city at the International
Fair Exposition contest for Miss
Philippines.
“Why not Imelda? “ Ricardo mused.
Imelda looked like a beauty queen, and
had the charms and manners of one.
Moreover, she had talent. If the contest
were held on pure merit, Imelda had
every chance to win. He submitted
Imelda’s photograph wearing a polka-
dotted dress with her hair fixed just as
Adoracion had first seen her — with
ribbons tied in two knots. It captured the
wistful look of someone lost but eager to
find her way. This was to be the
photograph that would be published
again many times during her rise from
Miss Manila to First Lady of the
Philippines.
Ricardo enclosed the pictures in an
ordinary envelope together with a letter
signed by him and his wife as
representatives of the candidate Imelda
Romualdez. The couple was enamored
with the idea that somehow this poor girl
would achieve the fame she sought so
ardently.
Imelda, quick to perceive the
possibilities of a good chance, was
equally eager. When she returned home
that day, she timidly told Danieling about
her plan to join the beauty contest.
His reply was a thunderous “No! “ He
objected to the expense, the vanity, and
the vulgar publicity that come with
beauty contests. Being merely a cousin
and a busy congressman, Danieling
refused to sponsor her. Besides, among
conservative and respectable families in
the 50s, beauty contests and its
vulgarities were shunned. This was not
so in pre-war days when daughters from
rich families participated in beauty
contests as part of social life. And then
there was also the risk of losing face if,
after having exposed herself so publicly,
she would be defeated. Being only a
poor relative of the Romualdezes, she
had the name but expected little help
from them. There were occasions when
she was hurt by her relatives’ lack of
sympathy. her relatives’ lack of
sympathy.
When she became rich and powerful,
she would tell members of the
Romualdez clan how difficult it was to
be a poor relative of a wealthy family in
Manila. In her case, what made it worse
was she had to live in the house of her
rich relatives. She was careful not to
abuse their hospitality and that meant
always being sensitive to their whims
and caprices. Even when she had not yet
told Danieling about the contest, she
knew she could not count on him to
shoulder the cost of being a candidate in
a beauty contest in Manila. But because
she was determined to win this contest,
she steeled herself to talk to him and at
least try to convince him. His refusal did
not come as a surprise.
Still, she was hurt and ashamed by the
vehement refusal. Undeterred, she tried
her other cousin, Eduardo Romualdez,
who was influential in Manila’s
financial circles. Again the answer was
an equally emphatic “no.” She knew that
if she had their backing, she would
surely win in the beauty contest. The
name and their prestige in Manila’s high
society would boost her candidacy.
Her last resort was cousin Loreto. At
least even if she had no political
influence, she would give her moral
support. That would help. Loreto, unlike
Danieling and Eduardo, did not refuse
help to her but she did not have the
means the two had. She made it clear to
Imelda that she was entirely on her own.
She was old enough to know whether the
contest would be good for her and her
future. If she thought it would, then fine,
Loreto would be for it. But if she had
reservations and doubts about its
usefulness to her, Loreto would not want
to have anything to do with it. It was an
ambivalent response but it was better
than nothing.
But Imelda was convinced that an
opportunity to win in a beauty contest
was a good thing. It would help her
achieve what at the time was still a
vague ambition. She was not giving up
so easily. If the Romualdezes said she
was on her own, then she would go
ahead on her own. She accepted that as a
poor relative she could not rely on her
rich relatives for support. They would
not risk their social standing to
something as demeaning as losing a
beauty contest.
She broke the bad news to the
Reyeses. “Not even my cousin Loreto is
supporting me in this contest. So I can
count only on you.”
Only then did it come to the Reyeses
that the whole idea might be a foolish
whim. How could they — merely an
average-income family, support a beauty
candidate and make sure she won? They
asked Imelda how she felt about it, if she
was still willing to go ahead despite the
difficulties and expenses she faced. Her
eyes were red, Adoracion recalled,
probably from crying. The beautiful face
had become a picture of sorrow and
disappointment. “I don’t care if they
don’t help. I won’t back out now,” she
cried. She pleaded with the Reyeses to
help her.
Naturally, the Reyeses assured her
that she could count on them. After all, it
had been their idea. They might have
regretted the brash idea of entering her
name and picture for the contest. It may
not have been the wisest thing to do, but
at the same time it seemed too late to
deny this girl their moral support. They
had encouraged her and now the girl
seemed bent on it. How could they fail
her now?
So the three embarked on a plan to
win the contest. They would solicit the
help of other people. Among those they
saw were Dr. Angelo Singian, the
medico-legal officer of City Hall, Dean
Horacio Quesada, and Lilia Garcia,
Imelda’s friend. They went around
soliciting votes from others, including
Senator Ambrosio Padilla and Geronimo
de los Reyes, both of whom they barely
knew.
At times, candidates and their
sponsors were confused with the rules of
the contest. It was not clear whether it
was a contest of the number of ballots a
candidate got or whether it would be a
choice by the Mayor of Manila.
Strangely, the International Fair
Board, the sponsor of the contest, did not
clarify the rules of the contest.
The contestants were just told to
assemble in the residence of the
Madrigals, of the fabulous shipping
wealth. A board of judges would
interview the participants, and that the
candidates should be sponsored by some
organization, preferably a school,
because most of the participants were
students.
Adoracion accompanied Imelda on
the day of the interview. That night they
studied the problem of sponsorship and
agreed she, as her voice teacher, would
try to make arrangements with the
Philippine Women’s University. They
were not sure how the school would take
it because Imelda was not a regular
student of the school. They would have
to ask a special favor from the school
authorities to make an exception for her.
Adoracion remembers how nervous
she was that night. She would have to
use an intermediary for such a purpose.
Then again there was the problem of
gowns and dresses. Where would they
get the money for these?
The board of judges for the
International Fair gave out the schedule
of activities for the contestants. They
included several social functions and
public appearances in which the
contestants had to wear long gowns.
Imelda did not own a single gown.
Adoracion would have to discuss this
problem also with the school. After all,
if they were to sponsor the girl the good
name of the school would be at stake. It
would have to provide the means to
make her presentable as the candidate of
the school.
Imelda’s music teacher approached
Lucretia Kasilag, the head of the
department of music and a composer of
note. She introduced Imelda to her. She
was virtually unknown in the campus,
and much more so with the faculty. Mrs.
Reyes remembers her embarrassment
then when they brought up the problem
with the faculty members. Imelda, being
an outsider could not impose on the
school officials to take up her cause.
Miss Kasilag looked at Imelda from
head to toe, sizing up her potential to
win and nodded, “We can try.” But her
reluctance to bring the matter to the
Benitezes showed all over her face,
Adoracion remembers. Miss Kasilag
tried to be civil. When the question of
gowns was brought up, she raised her
eyebrows. What? If the provinciana
could not even afford to buy a gown,
why should she be so eager to compete
with Manila girls to win a beauty
contest?
When the day came to see Mrs.
Francisca T. Benitez, then President of
the Philippine Women’s University,
Adoracion remembered that she had not
eaten breakfast. She was nervous and
still too weak because she had just given
birth. She felt she might not be up to the
task of facing the Benitezes to ask a
favor.
After introducing Imelda, she then
said what they had come for — to ask
for the school’s sponsorship and donate
some money to help her defray expenses
for the contest. As expected, the question
came up about Imelda and her relation to
the rich and powerful Romualdezes.
“Why can’t they help you?” The question
was met by embarrassed silence. But
Benitez was a shrewd businesswoman
and saw Imelda’s fine chances of
winning the contest. Should she win in
the beauty contest it would bring
publicity and add to the popularity of the
university. It stood to gain in public
relations if she won as a PWU student.
Benitez agreed to sponsor Imelda.
As for the gowns, there would be no
money. Imelda was told she would just
have to borrow some old ones stored
and used for school recitals. Then there
was Betty Favis, a wealthy girl studying
in the school, who could lend her one or
two.
After all, Philippine Women’s
University was a more prestigious
school than the other sponsors. Among
them were Far Eastern University and
University of the East, that, in Manila’s
status-conscious society, would be a
notch lower in the social ladder.
The Miss Manila contest was just a
minor part of the more important Miss
Philippine contest.
Wherever Imelda went for interviews
and photographing sessions, Adoracion
accompanied her. There were times
when people mistook her for Imelda’s
mother. Most of the girls were
chaperoned either by parents or
relatives. Adoracion knew it was
important that Imelda be chaperoned. At
the time, it was unseemly to allow girls
to go alone, and campaign for
themselves, to win a beauty contest.
“I was flattered when they thought I
was her mother. After all, she is such a
lovely girl,” she continued. Adoracion is
not bad-looking herself, with her
mestiza (a mix of Spanish and Filipino).
The times they spent together in their
struggle to win the Miss Manila contest
are memories that Imelda’s voice
teacher treasures.
She remembers the late nights when
they would come home exhausted after a
full day traveling in the Reyeses’
dilapidated 1948 Chevrolet, to solicit
votes.
“Sometimes we would be waiting
under the hot sun and take our snacks in
dirty restaurants. Imelda always
volunteered to pay for such meals, but
we knew how hard up she was so we
spared her from paying the bills.
Oftentimes we would eat a sandwich or
two and coffee. That’s what we used to
have. It was a campaign that we carried
on at great sacrifice, including skipping
meals if necessary.
“But I was happy. Imelda kept
thanking us for the help we were giving
her. The contest had become an exciting
experience — meeting people and
attending events. Sometimes I would
leave my children, then aged seven, four,
three, and two, plus a newly born baby,
with my maid. I am horrified now to
think that I had done that. Imagine if
there was a fire in the house while we
were out on one of our vote-soliciting
trips! Mr. Reyes drove for us.”
Sometimes, when they came back late
at night, it was not possible for her to go
home — by then everybody in the
Romualdez home would be asleep and
the front door locked. Being only a
guest, Imelda couldn’t ask her hosts to
leave the door opened when she
returned. If it was locked, then that was
that. She had to spend the night with the
Reyeses. It happened more than once.
The Reyeses could not afford a cook.
Often when they came home, there
would be no prepared meal. But the
humble, good-natured Imelda then
always managed a laugh and offered to
buy sardines or corned beef from the
nearby sari-sari store.
“She would run briskly to the store
and cook it herself and prepare the table.
We would eat whatever it was she
cooked. For us that was good enough.
More importantly we saw how sincere
the girl was. She really belonged to our
home all this time.”
Mr. Reyes was then working with
Monte de Piedad. “When the Company
had a bowling tournament, I asked
Imelda to be the muse. She readily
consented to show how grateful she was
to us,” Ricardo said.
Imelda and the Reyeses were
confident she would win the Miss
Manila title. They had gathered enough
votes and waited for the results.
On March 1, 1953, a small
announcement appeared in a prominent
section of the front page of newspapers:
Norma Jimenez was recently selected Miss
Manila and will compete with three other
regional winners for the Miss Philippines
contest. She is 20 years old and the daughter
of Albert Jimenez, government prosecutor,
and Sally A. Jimenez. She hails from
Lingayen, Pangasinan.
Miss Jimenez was a popular coed of the
Far Eastern University and had been
identified as muse of several student
organizations from various universities and
colleges.

The Reyeses were dismayed. Imelda

was in tears. Something had gone wrong.
The Reyeses immediately contacted their
friend, Dr. Angelo Singian, who, being
in the City Hall, would have access to
Mayor Arsenio Lacson. As official
representatives of Imelda Romualdez,
the Reyeses filed a protest against the
“winner” of the contest.
The protest was filed on the ground
that no representative of the Mayor of
Manila was present during the
canvassing of the votes. Miss Jimenez
had powerful backers who tried to rig
the contest, the protesters claimed. If
Imelda had been contented with the
results like the other contestants, then the
technicality would have gone unnoticed.
But not Imelda, after all the trouble she
went through.
Dr. Angelo Singian promised he
would do all in his power to help the
Reyes couple and Imelda. He advised
them to see Mayor Lacson personally.
On the day of the appointment with the
Mayor, Adoracion’s baby was stricken
ill. It was tough luck for Imelda. How
would she look, beseeching the Mayor to
intercede and give her justice
accompanied by no one? Adoracion was
downhearted but she had to stay home
with the baby. Ricardo was tied up with
the bank and his bosses had warned him
about his frequent absences from work.
Another girl would have given up. But
not Imelda. If there were no one to
accompany her, she would still go —
alone. And alone she went, determined
to win her case.
As she told Adoracion later, she could
not help crying when she told the Mayor
about her case. It seemed so unfair, the
way they had worked so hard to win the
contest, only to be disappointed in this
manner. Surely, a clarification could be
made.
The chivalrous Mayor, always
accommodating to women, melted. This
was no ordinary woman. Here before
him was a beautiful woman in tears,
certain to melt the hardest of male
hearts, including his.
“Miss Romualdez, you are really bent
on winning this contest,” Mayor Lacson
said with a chuckle. And with a wink,
“Then you are going to win the contest.”
The very next day, Tuesday, March 3,
1953, after Imelda’s appointment with
the mayor, all newspapers published the
item:
“Mayor Lacson yesterday disowned the
choice of the International Fair Board and
named Imelda Romualdez of Philippine
Women’s University as Manila’s official
candidate for Miss Philippines.
In a letter to the director of the
International Fair, Lacson charged violation
of certain rules of the International Fair
contest that as Mayor of Manila he would
nominate the only candidate of the City of
Manila for the beauty contest.
The beauty contest committee named by
Mayor Lacson adjudged Miss Romualdez
winner of the Miss Manila title with 655
points. Norma Jimenez and Amparo Manuel
tied for second place with 453 points each.
His action upheld a protest previously filed
on behalf of Miss Romualdez before the Fair
board of Directors by Dr. A. Singian, Dean H.
Quesada, Adoracion Reyes and Lilia Garcia,
official representatives of Imelda
Romualdez.”
 With the announcement, Imelda tasted
her first hard-gained victory. She had the
strength of will to win. This was a
lesson she would carry with her through
the challenges she would face later in
life: victory is had with determination.
But despite the verbal furor in the
press, the Miss Manila controversy was
merely a sideshow: The news that
counted then was that the Miss
Philippine title of that year was won by
Cristina Galang, now Caedo, who would
later count among Imelda’s band of
women campaigners known as The Blue
Ladies.
Nevertheless, on the night of the
presentation of candidates for the Miss
Philippines contest, with the Finnish
beauty Armi Kuusela, the first Miss
Universe winner, as honored guest, both
Miss Jimenez and Miss Romualdez were
present. The former represented the
International Fair and the latter, Mayor
Arsenio Lacson.
The International Fair Contest had
overruled the Mayor’s objection. The
board explained its case: Manila, for the
purposes of the beauty contest, had been
considered an area like Luzon, Visayas,
and Mindanao, so that the Mayor of
Manila, unlike the mayors of other
chartered cities and the governor of
provinces, was not empowered to
choose the candidate for Miss Manila.
Miss Jimenez had received more votes
than Miss Romualdez, and hence, had
been declared winner.”
Imelda at the Reyes’ home in 1952
Ariston Nakpil, Imelda’s boyfriend before
Ferdinand Marcos
CHAPTER X

The Man With An

Impediment
WHILE SHE CRIED OVER HER DEFEAT
in the Miss Manila contest, she had won
the curiosity of one of Manila’s most
eligible bachelors: Ariston Nakpil.
Fresh from studies in modem
architecture from Harvard University,
Cranbrook Academy of Arts, and the
Fontainebleu School of Fine Arts in
France, he was listed among the notable
arrivals in Manila on February 17, 1953.
He was a dashing figure, tall, urbane and
belonging to one of Manila’s oldest
families. In Manila high society, he was
considered as “a good catch”.
Upon his arrival, a huge dinner dance
was held at the home of his parents, the
Juan Nakpils, to which Manila’s
prominent people were attending. His
younger sister, Edith Nakpil, who would
later be among Imalda’s coterie of Blue
Ladies, was then a budding debutante;
another sister, Annie, had married
Renato Tañada of the politically
powerful Tañadas. It was a society affair
for the affluent, the influential, and the
celebrated, a world still closed to
Imelda.
 This was the world she did not realize
she would be part of when she joined the
Miss Manila contest. Her beauty was her
ticket to get introduced to the inner
circle of Manila’s high society. Despite
Imelda’s defeat in the contest, she was
conferred another title specially created
by Mayor Arsenio Lacson — Muse of
Manila. This has led to nasty rumors
about how Imelda won the title from a
mayor who was known for womanizing.
After the publicity from the Miss
Manila title, organizers of civic
gatherings kept her in mind. Not very
long after the Nakpil party, she was
asked to be an usherette in the Grand
Derby, another red-letter event in
Manila’s social calendar. Ramon Valera,
then Manila’s leading couturier, had
asked her to model some of his
“creations.”
Imelda remembers that on one
occasion, after modelling a terno for
him, Mr. Valera offered the dress for half
the price. Again, acting out of a sense of
Romualdez propriety, she quickly turned
down the offer with the excuse: “Next
time na lang.” She wanted to laugh, she
said. “The gown cost P4,000 and he was
offering it then for the ridiculously low
price of P2,000.”
“Where would I have gotten that kind
of money? “ she said when she related
the incident to cousin, Loreto, with a
salary of only P250 a month at the
Central Bank.
 Even the initial objection of Danieling
was receding. Certainly it was pleasant,
to be greeted with remarks from
colleagues, “O, mayroon pala kayong
magandang pinsan na tinatago.” (So
you have been hiding a beautiful cousin!)
Imelda was decidedly a politician’s
asset and Danieling was not blind to her
charms. Ironically it was through the
Miss Manila beauty contest that she
broke the ice on her relations with her
rich relatives. She graced social
gatherings in the Dapitan home with
aplomb and was slowly introduced to
the world of politics.
Once, Francisco Pedrosa, her former
schoolmate and rival for the presidency
of the student council in St. Paul’s
College in Tacloban, visited her in
Dapitan. “There were so many cars
parked in front of the house. I saw about
one or two uniformed men at the wheel
of one of the cars. I thought they were
officers of some army,” and Imelda
giggled, saying that they were drivers of
her visitors.”
When he recalled that visit, Francisco
thought Imelda had changed. She was
different now from the girl in the little
house on Calle Real in Tacloban. A
woman had emerged in a plush house in
a fashionable district, with its
upholstered sofas, ceiling-to-floor
curtains, and carpeted passageways. She
had always been confident, he declared,
but he was surprised with the way she
moved to answer the phone and how she
graciously begged to be excused as she
opened the door.
Eric Torres, Manila Times art
columnist, recalls that he had
accompanied the late Carmelo Quintero
to visit her.
“It was a rainy day. When we arrived,
Imelda was not yet at home,” he recalls.
They waited a while until a taxi
skidded into the driveway. When she
came, she was all flushed and
apologized that they had been kept
waiting.
“She was so beautiful, it must have
been the stress and strain of getting
through traffic that gave her the blush on
her cheeks,” Eric said.
 Carmelo, a nephew of Ambassador
Eduardo Quintero, was Imelda’s
province mate, an ex-Jesuit seminarian,
and a student at the Ateneo de Manila.
They had come to invite Imelda for
dinner. She apologized promptly saying
that she had a previous engagement.
She noted that Carmelo had a raincoat
but Eric had none.
“O, umuulan, mabuti pa si Melo,
mayroong kapote. Here, take my
umbrella so you won’t get wet,” Imelda
offered. The next few days Eric tried to
get in touch with Carmelo to ask him to
return the umbrella on his next visit to
Imelda. He was not able to contact him.
Weeks passed, months, years: Carmelo
died in an airplane crash in 1967.
Imelda had become First Lady of the
Land. Eric still has that umbrella.
Eric remembers that as they walked
out into the rain Carmelo said, almost in
a whisper, “Oh, well, it’s hopeless.”
“He must have been thinking aloud, and
he had not meant to let me hear,” Eric
says.
Melo was a quiet sort of lover, full of
platonic idealism, sulky, moody and
secretive. Those who knew him doubt
very much if he had enough boldness to
propose marriage to Imelda. Many years
later after his death, his widow found
Imelda’s picture among his belongings.
She had written a short dedication at the
back of the picture: “Thinking of you.”
Certainly he was no match for Ariston
Nakpil, the urbane society figure who
was by then courting Imelda. All other
suitors paled in comparison to this
prominent architect. He was the blue-
blooded Manilan whose charms some
women claim were irresistible. The
Nakpil males are known to be especially
discriminating about their women —
they courted only the most beautiful.
Many remember Anita Noble, for
years talked about as the most beautiful
Miss Philippines: She is Ariston
Nakpil’s mother. When Ariston courted
Imelda, he was following a tradition in
the Nakpil family.
Imelda was flattered that someone
rich and belonging to a prominent family
in Manila should court her. She was also
attracted to his character because he did
not seem to mind her being a
probinsyana. This was rare among
Manilans who tended to snub those who
come from the provinces and treated as
outsiders in city-bred elite society. On
his part he said he was fascinated by
Imelda’s beauty and was intrigued by her
protest case.
“The newspaper accounts about her
protest in the Miss Manila beauty contest
triggered off a desire to meet her,” he
said.
Although she did not have the
sophistication of Manila girls, being a
natural was her attraction. He knew
about her difficulties with money. He
soon caught on with her isolation, being
only a poor relative to the better-off
Romualdezes. He remembers her
wearing modest clothes and as far as he
saw she lived within her means. In their
many conversations however, she
confided to him that she was not happy
with her life.
“Given a chance, she impressed me as
a person who would work hard to get
herself out of the rut,” Ariston said. An
astute observer, Ariston remembers
“Looking back, I’d say that was perhaps
her outstanding character trait — will
power.”
He described her as being raw,
coming as she did from the province,
and generally not in step with urban life.
Compared to girls born and bred in the
city her conversation was awkward, and
so was her style of dressing. Her
manners and attitudes reflected these
feelings of inadequacy. She was aware
that she did not have the confidence of
girls who had lived all their lives in a
big city. But her beauty made up for what
she lacked. As far as Ariston was
concerned that was all she needed to be.
She had other things in mind and she was
determined to be one if not better than
city girls.
She spoke with pride about Ariston’s
courtship and told close friends how
surprised she was that despite her being
a mere probinsyana, he was in love with
her. It gave her a sense of triumph that
she was courted by no less than one of
the most eligible bachelors in town.
Those who knew them say that the
Nakpils were good to her. One story that
went around after she had broken up
with him was the Nakpils’ complaint that
she should have at least bothered to get
back her clothes that were left in their
house. She had spent weekends with
them in Batangas and went on her first
trip to Baguio that summer of 1953.
“The whole family chaperoned us. We
stayed at Pines Hotel,” he recalls. It was
decidedly a serious romance.
At that time, Virgilio Hilario, who
would later marry Miss Universe Armi
Kuusela, was also interested in meeting
Imelda, but she told a cousin that she
was not interested in any one else. She
was in love with Ariston Nakpil.
Although the couple was not formally
engaged, they had talked of marriage and
his whole family seems to have
approved.
Ariston would pick her up from the
Cenral Bank, they would dine together,
and he often brought her to Manila’s
exclusive parties. She was keen to
comport herself in ways that he could be
proud of her. Through all that time,
Ariston says she was eager to learn and
adopt a lifestyle appropriate to Manila’s
high society, to which she was gradually
being introduced. Nakpil’s remembrance
of her and how she was in those days
before she met Ferdinand Marcos was
first-hand. When he said he could not
forget her determination to rise to the
top, it was real. He assured her he was
willing and ready to help her get there.
For Imelda, the good life was still
very much tied up with the question of
love and marriage. Ariston represented
the “top” because he belonged to
Manila’s hard-core elite. It would have
been a good match but for an obstacle.
Ariston was seeking the annulment of a
previous marriage that was not
consummated. “It was one of those crazy
things young boys do,” friends of Ariston
attest. The marriage may have had
grounds for annulment because it was
subsequently voided. At the time he was
courting Imelda, however, the annulment
was still being worked on. He was a
bachelor but as long as there was a legal
impediment, marriage to Imelda was out
of the question.
Imelda told him she was willing to
wait for the annulment to come through.
But that did not remove her anxiety and
the uncertainty of her relationship with
Ariston. She could wait, but supposing
the annulment did not come through? She
was torn between her love for him, the
legal impediment, and an uncertain
future.
It was at the height of Imelda’s love
affair with Ariston that Eduardo, her
cousin, got to know about the problem
and asked her what she plans to do. He
was afraid that her father, Vicente
Orestes, might make another trip to
Manila and discover it.
Eduardo’s wife, Conching Veloso, in
turn decided to tell Loreto, who was
somehow responsible for Imelda’s
presence in Manila. Loreto recalls:
“We both worked for the Legion of
Mary. So on one of the working days of
the Legion, Conchita turned to me and
said:
“Imelda esta enamorada.” (Imelda is
in love.) “Well, good,” I said.
“Oh, no. It is bad this time. The man is
married,” she said.
With that information, Loreto was
frightened. It was a serious problem, and
if anything should happen to her, she
would have to account for it to Imelda’s
father. He would be furious.
 “Does she know he is married?”
“Yes, but it seems his family is
working for the annulment of the
marriage. He has never lived with the
woman and there is good basis for an
annulment.”
So the very next day, Loreto went to
the Central Bank from her classes at the
Lyceum, and invited Imelda for lunch for
a confrontation.
“I hear you are in love with a married
man. Sayang (a pity). If there are single
men with honest intentions, they will be
discouraged from courting you if they
find out. I feel obliged to tell you this
because I was the one who suggested
that you come to Manila,” Loreto began.
At first Imelda denied it.
 “Meldy, it was Conching who told
me. Eduardo told her.”
At this point of the conversation,
Imelda was annoyed and told Loreto she
did not want to to talk about the subject
any further. So Loreto went to Conching
and told her that there must have been
some sort of misunderstanding.
Eduardo’s report must have been
inaccurate.
“What? She denied it? How can she
deny it when it is public knowledge that
she goes with the entire Nakpil family to
the province of Batangas. It’s true they
were chaperoned by the elder Nakpils
and there seems to be nothing wrong
with that,” Conching replied.
Now Loreto saw the entire picture. It
was true that there was nothing seriously
wrong with Imelda’s trips to Batangas
with the Nakpils. After all, Imelda was
of age. She was 24 and really on her
own. She could do what she pleased.
She accepted Imelda’s explanation of the
situation about Nakpil and her. That was
very much her business. There was
nothing wrong or dishonorable about it.
An annulment was being worked out.
But the big question was, while he
worked at eligibility, what should
Imelda do in the meantime?
That was Imelda’s dilemma and
absolutely no one had any right to tell
Imelda what to do. The risk, the pain, the
inevitability of talk was all hers. All that
anyone could do was counsel her.
 So Loreto decided to see her for the
second time with a slightly different
approach.
“Meldy, you told me it is not true. I
know it’s none of my business. If you
don’t want to be helped, that’s all right.
But I’m thinking of your future. You must
avoid the malicious public eye. If you
must continue seeing him, be more
discreet until the annulment comes,”
Loreto said.
Imelda was quiet. Loreto rattled off
more facts to prove how well she knew
what it was about.
“This is the last time I will see you
about this.”
Through the letters of Braulio Hipuna,
Imelda’s immediate boss at the Central
Bank, to Isabel Cam, one of her close
friends in Tacloban, one can find the
reasons for Imelda’s guarded approach
to Nakpil’s courtship. Imelda had played
matchmaker to Braulio and Isabel. She
had introduced them by a letter and the
two became pen friends.
In a letter dated June 30, 1953,
Braulio wrote Isabel that Imelda had
decided not to go to the Tacloban town
fiesta, which fell on June 29, the feast of
Saints Peter and Paul.
“Well, Meldy is still here. She will
not go to the fiesta because she is crazy
about him even with the impediment. She
would not like to leave him,” he wrote.
But about five months later, on
November 27, 1953, Isabel wrote to
Braulio that Imelda had finally arrived
in Tacloban with her father. Imelda had
hand-carried Braulio’s letters to Isabel.
In one of those letters Braulio had
written: “I don’t know how I could thank
Meldy for bringing you to my life.”
Imelda’s matchmaking, however, was
not too successful. The pen romance
fizzled out soon after.
Their letters however, reveal that
Vicente Orestes found out about Nakpil’s
courtship of his daughter and the
impediment.
Imelda had written her father about
the serious turn of the romance and had
asked for his blessings. She knew her
father would object, but like a good
daughter, she wrote him anyway.
 Her father, on the other hand, did not
bother to write. He flew immediately to
Manila for a heart-to-heart talk with his
daughter.
In the same letter, Isabel further wrote
Braulio, “Imelda said she misses
somebody there. Somebody ‘close to her
heart.’ I think I agree with you about
Meldy’s being so in love. She’s different
now — there’s love in her eyes when
she talks about him.”
Whatever Imelda had told friends in
her letters about how in love she was
with someone in Manila she was already
having second thoughts about the Nakpil
affair. What her father thought of the
affair and how it would hurt her family if
Nakpil were unable to get his annulment
overcame her feelings for the prominent
architect.
“My father was not only mad about
the whole thing, he was furious,”
Conchita, Imelda’s youngest sister
recalls.
Vicente Orestes’s uptight mind was
closed even to the question of annulment.
He did not care, he told his daughter,
even if the previous marriage were
annulled. There would be no
compromise about the teachings of the
Catholic religion about love and
marriage. That was how he thought and
no one could change it. The dilemma
was how to reconcile a daughter’s
desire and a father’s concern for
tradition. Even if the impediment were
removed, she would only be a mistress
to Nakpil in Vicente Orestes’s eyes.
Imelda’s sisters and brothers echoed
their father’s objections.
“The whole family was against the
match,” Conchita says.
Imelda’s homecoming was not
completely unhappy. She had not been
home for a long time. She had many
stories to tell her family about her new
life and adventures in Manila. She
elaborated on how Angel Anden made
her the cover of This Week, her
candidacy as Miss Manila, the many rich
people who met and admired her after
her debut through that magazine cover.
She tried to win us over into
accepting her love affair with Ariston
Nakpil. “We could understand why she
was so flattered by Ariston’s attentions.
She also told us how nice his parents
were,” Conchita continues.
But despite that, the family refused to
entertain even the notion that Imelda
would consider marriage with “the man
with an impediment.”
Imelda even wrote her cousin, Estela
Romualdez-Sulit, who was on a
diplomatic mission in Rome, to help him
work out the annulment. But she did not
reply to her letter.
“I knew that Imelda would change her
mind. With the whole family against it I
don’t think she would have gone on with
it,” Conchita said.
“It was not the first time that she had
consulted the family for approval. Once,
I was sitting in the sala while Meldy
entertained a visitor. I overheard the
young man say that he didn’t mind where
the honeymoon would be as long as she
married him. I ran away from the room
and cried.
She followed me and whispered
gently, ‘Why are you crying?”
“Because I heard you were getting
married,” Conchita answered.
“Of course not,” Imelda gently
assured her sister, “I will tell you should
I decide to marry.” Little did she or her
family know then that these episodes
were a preparation for a more
meaningful meeting that would catapult
her to national prominence beyond her
wildest dreams. On December 10, 1953,
Imelda left Tacloban to return to Manila
with a troubled heart and mind, torn
between her family’s objections and the
pursuit of one of Manila’s most eligible
bachelors.
Like her mother, she was beautiful;
like her mother, she was kind and gentle;
like her mother, she was gifted with a
beautiful voice; like her mother, she had
an ill-fated romantic love before her
marriage.
It was at this stage that she met
Ferdinand E. Marcos, the ambitious
congressman who would be President.
CHAPTER XI

The 11-Day
Courtship
“IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT,”
Ferdinand Marcos has publicly
admitted. Most people might have
accepted that explanation for the
whirlwind courtship and marriage. If
Marcos had been an ordinary man, there
would be no need for further
explanation. He would not be the first
nor last man to have been so smitten by a
beautiful lady at first sight. But he was
not an ordinary man. When he met
Imelda, his feet were very much on the
ground. He was described in newspaper
articles as a colorful, brilliant lawyer, a
much-decorated war hero, and an
ambitious politician in a hurry. Marcos
at 37 is unlikely to have been merely
romantic and that his love at first sight
on seeing Imelda was a convenient
cover for the reasons why he fell in love
with her.
With the presidency in mind, he had to
choose his partner for that journey with
destiny. Imelda fulfilled all the
requirements he had in mind — she was
beautiful, but more importantly, she had
a politically powerful name. She was a
Romualdez. He did not as yet know that
she was a poor relative from Tacloban
of the wealthy Romualdezes from
Manila. He made the choice right then
and there after being introduced to her,
and determined that she would be his
wife and ultimately become the First
Lady of the Philippines. He was
attracted to her beauty. But more than
that, he would make political capital of
her name as the niece of the powerful
Speaker of the House Danieling
Romualdez.
He was making a shrewd judgment
when he decided he would marry Imelda
at first sight. She was The Woman, the
archetypal woman for the kind of
ambition he had.
 But the idea did not happen all at
once. Before that meeting in Congress,
Marcos, like Ariston Nakpil, first
learned of Imelda through the
newspapers when she became involved
in the controversy on the Miss Manila
contest. After reading about her, he
teased Danieling, “Aha, meron pala
kayong magandang pinsan! (I didn’t
know you had a beautiful cousin!)”
It was a flippant remark. Marcos did
not pursue the compliment he made to
the powerful Speaker. He could not
because he did not fall in love with
Imelda’s picture in the newspaper. It had
to wait for another time. Carmen Ortega,
a former Miss Photography, was already
his mistress, and he was then thinking of
marrying her.
With both of them committed to other
partners, the meeting in Congress was a
matter of fate. Although he had known
about her from the newspapers and that
she was a Romualdez, he did not see
how she would be relevant to him as a
politician until he met her personally.
The Newspaper-Photo Image came to
life.
This time, it all connected — the
beauty queen with a prominent name to
boot was the formula for a consort when
he became President.
Imelda Romualdez was introduced to
Ferdinand Marcos on April 6, 1954. It
was in the evening, about suppertime,
when Imelda accompanied her cousin-
in-law Pacing to fetch Danieling, who
was then Speaker Protempore of the
House.
Imelda was in her housedress and
slippers, and so was Pacing. They had
gone along for the car ride and had no
intention of looking presentable to
anyone. Both Pacing and Imelda had
planned to stay in the car and wait for
Danieling to come down. Marcos, then a
neophyte congressman prone to
bombastic speech, was on the rostrum
lambasting President Ramon
Magsaysay’s budget on the floor of
Congress.
When Imelda and Pacing reached
Congress, the Speaker was not yet ready
to leave. To while away their time, they
bought butong pakwan (watermelon
seeds) and watched the proceedings
from a side door. Congressman Marcos
was speaking at the time when Pacing
nudged Imelda and said “he was a good
orator.”
Imelda was not impressed. She was
preoccupied with thoughts of another
man. Imelda was not interested in
politics, which at the time she did not
think would have anything to do with
her. So what if this bright man Marcos
was a good orator and that he was
speaking on a very important matter at
the center of the legislative hall. Soon
both she and Pacing became bored by
the noise of speeches blaring through
microphones. Besides there were
mosquitoes buzzing around them. So they
decided to return to the car.
Pacing wrote a note to the Speaker
informing him that Imelda and she had
arrived to fetch him. If it would take
much longer, they would prefer to go
home and send back the car. The
Speaker sent back a reply suggesting that
they stick around and wait in the air-
conditioned cafeteria were they would
be more comfortable.
After his long harangue of a speech,
Marcos, accompanied by Manila Times
reporter Jose Guevara, also decided to
go to the cafeteria to get a drink.
It was there he saw Imelda. It was the
fateful meeting.
There she sat, the archetypal woman
as wife that he had been waiting for all
his life. It made perfect sense to any man
with a pair of eyes and a head on his
shoulders to step up to The Woman, who
appeared to have all he needed as his
conjugal partner when he became the
President of the Philippines. She had
Beauty, the Romualdez Name and its
Connections.
He did not know that Imelda was a
poor relative. She may have had the
name but she did not have the wealth and
power associated with it. Indeed, the
Romualdez name, to her, was not an
asset but a constant source of
embarrassment when acquaintances soon
discovered she was not rich but a poor
relative of the Romualdez political clan.
 Years later he would admit that when
he met her for the first time he did not
know she was a poor relative of the
Romualdezes. Still much less did he
know that that her poverty was traumatic
and had its roots in childhood, including
growing up in a garage. Life might have
been better in Tacloban, but that did not
lift them up from that poverty as a child
as Imelda would have wished. She
continued to worry about her family
even when she finally came to Manila.
But Marcos told friends that even if he
had known about all this at the time, it
would not have mattered. He would still
have married her. It was only when she
became his wife that he found out that
the woman he married had a past of
poverty and grief that would feed an
unshakable will power to possess the
things she had long been denied.
Marcos wanted to be introduced at
once. He nudged Jose, “O, maganda.
Puede kayang makilala? (She’s
beautiful. May I be introduced?)” He
forgot he had already seen her in the
newspapers.
A practical joker, Jose Guevara did
not know Imelda himself, except also
from newspaper articles. But he obliged
just the same and came forward to
introduce the two. Apparently, the young
Congressman Marcos was not satisfied
with Guevara’s introduction. He wanted
to be introduced again — this time
“properly.” When Congressman Jacobo
Gonzales, a mutual friend of the
Romualdezes and the Ilocano
Congressman, came into the cafeteria, he
asked him to do the honor.
“Marcos was probably afraid my
introduction would be considered a bad
joke,” Guevara said.
After the introduction, Imelda, in her
usual charming way offered him butong
pakwan (watermelon seeds).
“There must have been some magic
drug in those watermelon seeds, because
they made me feel as I have never felt
before,” Marcos said. He had an idea of
what he wanted his Future First Lady to
be but how was he to find her? That
evening she was in front of him, his
Archetypal Woman, the woman he was
looking for, quietly nibbling watermelon
seeds, in the Congress cafeteria.
And when she stood up, he noted he
was half an inch taller than she was in
her slippers. That was an uncomfortably
small advantage. “Fine,” he must have
said to himself, completely confident
that he could convince her to marry him.
What mattered to him more was how
glad he was. He had found Her at last.
But it was not so to Imelda. Half an
inch was too little. She liked Her Man
tall. Justo Zibala, the Protestant doctor,
was tall, dark, and handsome. Ariston
Nakpil was tall, fair, handsome, and a
lot of other pleasant things besides. She
was not impressed. He was, well, a
politician. He did not belong to the
cultured elite or to the traditionally rich
of Manila whose hands were unsoiled
by the dirt of politics.
But then she was not exactly growing
any younger. Loreto warned her that if
the annulment did not come soon she
would lose her chances at getting
married altogether. Then what? At her
age, it was expected that she should have
already married. She was under pressure
as the clock ticked towards that
imagined deadline. She would be left
behind and would have to be satisfied
with whoever came along if it were
postponed any longer. At the same time,
when she met Marcos, she thought there
was still plenty of room for choice with
the Nakpil engagement still on.
 To Ferdinand Marcos, it was simply a
matter of strategy and persuasion to win
her — fast.
The following day he sent her two
roses, one fully opened and the other
still a bud. It was, he said, an Ilocano’s
message of love — the bud represented
his love for her, still a bud that would be
in full blossom as the other rose if only
she would accept him. After the roses,
came boxes of chocolate and books,
frequent telephone calls.
Imelda’s reaction was: “Nakakainis,
ang bilis.” (So annoying, he’s too fast.)
Apropos, a book she had just received
from her new admirer, Imelda remarked:
“Akala mo naman, kung sino akong
intellectual.” (You’d think I was an
intellectual.)
Even before he had persuaded her to
marry him, the process of educating her
for the role she would play had begun.
Marcos’s plan to marry Imelda was
urgent — so he moved fast to woo her.
He did not know that there was
another man. Her romance with Ariston
Nakpil was still on and she was engaged
to him until his previous marriage could
be annulled. It bothered Ariston that
Imelda never told him about her dates
with other men. He had, of course, to
understand that she had every right to be
free with the annulment still uncertain. In
her telephone call from Baguio, Imelda
did not tell Ariston about the pursuit of
the Ilocano congressman. She did not
think it important to tell him so.
“Ferdinand visited her only once in
Manila during the entire 11-day
courtship and that was the day before we
left for Baguio,” Jose Guevara recalls.
“It was Ash Wednesday afternoon, when
the Congressman asked me to
accompany him to the Romualdez home
in Dapitan.”
Jose Guevara is a comedian of sorts,
and Marcos brought him along to lighten
the mood for the courtship. Although he
planned to propose marriage, the speedy
courtship would seem ridiculous,
awkward, without the help of some light
humor. Guevara fitted the role of jester.
“Imelda was a simple girl then and
she had a way of making even the
eloquent Congressman tongue-tied,”
Guevara observed.
The Manila Times reporter was
surprised at the pace of the courtship. He
did not know then that the Congressman
was fetching Imelda from the Dapitan
home of the Danieling Romualdezes to
bring her with them to Baguio.
Surprised, he went along with the couple
on the five-hour car ride to Baguio.
Imelda sat between Guevara and
Marcos, who took the wheel.
Guevara did not know that Marcos’s
plan was to bring off a coupcourtship —
proposal, marriage and all — by the
time the Lenten holidays were over. He
asked Imelda where she was spending
the holidays. When Imelda replied she
was going up to Baguio, Guevara
quickly joined the conversation by
saying, “Well, then go up with us.”
The congressional reporter winked at
the Congressman. He was going beyond
his role as court jester, but the
Congressman quickly caught up, “Yes,
why don’t you come along since we are
also going up? “Marcos had just bought
a shining white Plymouth.
Imelda at first demurely turned down
the invitation. The Congressman pressed
the offer. At the end of that late-
afternoon visit, arrangements were made
with the Speaker’s family that Imelda
would ride with the two to Baguio.
“I was a little surprised that she
accepted,” Guevara confessed. After all
they had just met. Imelda might have
been a provinciana but she was street-
wise, eager to meet as many people and
feel at home in the city. At the Central
Bank, she readily accepted invitations
from people she scarcely knew.
The next day, Marcos passed for
Guevara at his house in Horseshoe
Drive not far from his own house in
Guevara Street in suburban San Juan.
The newsman had only taken the
suggestion half seriously. He pleaded
earnestly with Marcos that he could not
possibly go because the office (he
worked at the Manila Times) would fire
him if he did not go to work.
“I’ll take care of that,” the
Congressman insisted.
 In that five-hour trip Guevara said
Imelda and Marcos would become close
and more informal. Since they had just
met their conversation up to this trip to
Baguio was still strained and stiff.
“I suppose after being cooked up in a
car for five hours, one can’t help but be
relaxed and friendly,” Guevara recalls.
Sometimes, the comic newspaperman
would teasingly hold Imelda’s hand and
the congressman would hit him lightly on
the head. Such informality and
Guevara’s antics did break the ice to
make a speedy courtship possible. By
the time Marcos and Imelda reached
Baguio, it seemed they had known each
other for a long time, according to
Guevara.
 After bringing Imelda to the cottage of
the Daniel Romualdezes on
Congressional Hill, Marcos and
Guevara took a room at the Pines Hotel.
They rested a while, washed up, and
were soon on their way to visit Imelda.
When Imelda consented to ride with
him to Baguio, she was unable to pull
herself out of the clutches of the urgency
of Marcos’s pursuit. Against Marcos’s
cunning and determination, Imelda’s
brooding over an uncertain commitment
to Ariston was no match.
Since it was Holy Week, religious
rites were a preoccupation among
visiting Manilans. Imelda, a devoted
Catholic, observed the Lenten rites.
When Marcos visited her, their
conversations turned to religion. He
impressed her with his deep knowledge
of religion, particularly the Gospels.
He played with the children of Daniel
Romualdez and tried to please everyone
in the family as he courted Imelda. When
they were by themselves and able to talk
to each other he made it clear that he
was not merely courting her or getting to
know her as other men would. He was
giving her the ultimate offer — marriage.
Marcos had already won over
Pacita’s brothers-in-law, who were also
in Baguio to his side. When Marcos and
Guevara left, the two would start their
own harangue of Imelda: “Ano pa ang
gusto mo, mayaman, bata pa,
Congressman pa! Yan na Meldy.
Pumayag ka na! (What else can you
want? He’s rich, still young, a
Congressman as well! Accept him,
Meldy!)”
“Huh!” she would answer, telling
them to stop it. But inside, her defenses
were crumbling. From the start, her
anxiety was indeed assuaged because the
man was offering marriage and security.
Why should she continue struggling? She
was tired of struggling. The night of
Holy Thursday, when she felt she might
succumb to Marcos’s aggressive
courtship, she placed a long-distance
call to Nakpil in Manila. The call was
recorded at 2 o’clock in the morning
according to Nakpil. Imelda could not
sleep. Nakpil, who sensed that
something was happening, picked up the
telephone call. Imelda had wanted
merely to say hello and ask how he was
in the most casual of tones. He was not
told what the call was about, he claims.
But like most lovers, he went by his
instinct and felt something was wrong
about the call. Nakpil did not know and
Imelda did not tell him about Marcos
and his whirlwind courtship. He did not
know the speed with which Marcos
wanted to achieve his objective — to
win Imelda and make her accept his
proposal in seven days. There was an
implicit understanding between Imelda
and Nakpil that if the annulment came
first, they would get married. If she fell
in love with another man and he offered
to marry her, the engagement to Nakpil
would be off.
On Good Friday, she acknowledged
Marcos’s victory.
“We were driving along Burnham
Park,” Guevara recalls. They were again
seated as they had been on the way up to
Baguio, Marcos on the wheel, Imelda
between him and Guevara.
That day, when Marcos was certain
that he had convinced Imelda to marry
him and it was only a question of signing
the proper documents, he had gotten in
touch with Judge Francisco Chanco, a
former classmate at the University of the
Philippines. They had gone all the way
to his house in Trinidad Valley, but were
told that the Judge was in Baguio. So
they returned to the city and told the
Judge about the problem — how to get
married immediately so the courtship
could be signed, sealed, and delivered
before returning to Manila.
“The documents were in Marcos’s
possession when he asked Imelda for the
drive around Burnham Park,” Guevara
said.
The Judge refused to give the
marriage documents to the Congressman.
At that time, scandals about false
marriages were rampant and the
Congressman’s reputation as a Lothario
compounded the Judge’s fear.
“The judge told Marcos that his
career would be ruined, that he was
quite satisfied with his success as justice
of the peace, that he would not let any
naughty Congressman ruin it,” Guevara
continued. But as usual, the persuasive
Congressman had his way. The Justice of
the Peace returned to Trinidad Valley
that afternoon rattled by Marcos’s
unusual request. He worried after he had
given the documents to Marcos and
feared he would be investigated for the
curious way he was being asked to
legalize a marriage on the spot.
Marcos and Guevara talked about the
marriage plans the night before. He
remembers that Marcos hardly slept and
one of the things he told him then was
that Imelda would be a lucky girl
because she would be the wife of a
future President of the Republic of the
Philippines. He meant to be president as
a final vindication from a murder charge
years ago. Despite his acquittal, people
still believed he was the culprit since no
other man was apprehended to answer
for the crime. Yes, Marcos told Guevara,
the girl he married would be lucky.
“Don’t you want to be the First Lady
of the land someday? “ Guevara asked
her, trying to keep a poker face. Imelda
laughed but Marcos was serious.
Marcos followed up Guevara’s jokes.
He told Imelda he was serious about
asking her to be his wife and would she
please sign on the dotted line to indicate
her consent? At this point he whipped
out the documents from his pocket.
Imelda received the papers. For a
moment she giggled nervously, turned to
Jose, and whispered to his ear, “What’s
the name of the Congressman, nga? Is it
Edralin or Marcos?”
“You win,” she must have thought as
she signed. It was a strange way to
consent to a marriage proposal. From
that day on, the courtship ceased to be
private matter between lovers. Marcos
had made sure she signed the document.
He would not take a risk and the
document was the guarantee to make
sure it was not merely lovers’ promise.
“Finally, I signed that marriage
contract. It’s funny but I didn’t know that
by signing it, I became legally married to
him. The next day, Holy Saturday, we
went to Trinidad Valley to formalize the
marriage before Judge Chanco.” The
judge had strung along with Marcos and
Guevara in Baguio and the contract was
safely in the shrewd congressman’s
pocket.
“I wired my father,” Imelda told Nick
Joaquin in a Free Press interview soon
after she became the First Lady.
The civil rites were held ahead of a
religious marriage ceremony but Marcos
promised Imelda there would be a
church wedding, as Imelda wished, with
her family, the Vicente Oresteses,
attending. She did not know that Marcos
planned a grand wedding, described in
society pages as the grandest of the
season, in keeping with Marcos’s entry
into a future presidential race at the
appropriate time. After the civil rites,
she was to return first to Manila and live
with the Daniel Romualdezes until
arrangements could be made for the
church wedding.
That night, a friend of Guevara’s,
Eugenio Baltao, Jr., who was also in
Baguio, rang up their Pines Hotel room.
Since they needed another’ witness,
Guevara recalls he asked him to join the
wedding party in Trinidad Valley. The
two brothers-in-law of Pacing were also
present as secondary witnesses.
Judge Chanco was still not convinced
that he was performing a genuine
marriage, and he kept mumbling his
doubts and displeasure. His wife
gathered some flowers from the garden
to add a fragile ceremonial touch to the
occasion.
After the quick rites, the wedding
party proceeded to Pines Hotel for a
little celebration. Guevara remembers
some Igorots (indigenous mountain
people) performing on the stage and he
had whispered to Imelda that Marcos
was an Igorot. Imelda turned pale. She
smiled at the joke but suddenly fell
quiet. It may have been a joke but it
flustered her because it had dawned on
her that she hardly knew anything about
the man.
Marcos, a man of the world, guessed
as much. He noticed Imelda’s paleness
and thought that her change of mood was
a delayed reaction to the suddenness of
the marriage. He assured her and said,
“Never mind how fast it happened. We
have our whole lives to be happy
together.” He raised his glass and
proposed a toast to that happy life
together.
Later, Guevara told Marcos that he
had kidded Imelda about Marcos’s
Igorot origins and that Imelda may have
believed him.
The lack of seriousness, the almost
comic nature of Marcos’s courtship of
Imelda was in stark contrast to what the
marriage would turn out to be. Indeed,
no one could have predicted then that the
marriage of a beautiful, talented, but
provincial Imelda and the driven,
brilliant Congressman Marcos from
Ilocos would set out to become a
controversial union in both love and
politics of Philippine history.
By Imelda’s own account, the
courtship from Manila to Baguio lasted
only from April 6 to April 17.
There was not even time to write to
her family in Tacloban.
Meanwhile, in the little house on
Calle Real, that Easter Sunday morning,
Vicente Orestes woke up, restless and
unable to understand why he should be.
“It was good I woke up early that
morning,” Conchita said. When she went
out to buy bread for breakfast, a
neighbor told her that Imelda’s marriage
was all over the front pages of the
newspapers.
 “Kinasal na si Meldy (Meldy has
gotten married),” the neighbors
announced.
Conchita was stunned, still feeling
sleepy from a long night but she did not
panic. Instead she went back home to
make sure her father did not get hold of a
newspaper before a telegram arrived.
Jose Guevara had filed the story
Saturday and it came out the very next
day. It took the telegram a little longer to
arrive.
“Conchita, get me the newspapers,”
Vicente Orestes ordered.
“The plane has not yet arrived from
Manila,” Conchita replied. “But it will
come soon.”
Just as she said it, she saw the
postman coming. It was the expected
telegram. “Its message,” Conchita
remembers, “was one which asked for
forgiveness and for his blessing.”
“When I handed Papa the telegram,
even without knowing its contents, he
went inside the room and stayed there a
while before he came out again to show
me the telegram.”
He was misty-eyed and said that he
was happy because at least “Imelda was
not getting married to Ariston Nakpil.”
But he was sad because like any father
he was losing a daughter, the very first in
the family to get married.
“And besides,” he said, “Who is this
Marcos, anyway? I do not even know
him.”
 The whole day, Conchita and he
ransacked the house, looking for articles
in old magazines to know everything
they could know about Marcos. Luckily,
he was featured as one of the year’s
outstanding congressmen in a magazine.
They had kept the magazine only because
Danieling was also one of them.
Vicente Orestes read through the
article over and over again. He was
eager to know who this man was that his
daughter would have decided to marry
after 11 days of courtship.
Still he said he felt the same sense of
importance he had 25 years before when
she was born at the San Juan de Dios
Hospital.
An announcement on the front page,
details of a coming lavish wedding —
indeed, his daughter had married an
important man.
At 37, Congressman Marcos had many
things going for him. If he told Imelda
that she was marrying the future
president of the Philippines, he meant to
keep that promise. He told her that his
whole life was a preparation for the
highest post of the country. His ambition
was not wishful thinking but a thoroughly
worked out plan.
He had been an exemplary student,
topping his class from grade school in
Laoag and Sarrat, Ilocos Sur, to the
College of Law, University of the
Philippines, where he graduated cum
laude.
 The magazine article described him as
the most decorated Filipino soldier in
World War II. Twenty-seven medals
were allegedly bestowed on him, four of
them for wounds sustained in battle. The
New York Times would refer to him
years later, when he became President,
as the “Philippines’ Audie Murphy.”
As a trial lawyer, he had the
reputation of defending and acquitting
himself in a sensational trial that made
him a national figure at 22.
The sensational trial was on the
Nalundasan murder case. It was a
watershed in Marcos’s life because
ironically it would be this trial that
would launch his political career.
Imelda was barely 10 years old when
Marcos was arrested for the murder of
Julio Nalundasan, a political rival who
defeated his father for the congressional
seat in Batac, llocos Sur.
While she was a child whose
loyalties were torn between father and
mother, Marcos was also facing a
crucial stage in his life. Fresh from law
school, he rose in public to defend
himself from the serious charge of the
murder of his father’s political rival.
It was a challenge of heroic
proportions. The trial would determine
the direction of his life. If he won, the
public would lionize him, install him as
a hero; if he lost, his future life, his
ambitions, would be shattered forever.
Judge Roman Cruz of the Court of First
Instance laid down the decision and
convicted the young man for murder. He
appealed the decision and the case was
brought to the Supreme Court where the
decision was reversed. Interestingly, the
Supreme Court decision cited “the
brilliant defense to acquit the accused
was put up by the youngest trial lawyer,
Marcos himself.” It was a spectacular
legal victory that put him in the national
limelight and spurred him to seek
vindication by taking up greater
challenges for fame and glory.
The decision to acquit was written by
Justice Jose P. Laurel. It said:
“By and large, we find the testimony
of Calixto Aguinaldo to be inherently
improbable and full of contradictions in
important details. For this reason, we
decline to give him any credit. In view
of this condition, we find it neither
necessary nor profitable to examine the
corroborative evidence presented by the
prosecution. Where the principal and
basic evidence upon which the
prosecution rests its case fails, all
evidence intended to support or
corroborate it must hence fail.
The judgment of the lower court is
accordingly reversed and the defendant-
appellants Ferdinand E. Marcos and
Quirino Lizardo are acquitted of the
charge of murder, and forthwith
liberated from imprisonment and
discharged from the custody of the law.”
With the court decision, the 23-year-
old young lawyer had tackled a
challenge few men would ever
experience — to be charged with murder
and successfully defend oneself at his
own trial.
Such an experience firms up a man’s
character, psychologically and
emotionally. After the Nalundasan trial,
Marcos emerged not merely a brilliantly
articulate lawyer but also an
exceptionally confident and courageous
man. But others said the decision comes
out of Justice Laurel’s own character
because he was from Batangas, where
machismo is admired. He saw himself in
Marcos and what he would have done
under the same circumstances.
The more Vicente Orestes read about
the man his daughter by Trinidad was
about to marry, the more he realized how
different he was from him.
The war saw the young Marcos
trudging jungles, getting wounded, being
incarcerated, living with death, while
Vicente Orestes sat reading in the
veranda of their nipa hut in Calle Real.
If he were younger when the war
came, he too, might have had a “taste”
for heroic exploits. But he had been old,
tired, and disillusioned by then.
Marcos was luckier. He met serious
challenges at fortuitous times of his life.
Townsfolk talked about his happy youth
in Sarrat. His parents, Mariano Marcos
and Josefa Edralin, provided the
environment that helped him develop a
character marked with unusual self-
confidence. No wonder when challenges
came in later life, he was ready to face
them.
A self-assured man, he thrived on
challenges and therefore sought them,
each challenge greater than the last.
Indeed, he has often said he thrived best
in times of grave danger, when his life
was threatened.
Described as a “very fundamental
man,” he told his biographer Hartzell
Spence in the book For Every Tear a
Victory, that the experience of the Death
March was the turning point of his life.
“The relentless charge of death had
cleansed him of all impurities of
character, of indecision, lack of
motivation and flagging drive,” wrote
Spence. The experience of the Death
March was not about a moment’s threat
that passed briefly, but the experience of
three months of continuous daily threat to
his life. That was what he needed.
Marcos was imbued with the spirit of
the good fight. He had no time for
trivialities. He combined his machismo
with a playboy image and had a string of
girlfriends before he met Imelda. But the
women were a diversion. Something
was lacking in his life. He yearned for a
woman who would be able to share his
inner life of challenge and victory that
was shaped through the crucible of the
Nalundasan murder, his defense, and
eventual acquittal.
 As a neophyte in politics, his search
for a woman that might fulfill his
ambition revolved around women from
wealthy and powerful families. To him it
was important to be accepted in politics
and this meant breaking through high
society. For a while, still new in
politics, he was linked to Maria Aurora
Quezon, daughter of President Manuel L.
Quezon, but nothing came out of the
rumored match. The talk was he was
snubbed. The Quezon girl, as a daughter
of a president, would have been a
logical step to fulfill his political
ambitions.
Then there was Chito Madrigal, heir
to the vast shipping fortune, whom he
had also reportedly courted. During
Malacañang functions, when she was
present, Guevara often teased the
President about his old flame.
These courtships are clues to how
Marcos viewed marriage — it would be
a stepping-stone to his ambition. But
while he tried hard to break into the
establishment he was rebuffed again and
again. As a man, Marcos had his needs
quite apart from ambition. The most
serious romance of Marcos before his
marriage to Imelda was, his friends say,
with Carmen Ortega, holder of a Miss
Photography title. She was his mistress
long before he met Imelda. Those who
knew about the Ortega-Marcos union say
it was serious enough that an
announcement of their engagement and
forthcoming marriage was published in
the Manila Times in August 1953.
Loreto, Imelda’s cousin, had a clipping
of the announcement and kept it without
thinking it would one day be important.
Marcos, however, claimed later that he
had not known that such an
announcement would be published.
In sum, the women Marcos sought at
the beginning of his political life had to
have at least one of the qualities that he
needed as his partner in his quest for the
presidency. The ideal in his mind was
someone who would have wealth,
power, beauty all rolled into one
woman. That was what made Imelda
instantly desirable to him and the reason
why he would not let her go without a
signed and sealed document of
commitment. He had to get her consent
as soon as he saw her. Everything
connected — she had beauty and
although she may not have been wealthy
at the time, she had at least a name that
conjured affluence and influence.
This is a crucial detail in the
unraveling of Imelda’s story. More than
anything that shaped Imelda’s later
persona, not enough has been said that
she would be driven to be the Imelda in
the mind of the ambitious Marcos.
From the start he knew that she would
be his chiefest asset in a presidential
campaign and would make a regal First
Lady he could be proud of and dedicate
affectionate verses to.
CHAPTER XII

For Every Day A

Diamond
ON HER RETURN TO MANILA FROM
Baguio, Imelda flashed an expensive
ring on her finger for her friends to
admire. “He courted me with
diamonds,” she boasted. The engagement
ring was encircled with 11 diamonds,
representing 11 days of courtship. Her
family name — Romualdez — once a
scourge, was now a blessing joined by a
hyphen to Marcos. Although not of
Manila’s old rich or high society, it was
a name with a promising political future.
In her, Marcos found the formula for a
First Lady that he was looking for.
Ironically, the name Romualdez might
have rung with wealth and power but all
this she did not have. During those early
days of their marriage, how was he to
know that? Slowly he was initiated to
this side of Imelda’s character. She had
sheer will power to make up for the
poverty and misery of her childhood in
the garage of San Miguel. With her
marriage to Marcos, she would carry the
name Romualdez without
embarrassment: She was poor no more.
Despite her joyful and triumphant
return from the mountain city, the woman
of humble origins was on her way to
become a source of envy by those she
left behind on the road to social
acceptance and material wealth.
She would no longer be the lost
stranger when she arrived in the city for
the first time with nothing but a tampipi
(a flimsy native suitcase) and a few
pesos. With so little, a woman less
motivated might have been discouraged.
She knew she had a a lot to learn to
improve to adjust to her new life in the
city but she was determined to do better
than those richer or more socially
prominent in Manila’s closed society.
Little by little, she slowly moved away
from her past, a life of want and
suffering, and the heroism that came with
it. Instead of being merely discovered by
editors looking for “fresh” subjects, she
was now besieged by society editors
and columnists. The story of her
wedding preparations was marked as a
“must” for newspaper coverage.
On her part, one can only conjecture
what her feelings were of her newly
found position in society, although there
were many who had their stories to tell.
Imelda slowly began to change and this
was not just because she could buy more
expensive clothes and jewellery. Her
friends said “something else about her
changed.” It is not easy or simple to
make the passage from poverty to wealth
without affecting one’s character. In
Imelda’s case it was more difficult than
with most. The experience of having
been denied buying a pair of shoes at the
time when she lived in the garage with
an ailing mother would not be easily
satisfied. Indeed the kind of denial and
pain Imelda suffered in childhood could
not be compensated by material
acquisitions.
What she ached for could never be
satisfied. She wished the impossible —
she wished that the unhappiness of those
years in the garage could be undone. She
wanted to return to those years and
change the circumstances of her youth.
No amount of wealth could make up
for the desire to reconcile that unhappy
past with her present wealth and
influence. Having once had only a pair
of shoes partly answers why she had an
insatiable appetite for shoes and more
shoes. This was at the heart of Imelda’s
excesses and frustrations in later Marcos
years. She would have had to live with
that past.
Perhaps, the compensating factor in
her tragic childhood was the beauty she
would turn out to be as a woman. She
recalls Ramon Valera who offered her a
gown for half its cost because he had
thought she could afford that because she
was a Romualdez.
Being the only couturier of note in
town in those days, he was
commissioned to “make the wedding
gown.” He was left to decide what kind
of gown she should wear as the young
Congressman’s bride.
Even at a late hour on the eve of the
wedding day, the much sought-after
couturier would not reveal the details of
his design and execution of the gown.
When interviewed by a society editor
about her wedding ensemble, Imelda
could only guess that it might be of
“satin material,” but even that she could
not say for certain. As for the couturier,
Mr. Valera was not available for
comment. He wanted to spring a surprise
on the wedding guests and keep the press
guessing.
The only definite detail the bride was
able to give that evening was that she
would carry her mother’s prayerbook
(an item Remedios held on her own
wedding). No one around her then knew
the significance of the prayerbook and
what it symbolized except that it was
one of the items in a wedding formula
for luck, “something new, something old,
something borrowed, something blue.”
By then, as a young bride-to-be
Imelda had only a hazy remembrance of
her mother. The fussing bride would not
have known that her marriage was the
fulfillment of a prophecy Remedios had
made before she died: that her children
would at least be better off than she had
been. Her mother had said it to only one
person —- Estrella, the faithful helper
on the eve of her death.
Estrella was not around at Imelda’s
wedding.
Bits of information about the wedding
leaked out “that she would carry a blue
handkerchief ,” that the wedding cake
would be a replica of the Legislative
Building, that the bridegroom’s wedding
ring had the shape of a rope. The
significance of the prayerbook was lost
in happy trivialities.
The next morning, May 1, 1954, was a
brilliant day. Towards noon, the
temperature read 96 degrees. At 7
o’clock of that morning, while Imelda
dressed for the great event, the sun shone
in scorching brilliance.
The secretive couturier turned up with
the gown on time. It was of nylon tulle
and white bridal satin — this much the
bride had guessed. The wide skirt was
covered with leaves in nacre sequins,
seed pearls, and rhinestones. The
sleeves were done in satin and traced in
chenille. The wisteria motif was
repeated on the panels and the mitts. A
long satin train trailed at the back. A veil
of illusion tulle was held in place by a
small coronet with white feathers
covering the ears and extended to frame
her face.
Imelda Romualdez-Marcos was
beautiful on her wedding day,
newspaper accounts wrote. Indeed she
was more beautiful than she had ever
been. At long last she could say goodbye
to a half-hungry life. Only a very thin
layer of powder was on the face of the
bride. Her shoes were the open sandals
with Cuban heels fashionable at the time.
The groom wore the native formal
dress shirt, barong tagalog. Physical
preparations on his side were not hectic.
But it was he who was more worried
before the wedding. He could not
produce a baptismal certificate, an
absolute necessity for the church rites.
This was worrying. He had memorized
the Mass in one sitting and the bride had
been impressed with his religious
fervor.
Marcos’s father was an Aglipayan
(Independent Church of the Philippines),
but his mother was a Catholic. The
records of his baptism did not seem to
be available. But he was not one to fuss
about a “trivial” matter like baptism
before a Catholic rite of message, unlike
Imelda’s Protestant lover in Tacloban
who had stood by his belief at the
expense of his love.
Ferdinand E. Marcos was quickly
baptized at the Lourdes Church in
Quezon City twenty-four hours before
the wedding in order to produce a
baptismal certificate, with the parish
records keeper as his sponsor.
One thousand guests, mostly members
of Congress, Cabinet Officials, and
members of Manila’s social elite filled
the San Miguel Pro- Cathedral.
“We were there,” Conchita said, “but
the family stayed in the background. We
knew it was more of a political
wedding.”
And indeed it was. President Ramon
Magsaysay, a Nacionalista President
whose budget had been attacked by
Liberal Congressman Marcos for days,
was one of the sponsors. So were
Congressman Eugenio Perez (Liberal)
and Congressman Eulogio Rodriguez, Jr.
(Nacionalista). The only member of the
Romualdez clan among the sponsors,
also a politician’s wife, was Mrs. Paz
Gueco Romualdez, the wealthy aunt who
was surprised that Imelda had nothing
when she first came to Manila.
Of the members of her immediate
family, Lourdes, Imelda’s eldest
stepsister, was unable to attend. She was
in the United States pursuing advanced
medical studies. A few months before
Imelda’s own wedding, she had married
Emil Caguiat, a Filipino old-timer in the
United States. Her absence from the
wedding is worth noting since the event
foreshadowed the beginning of Imelda’s
ascendancy as head of the two families
of Vicente Orestes, in view of her
“substantial” marriage to Marcos.
In Filipino families, the member with
greater advantages is recognized in many
ways as the head of the clan — just as
Norberto was titular head, even while
the old man Daniel was still alive,
because of his scholarly stature, the
important offices he held, his relative
prosperity. Lourdes, before Imelda’s
marriage to Marcos, had been “head”.
She was a “doctora” and had at any rate
assumed the management of the finances
of the Vicente Orestes Romualdezes
partly because she was the eldest and
partly because of the retiring ways of her
father.
After the wedding ceremony, the
guests all proceeded to Malacañang
Park. One of the sponsors, President
Ramon Magsaysay, had offered the
Malacañang Park for the reception. By
doing so, Magsaysay unwittingly became
a party to the fulfillment of one of
Marcos’s dreams. Indeed, it was only
fitting that the man whose dream it was
to become President of the Philippines
should hold his wedding reception in
Malacañang.
 Among the vast number of Romualdez
relatives who had come to the wedding,
only a few knew that the land they
stepped on, the site of the fabulous
Romualdez-Marcos reception, the now
well-known Malacañang Park on the
riverbank opposite the Palace by the
Pasig, had once been owned by Daniel
Romualdez. It was the sacatehan that
financed the studies of his three sons,
one of them Imelda’s father. Neither did
anyone know that the three boys had
crossed that field from their Pandacan
house several times each day on their
way to the Ateneo Municipal. The three
Romualdez sons were provincianos
(country folk) coming to the city for their
education.
 Such memories were not the stuff for
the glittering guests of high society in the
Philippines. They would never know or
care how the Romualdez boys rose from
humble beginnings to become prominent
in Manila’s elite 400 — the number
society editors would put as the closed
circle of Manila’s rich and powerful.
The mood was political. Guests at the
wedding reception were in spirited
conversation on the topic of
“turncoatism” when politicians flitted
from party to party for whichever gave
them opportunities. This was true of
those who claimed to be Nacionalistas
or Liberals. They were only party men in
name and were not bound by allegiance
to the principles of a political party that
would be expected in a more serious
society. Imelda and Marcos’s wedding
was not any different from any other high
society wedding, full of hypocrisy and
pretended friendliness of people who
would sooner stab each other when their
backs were turned.
The reception over, the bridegroom,
Congressman Ferdinand Marcos
announced to the guests that they would
be on their way to Baguio for a short
honeymoon before embarking on a trip
around the world.
When they arrived at the Pines Hotel,
they met the Pio Pedrosas, who were
also there at the time. After greeting and
congratulating the couple, former
Finance Secretary Don Pio said, “Brod”
(he and Marcos belonged to the Upsilon
Sigma Phi of the University of the
Philippines), “when the children come,
they should be born either in Batac or in
Tacloban. In a hospital in Manila they
will not even be recognized as
Manileños.”
“Brod, that is true, ‘no?” replied
Marcos. But none of the Marcos children
were delivered either in Ilocos Norte or
in Leyte.
Conchita and her father Vicente
Orestes returned to Tacloban to await
the couple’s return from the honeymoon,
at which time Imelda could properly
introduce Ferdinand to the Leyte folks
and pay the proper respects to ther
family especially her father. Vicente
Orestes had been complaining of a pain
in the chest. But since the pain was not
severe, it was dismissed as some
passing ailment. He would hear nothing
of suggestions that he come and stay in
Manila. After the wedding, he returned
as soon as he could to Tacloban, later to
Tolosa, to be by the sea that he loved.
The wedding held at the San Miguel
Pro-Cathedral had resuscitated painful
memories. The last rites for both his
wives were held there.
He was forced once more to view the
General Solano house from across the
church and the Singian Clinic where his
young second wife had succumbed to
double pneumonia. That small area of
home and church and hospital had
condensed a thousand memories of what
had been his failed existence in Manila.
After the honeymoon, Imelda brought
her new husband to Tacloban. There had
been the problem of where they would
stay. He was, after all, a congressman.
Once, on a trip to Leyte while still a
bachelor, Marcos had stayed at
Dominador Pacho’s house. Pacho was
Imelda’s former suitor and he was
pleased to play host to the congressman.
But on this trip, it was expected that
the newly married couple would live in
the Quonset house on Calle Real where
her family lived, even if it was too
shoddy to house a congressman.
The problem was solved when
Vicenting, Imelda’s stepbrother, offered
his house, which was more presentable
than the remodelled Quonset hut. He had
made a little money doing business with
Danieling in the Leyte ports, enabling
him to construct the house.
Despite this, Imelda could not hide the
house where she had grown up.
“I was so ashamed when Papa had to
show our Antipolo toilet,” she said to
her good friend Lulu, who was in
Tacloban during Imelda’s visit with
Marcos.
Lulu recalls that Imelda’s friends in
Tacloban, upon hearing that the couple
had arrived, went to the Romualdez
house. Imelda ran out without her
slippers. This was a habit of Imelda way
back in her schooldays in Tacloban. She
was halfway to the door when Ferdinand
saw her without her slippers. He did not
say a word. But Imelda quickly returned
and put on her slippers before greeting
her friends.
Such things as a primitive toilet
system and such ways as running around
without slippers are too trivial
shortcomings to affect a marriage. It was
important that the Congressman see all
this without her having to make any
explanations. They were getting to know
each other and would have to adjust and
accept each other as it should be in
every marriage.
Marriage often releases one from
inhibitions. Imelda was no exception to
the rule. During her brief acquaintance
with the iron ways of urbanity, while
living in Danieling’s house, she had been
reticent about revealing the conditions of
her family home life in Tacloban.
Consequently, many acquaintances in the
city thought she was an adopted child of
the Danieling Romualdezes. She had
imagined that it was unnecessary for her
to give an account of her own family and
be humiliated by it.
There were, of course, a few among
her friends in Manila who knew about
her poverty. Nakpil had been one of
them, and that was probably one reason
he became dear to her.
“She was a completely honest girl. I
knew all along about her difficulties,”
Nakpil recalls. Her engagement to
Nakpil lasted almost a year, and there
was time for this kind of testing of
character.
But with her new husband, there was
not enough time in a sevenday courtship
to know much about each other before
their marriage. They had met in
Congress and saw each other once
before the hasty marriage in a quick civil
ceremony in the romantic setting of
Baguio. From there, the 11-day romance
and courtship was capped by the grand
wedding at the Pro-Cathedral and the
reception in Malacañang Park. It had
seemed all too unreal.
By contrast, Tacloban, specifically the
world Imelda knew on Calle Real, was
real life — the poverty, the hardships.
But it would seem that it would not have
mattered to Marcos had he known then
that her name did not mean what it was
supposed to bring with it — power and
prestige. In the years that followed,
Imelda would prove herself as an asset
to him and he would love her for what
she was — her determination and pluck
rather than a wrong impression of what
the Romualdez name meant to her.
Neither was it necessary for him to
visit Tacloban to realize that Imelda was
poor. He knew she was, but not that
poor, he told friends later. He had an eye
for rich society women. He could tell by
the way women dressed if they had
wealth, pretended to have wealth, or did
not have wealth and did not pretend to
have any. Imelda dressed simply,
according to her means. She did not
wear any fancy jewelry. Her ways were
simple, different from those of Manila
girls. He perceived all this even in the
short time of their courtship. Instead of it
bothering him, it he wanted to protect
her more because he saw potential to
become a magnificent lady if she were
given the chance.
Guevara recalls that soon after the
civil rites in Baguio, Marcos handed her
a thick envelope of cash that he kept
with the Pines Hotel cashier. The nosy
newspaperman queried, “Why did you
give all of it?”
“Because she’s my wife!” Marcos
snapped.
 Any groom would have made the
same gesture, but with the Congressman
and Imelda, the gesture had meant much
more. He knew her needs and was glad
to assure her that from then on, life
would be happier than she had ever
known.
Although Imelda felt embarrassed and
winced when her father nonchalantly
gave the Congressman a tour of their
small home, she was glad he had spared
her the task. Vicente Orestes, Conchita
recalls, took to his new son-in-law
immediately.
Imelda noticed that her father had
become thinner and did not look well.
He coughed a lot and complained of pain
in his chest, but he would not think of
medical attention. He was afraid that the
doctor would recommend surgery and it
was something he would never undergo.
Nevertheless, Imelda kept in mind that
once settled with her new family in the
house in San Juan, she would send for
her father to receive the best medical
attention.
Early in her marriage, Imelda did not
lose her perspective about having been
poor in the past. She was too close to
her origins to forget why she had come
to the city. Foremost in her mind was
that if she should be lucky, get a job, or
marry well, her brothers and sisters
would share in her good fortune.
Marcos, as he slowly learned more
about his bride after a courtship of 11
days, understood her concern and did not
stop her from wanting to improve their
lives. He opened the doors of his Ortega
home to Imelda’s sisters and brothers
without counting the cost.
In those early days of her good life in
San Juan, she also did not forget her
immediate benefactors, the Reyeses. To
her they were her “foster parents” in
Manila. She told Marcos about them,
how they helped her in the Miss Manila
contest, of the free voice lessons
Adoracion gave her and how she wanted
to reciprocate their kindnesses.
“We should pay them a visit,” she said
one day.
It was almost 9 o’clock in the evening
when the young couple knocked at the
wooden gate of the Reyes home on Sta.
Teresita Street. Since the Reyeses
retired early, the doors were locked and
only a small light at the gate was kept
on. Mrs. Reyes remembers distinctly that
she was about to sleep when she heard
voices from a man and a woman who
were knocking and calling alternately:
“Tao po, tao po.” (Is anybody home?)
Mrs. Reyes heard the voices. “It
sounds like Meldy,” she thought. She
woke up her husband and together they
let in the newly married couple. It was
Marcos who began the conversation
after Imelda had made the introduction.
“Sabi ho ni Imelda, malaki daw and
tulong ninyo sa kanya, kaya ho,*
(Imelda says that you have helped her a
lot) we are here to pay respects,” the
young Congressman began.
The Reyeses felt awkward. Being a
humble couple, they had not imagined
that a Congressman would visit them in
their humble home in the middle of the
night. But Imelda had been dear to them
and they were happy to see her.
“They looked like any honeymooning
couple, sweet and very much concerned
with each other,” Adoracion observed.
Marcos then invited the couple to
have dinner with them. The Reyes
couple had finished dinner, but being
eager to go out with the newly married
couple, they accepted the invitation.
The Reyeses remember vividly that
the four of them voted unanimously to eat
at the Aristocrat Restaurant on Dewey
Boulevard, then one of the most popular
restaurants in Manila. There was a lot of
ribbing from the Congressman who
teased his new bride.
“Ay si Meldy parang bata. Binigay
ko sa kanya ang mga susi sa bahay
pero hanggang ngayon hindi pa alam
kung alin ang tamang susi sa mga iba’t
ibang pinto.” (Imelda is like a child. I
gave her a bunch of keys, but until now
she still does not know which key
belongs to what door.)
“Huh!” Imelda retorted to stop him.
The Congressman ordered sate babi,
(pork barbecue) which he liked very
much, and again he teased Imelda that
she should learn to cook.
 They had a nice time, Mrs. Reyes
recalls. The evening over, the young
couple brought the Reyeses home,
promising to see them again.
Ferdinand Marcos’s residence on
Ortega Street is a sprawling bungalow
with a magnificent garden. The garden
on rolling ground follows a natural
elevation giving character to the house.
There is a lower and higher area in
between, like a mezzanine. The lower
portion is partly covered with lawn,
partly paved. There is a small, tiled pool
for children in the mezzanine where
water, spills from the rocks above. The
front of the house faces the upper-level
garden with a teahouse at the back.
From outside, none of these could be
seen, with high walls surrounding the
house’s perimeter. The only way to see
the interior of the house or its garden is
to be invited in. Describing the house to
his new bride, Marcos said “It is made
for entertaining.” As a politician, he had
to entertain on mane was young, a new
bride and still trying to undy occasions,
even when he was a bachelor. The huge
garden was where he entertained many
guests. With Imelda by his side, he
looked forward to more of these parties
that would gather politicians and friends.
Strangely she told relatives that when
she arrived to manage this household,
she was not allowed to make any major
changes. Marcos was a very
superstitious person. “This house,” he
had said many times, “has given me luck.
We’ll keep it as it is.”
Throughout his political career, the
Ortega house was his campaign
headquarters. He did not want any major
changes that might alter “the house of
luck.” Imelda did not mind the
restrictions imposed on her by her
husband. She was young, a new bride,
and still trying to understand and learn to
cope with her role as wife in his
political career.
She told a cousin that she was
overwhelmed by the amount of money
she had to handle. She had been used to
a life budgeting P5 from day to day.
Now she had to manage a house that
paid a cook P120 a month. When she
became Mrs.Marcos she thought the life
was extravagant and wasteful.
“Imelda, like any other newly married
young woman, sought the life of a good
wife as she had known it from her
mother and her grandmother before her.
The women cleaned the house, cooked
the food, and cared for the husband,” a
cousin observed.
Imelda told Ferdinand that since she
was not doing anything most of the time
anyway, she could cook. She was aghast,
she said, at doing nothing while they
paid P120 a month for a cook.
“Look, Ferdie,” she confronted him,
“I’ll cook and you pay me the P120.”
Marcos was apparently amused with
the “deal” and, intrigued by his wife’s
innocence, decided to play along. Little
did he realize that Imelda was serious
about her suggestion She knew what
hard-earned money was and was
repelled by the thought of being a
spoiled wife.
Late one night, a man she did not
know came to visit. It was 10 o’clock in
the evening. Ferdinand received the
caller, who stayed for a long time. Both
he and Marcos spoke in whispers.
Imelda was surprised. She peeked out
of the bedroom door and waited for him
to come and, tell her what it was all
about. Soon Ferdie came in and asked
her in a grave tone to give him P5,000.”
“Who’s that?” she asked. “P5,000?”
He repeated the order. “Why should you
give him P5,000?,” she asked.
“Basta, give it. It’s important,” he
said.
Naturally, she was going to give it.
She just wanted to know who this man
was, coming at a late hour and
demanding P5, 000. Later she found out
that the man was one of Marcos’s
political leaders. In later years, she
would know hundreds of them and she
would ably manage funds to give them
from Marcos. At that time she was
aware she was merely custodian of that
money and had no choice but to give it
as she did that first night when one of
them visited.
That night, she began to realize she
might have been naive and foolish. The
next morning, at breakfast, she said:
“Naku, I have such a hard time cooking.
My nails are all broken and I get only
P120 a month. A man comes along from
out of the blue and you give him P5, 000
just like that.”
Ferdinand laughed.
“It’s your fault. Who told you to work
so hard to get only P120?”
Imelda was gradually being initiated
into the affluent life she only dreamed
about. She realized that as a wealthy
congressman’s wife, she could buy
everything she needed and wanted and to
have a share of her husband’s wealth.
This was how the conjugal partnership
began.
It started modestly and did not reveal
what would later become the thorniest
aspect of the Marcos leadership of the
Philippines. From then on, she got
whatever she wanted. As someone who
had only recently been poor, she was
overwhelmed by what it meant to be
wealthy with its privileges and material
excesses.
She needed a wardrobe. She bought
shoes, clothes, and ordered ternos (the
native formal long gown ordered through
local coutouriers for thousands of
pesos). The fashion grapevine was abuzz
with tattle that the new Mrs. Marcos was
ordering too many ternos from Ramon
Valera, the premier couturier, but as
Manila snobs would add: “she was also
wearing too much jewelry.”
 The poor rich girl from Tacloban
began spending with abandon. Her
shopping was unrestrained, but sadly,
she did not have the good taste of
someone who had been used to it. At the
time there was just no way it could have
been known that she had a past of
poverty and the grief that came with it.
Only a few did. Imelda was new to the
public eye. She was raw, as friends
including her high-society ex-fiance, the
architect, Ariston Nakpil, described her
even if she was already a
Congressman’s wife. The idea of
restraint was alien to her. It had no place
for a person trying to make up for the
years when she had nothing. During
those early years of marriage, the once-
poor Imelda Romualdez struggled to
understand her life as Mrs. Imelda
Marcos.
Outsiders would not be privy of just
what suffering she had both as a child
and an adult until her marriage. Those
who came close enough suspected she
had an inferiority complex that she tried
hard to hide. She sought stability in a
marriage that would help her break
completely from the past and start a new
life open to new experiences.
She wanted to cook, to supervise the
house, to garden, to be a mother, to be a
wife. She wanted a baby immediately.
When a year and a half passed and there
had been no sign of a baby, she fretted.
She asked Ferdinand if she could seek
medical help so she could bear a child
as soon as possible.
Ferdie, Meldy and Imee
Don Vicente Orestes Romualdez (Imelda’s
father) right before he died at the Marcos’s
Home in Ortega, San Juan,1955
CHAPTER XIII

A Father’s Profound
Carelessness
NOT VERY LONG AFTER THE
ROMUALDEZ-Marcos marriage, late in
1955, Imelda sent for her ailing father.
Conchita had written earlier that Vicente
Orestes was very sick and may die soon.
He was suffering, doctors diagnosed,
from advanced cancer of the lungs. For
months, he kept a brave struggle to ward
off the fatal disease. But this was to no
avail. By the time he was sent to Manila,
there was very little hope that he would
recover or undergo surgery to prolong
his life.
He was stubbon and would not listen
to any suggestion that his life could be
prolonged. Although he was not told, he
knew he had a serious illness. He was
70 years old, the last of the three
Romualdez sons of the previous
generation, his elder brothers having
died earlier.
In spite of a difficult life, he survived
his elder brothers because he gave up
fighting for success earlier than they did.
The Romualdez son who could not strike
roots in the city, the man with the
“lyrical” temperament who wanted to
spend the rest of his life in bohemian
leisure by the sea, proved to be the
sturdiest. He may not have been as
learned as Norberto nor as prosperous
as Miguel, but he lived longest. That,
also, was some kind of achievement.
He refused to come back to Manila.
Yet ironically, like his mother before
him, despite his aversion for the city, he
was doomed to die in it. Imelda had by
then sent for Alita and Conchita to study
in Manila; Lourdes was in the States;
Victoria was in Spain. The elder boys,
Francisco and Vicente, had married;
Dulce had entered the convent; and the
younger boys, Kokoy, Armando, and
Alfredo, were also in Manila studying.
Really, there was no one left to care for
Vicente Orestes in Tacloban even if he
insisted on staying there.
It was a blessing that he was able to
spend the last days of life in the Ortega
home where he found love and harmony.
It is said that he was pleased with the
marriage, especially when he came to
know his son-inlaw better. To him,
Congressman Ferdinand Marcos was a
very special kind of son-in-law. He
shared Imelda’s concern for her younger
brothers and sisters as if they were his
own.
“At no time did he make us feel we
had abused his hospitality despite the
fact that at one time almost the entire
family went in and out of Ortega,”
Conchita says. The youngest sister of
Imelda, more than anyone in Imelda’s
family, had a special affection for the
congressman. She recalls that often he
would ride with other congressman
friends to enable her to use the family
car when she had parties to go to.
Vicente Orestes was witness to all
such kindnesses during his brief stay
with the Marcoses. He saw in the young
congressman all that he lacked and had
failed to do in life. His son-in-law had a
strong will. He exerted authority without
being offensive. But most of all, he had
great confidence in himself when he
moved in the world.
He was happy that he lived long
enough to see the blessings of success
and fortune achieved by his eldest
daughter by Remedios, but it was a
bittersweet happiness. He knew, even
when Imelda was merely a newborn
baby, that she would be “somebody”, but
he could not have foreseen that during
the ups and downs of his own failed
marriages. In contrast, Vicente Orestes,
of the three Romualdez brothers, had
failed to make his mark and lived long
enough to realize it. He was destined to
close the chapter of a glorious
generation he had played almost no part
in making. While his brother Norberto
blazed trails in scholarship that survive
until today, Vicente Orestes had only his
private world of grief. To the end of his
days, his wish was that the children of
his two marriages would reconcile and
find peace with one another. Such a wish
would not have been fulfilled if he did
not have a generous daughter in Imelda.
During those last days Imelda called
for Lourdes. She wrote her saying that
being the eldest in the family and a
competent doctor, she should come home
and see what could be done for their
father. Imelda could easily have kept him
to herself on those last months and
ignored her brothers and sisters,
especially those from her father’s first
marriage who gave so much pain to her
mother. Instead she made her father feel
the fullness of her magnanimity.
The temptation was always there to
make him feel how wronged they were
as children of a second marriage. It was
a good time to flaunt revenge—that
although they had received less, they
were willing to give more. But Imelda
resisted the temptation. She told
relatives and friends that she wished to
forgive her brothers and sisters of the
first marriage and most of all, she
wished to forget the unhappiness of her
life in a garage in General Solano.
She made sure that before Vicente
Orestes died, he should see the two
families reconciled. She wanted him to
be consoled when he died that at least he
did not fail to finally bring harmony to
his family of two marriages.
When Lourdes arrived, she was
shocked to see how thin her father had
become. She loved him dearly, often
extravagantly, that she was willing to
make sacrifices to prove her love for
him. When she came back to Manila, she
left her husband Emil Caguiat in the
United States, promising to return only
after she had nursed her father to
recovery. She was never able to return
to her husband and eventually they were
divorced.
She did not complain of the monotony
and hard work of caring for her father
during the last days of his life. As a
doctor, she knew there was no hope that
he would ever recover. His last words
to Lourdes were: “I wish Meding had
seen the way you took care of her
children.”
That was at one o’clock in the
afternoon of September 30, 1955. Those
around him noticed how the lined and
tired face smoothened out as it so often
does at death. Once more he became the
“handsome, aristocratic, and enigmatic
gentleman” that parishioners in San
Miguel described. A priest from San
Beda was called to administer the last
sacraments.
“We were all present that day, all of
Vicente Orestes’s children,” Conchita
says, “but what I remember so well was
that Imelda did not want Papa’s body to
be brought to the funeraria (funeral
parlor). She wanted him embalmed right
at home.”
Vicente Orestes Romualdez’s obituary
appeared the next day in all newspapers
of the country. The bereaved mentioned
in the obituary were: Lourdes R.
Caguiat; Vicente, Jr.; Sister Bellarmine
(Dulce) S.SP.S; Victoria, Francisco,
Imelda R. Marcos, Benjamin, Alita,
Alfredo, Armando, Conchita, Emil
Caguiat, Milagros Lebumfacil and
Congressman Ferdinand E. Marcos.
A press story mentions details of
family relationships:
“Don Vicente Orestes Romualdez, Dean of
the College of Law, St. Paul’s College,
Tacloban, younger brother of the late Justice
of the Supreme Court, Norberto Romualdez,
and of the late former Mayor of Manila
Miguel Romualdez, died yesterday at the
home of his son-in-law Ferdinand E. Marcos.
He was 70 years old. The late Don Vicente
Romualdez is an uncle of Speaker Pro-
tempore Daniel Z. Romualdez and Eduardo Z.
Romualdez, Chairman of the Rehabilitation
Finance Corporation. His remains now lie in
state at the Marcos home at 204 Ortega
Street, San Juan, Rizal. Interment will take
place Sunday afternoon at one o’clock in the
La Loma cemetery.”

Again, he could not escape his fame

by association, that he owed his
significance to the successes of his two
brothers, his nephews, and his new son-
in-law.
According to his children, no trace of
envy appeared in Vicente Orestes
toward the successes of people around
him, friends and relatives alike. He was,
in his own way, an adequate person. If
he had not been a success, especially in
providing for his children, that was
because he did not care to be successful.
He showed no sign that he regretted his
life.
Even when he knew he was dying, he
was as careless about matters as the
writing of a will or the straightening out
of titles to the remaining properties so
that Meding’s children could feel wanted
and be Romualdezes not just in name.
Whatever properties he had were left to
his children of his first marriage. These
remained in their names even after he
died. He just did not seem to care. When
Imelda later became very wealthy, she
and Kokoy built houses on the lots on
Calle Real Street. The properties
remained in the name of Lourdes and the
other children of the first marriage. The
same is true with other properties he
owned in Tolosa.
The only likely explanation for that
oversight concerning property rights and
titles is that Vicente Orestes did not think
it important to execute a will. He simply
took it for granted that the children
would be able to fend for themselves
and make out in the world on their own.
It was a kind of profound carelessness
on his part to assume that Providence
takes care of those who are not left
much.
He died in the home of Imelda, who
would be twice blessed—no, not twice,
but 70 times seven times his wildest
expectations. She would be the leader
not only of her immediate family and the
entire Romualdez clan of her generation,
just as Norberto had been in his own.
The spectacular success of Imelda, the
deprived daughter of the least gifted son
of Daniel and Trinidad, would make up
for all the shortcomings and
disappointments of her father.
Imelda visiting Mrs. Magnolia Antonio, wife of
then sick Sen. Gaudencio Antonio
Having a laugh with Manila Times publisher
Joaquin Roces and Vice President Fernando
Lopez
CHAPTER XIV

Learning The Game

Named Politics
DURING THE FIRST MONTHS OF THEIR
marriage, in spite of her reputation as the
“Muse of Manila” with an illustrious
name and Marcos’s growing popularity
as the “Benjamin of Congress,” Imelda
had not yet made it socially with the “In
Crowd” of Manila’s elite. Politically,
she remained insignificant. What assets
she had - beauty and a newfound social
position — were not enough to give her
the cache needed to move with ease in
the charmed circle of the country’s
Beautiful People.
Her father had died. It had been a
terrible jolt to Imelda, who adored him
despite her dissatisfaction with the way
he managed their family life.
Her father’s death reopened old
wounds. How was she going to live with
the rest of her family now that she was
socially superior to the rest of them?
Would it be revenge or forgiveness,
continuous conflict or lasting
reconciliation? The stylish clothes she
wore and the expensive diamonds she
wore could not make up for her past.
Her image-makers claim that at the
beginning of her marriage, under the
tutelage of her husband, she was being
transformed into an accomplished wife.
She was not — not at this time.
As a congressman’s wife, she was
much too reticent to develop friendships
with wealthy, gregarious, influential
women who graced cocktail parties and
cut ribbons at opening-day ceremonies.
She knew very few politicians’ wives of
her own age. Most of the time she
preferred to stay at home.
To ward off her loneliness, she asked
Adoracion Reyes to visit her on Sundays
as a mother would. “Those Sundays
were unforgettable. I would bring my
children to Ortega Street and we would
spend the day in feminine banter,”
Adoracion says.
One day Imelda learned that her old
friend from Tacloban, Lulu de la Cruz,
had married and was staying in Manila,
she tracked down her address. Every so
often, she would send her car to pick up
Lulu. “When she gave birth to Imee,”
Lulu relates, “Imelda had me fetched and
I stayed with her in the Lourdes
Hospital, which is close to her house.
She told me that her delivery was
painful.”
At the birth of Imee, Marcos
presented Imelda with one diamond, and
explained, “For every girl, one diamond;
for every boy, two diamonds.”
When he first courted her with
diamonds, he promised her she would be
First Lady to the youngest President of
the Philippines. She thought that it would
mean the end of her struggle for some
decent measure of recognition and peace
of mind. As with most brides, she
looked forward to domestic stability,
with plenty of time for love and
companionship.
Imelda did not as yet comprehend the
full extent of her role as congressman’s
wife, and the more she thought of it, the
more frightened she grew. Marcos
expected more from her than simply
being a homebody, raising a family,
attending to household chores, and
entertaining friends at home. He was
initiating her to a new involvement in a
game completely unknown to her — a
game played under constant pressure
with complicated rules, under all kinds
of rough and treacherous challenges and
most of all deal with unpredictable
human beings who could be treacherous
when least expected.
The game had rules, many of them
arbitrary, and she had to learn to play it
by ear. To play it well, she needed to be
alternately cool and cunning because the
rules kept changing. The name of the
game was politics.
Marcos wanted her to read more
books, to be less inhibited, to shine as a
woman with worldly elan. He had a
prototype of a woman designed to be his
political partner and he wanted her to
fulfill that woman in his mind.
 Her provincial ways would not
suffice for the role that she was to play
as wife to Marcos. The people she
would have to deal with were
politicians and big-time businessmen
who knew the game. She had to be
knowledgeable, and more important, to
be shrewd to be able to deal with them
effectively. On her part, she had to
motivate herself to be the woman he
wanted her to be — who would learn
and be adept at the ways of the political
world. She found that difficult because
she was not psychologically prepared
for the role.
What woman would not be hurt when
the man she married was now asking her
to change, to be better than what she
was. It seemed almost ironic that he was
asking her to be re-educated, as if she
were a girl who had not always wanted
a better education such as her affluent
city cousins had.
It was painful to be told to develop
taste when she had wanted the good
things of life so much but she did not
have the means until now. It was
unbearable to be told that she had to
work and strive to excel, to be nice to
people one never knew out of political
expediency.
When she became First Lady, she
often looked back to those first months
of her marriage. At first she wanted to
avoid getting involved in politics
because the task of transforming her
personality seemed impossible.
Marriage to Marcos meant changing her
quiet lifestyle to a more assertive, fast-
stepping one. The thought of change was
too much — and it gave her
excruciatingly painful migraine
headaches.
During these days of Imelda’s married
life, Conchita says: “There were times
when she would just collapse and her
feet would grow numb and cold. We
would bring her to Dr. Jose Barcelona,
who lived nearby.”
If Imelda was accustomed to a
passive, somewhat fatalistic approach to
life, Marcos was not. He thrived on
competition, always confident of coming
out the winner. He wanted her to share
with him the anxiety, pain, and glory of
the uphill struggle to the political top.
She cracked under the pressure and
had a nervous breakdown.
But unlike Doña Trinidad, who had
her cure by resting by the sea, Imelda
was sent to the United States for
treatment. An eminent psychiatrist
convinced her that it was in her best
interest to resolve the conflict. To save
her marriage, she had no other choice.
She began to fall deeply in love with
the man she hardly knew and had
married after a swift courtship.
Susie Abadilla, who accompanied
Imelda at her PWU voice lessons, asked
her, right after her marriage to Marcos, if
she had loved this man deeply enough to
marry him after a brisk 11-day courtship.
She merely shrugged her shoulders
enigmatically and said, “Well.”
But after the trip to the United States
and the sessions at the psychiatrist’s
clinic, Imelda emerged a new person.
She cast away her inhibitions and
uncertainties. She began to express a
willingness to gain experience, to face
the challenge of becoming more
extrovert, more resourceful, more
adaptable, to meet and study the people
who ran the government and the people
who put them there, corporation tycoons,
industrialists, shipping magnates,
lawyers, journalists. If her poverty and
intellectual limitations were handicaps,
she would try harder to overcome and
transcend them.
In 1960, when she had just delivered
Irene, their youngest child, she made up
her mind to become an exemplary
politician’s wife.
“I first met her in the Liberal Party
Convention of that year;” relates Connie
Manahan, wife of former Senator
Manuel Manahan, who would be one of
her close friends among wives of
senators.
“She was very simple, very
unaffected although she wore
conspicuous jewelry and expensive-
looking ternos. She was good to look at
but when she moved and talked, she
gave away her provincial background.”
Beauty and height could not make up
for her lack of confidence in
conversation. As a woman with a
complex she wanted earnestly to please
and that earnestness exposed her. As in
her days at the PWU, she did not realize
that overeagerness made her an easy
target of nasty twaddle among
sophisticated Manilans.
Except to accompany her husband to
meetings and out-of-town trips, Imelda
did not care to venture out to public
places. She was not seen in art exhibit
openings, or social gatherings on her
own.
“One time she suggested we go to see
a movie. When we returned, Marcos
was there pleasantly surprised. I
remember him saying distinctly,
‘Milagro! (A miracle!), Imelda going out
to the movies!’”
Her attempts to be socially accepted
by senators’ wives were rebuffed by
some of them. The main reason, of
course, was her husband’s nottoo- secret
ambition to become president. But her
naivete made matters worse because she
openly talked about her husband’s
political ambitions.
“Marcos will run for the Presidency
of the Philippines,” she would declare at
odd times and unlikely places, as if it
were the most natural thing on earth for a
husband to do. Acquaintances were
surprised that she referred to him as
“Marcos” when she talked of him as a
politician, “Ferdie” when she talked of
him as her husband. Each time she spoke
of Marcos and his political ambition,
she stoked both ridicule and disbelief.
Then, of course, women envied her
good looks. She easily stood out as the
fairest and the youngest of the senators’
wives.
She worked at how to make dramatic
entrances. Before entering a room, she
always stood for a moment at the door in
silent announcement of her presence.
“When she entered, women would nudge
each other and raise their eyebrows to
prepare for a collective snub,” Connie
continues.
But she knew that if she were to help
her husband, she needed friends, not
enemies. When she felt that she had
found a sympathetic one in Connie, she
took her in confidence. Connie recalls
the days they used to go out together:
“On one occasion, maybe because she
could not keep the hurt to herself
anymore, she asked me why nobody
among the senators’ wives seemed to
like her and why I bothered to befriend
her. I replied that it’s probably because I
had no reason to envy her. Neither her
beauty nor her wealth nor her husband’s
power was a threat to me because I
cared nothing for those things.”
Some of the other senators’ wives
believed that they had reason to resent
her. There was Lily Padilla, wife of
Senator Ambrosio Padilla, who was just
as young and as fair and had a husband
equally ambitious as Marcos.
The rivalry between Imelda and Lily
became a favorite topic of many
politicians’ wives’ tete-a-tetes. A story,
for instance, got around that a jeweler
had said that Imelda described Lily’s
jewels as made of paste. Naturally the
information reached Lily. When Imelda
realized that the rumor had gone out of
control, she did not hesitate to see Lily.
She denied ever having told the story
and apologized if the unfounded rumor
had hurt her.
Whether or not Lily accepted the
apology is not known. Later, other
incidents reportedly arose between
them. Other women who relished
watching the battle between the two
beauties added to the general confusion
by distorting information and inventing
bits of sheer fiction. There was gossip
that Imelda had complained that Lily had
stuck out her tongue at her at a party. Lily
was reportedly aghast to hear this rumor
and went around as an aggrieved party,
saying, “How could I do such a thing! “
On the contrary, she claimed, it was
Imelda who had been unfriendly at a
party and had given her dagger looks!
The background of the rivalry
between the two women had their
origins in Imelda’s Rose of Tacloban
days when Senator Padilla visited and
openly talked about her beauty and that
she should go to Manila.
Such womanly fights seemed trivial
but they put a great strain on Imelda’s
patience.
Up to the time of Marcos’s campaign
to be senate president, Imelda’s so
called political prowess had been
provincial and crude. Marcos needed
two votes crucial to win the Senate
Presidency in 1963: those of Senators
Manuel Manahan and Raul Manglapus.
The two belonged to the Progressive
Party of the Philippines, a third force
which joined the Liberal Party to form
the United Opposition during the 1960
senatorial elections.
“Pacita Manglapus and myself were
sometimes embarrassed by Imelda’s
solicitousness,” Connie relates. “Once
when she saw that we were standing in a
party, she carried chairs by herself to
offer to us.”
Imagine a tall, fair, and regal-looking
lady stooping to pick up a chair to give
to another woman! But then Imelda had
made up her mind by that time that she
would go through any length to make her
husband win the Senate Presidency. It
was a crucial stepping-stone to his
campaign for the Presidency.
All throughout that campaign to win
the votes of Manglapus and Manahan,
Imelda sent food, brazo de mercedes
(whipped meringue with sweetened egg
yolk) or nilagang manok (boiled
chicken). She cooked the dishes herself.
It was her way of showing how much
she wanted to befriend both Mrs.
Manahan and Mrs. Manglapus
“Sometime in 1963 she came with us
to our farm in Kaba, Nueva Ecija, and
there she was again cooking for us,”
Connie recalls.
If her behavior was too obsequious
for sophisticated city-folks, Imelda
nevertheless disarmed people with her
natural charms.
Once when Connie was hospitalized,
Imelda visited her twice. On both
occasions she had cried so profusely that
nurses wondered whether she was a
mother or a sister of the patient. Imelda
seems not to care about crying in public,
in spite of criticisms that she cries too
often and too much in front of people.
Connie gave Imelda their favorite pet,
a parrot named “Pikoy,” as a token of
their close friendship during those years.
Connie, however, admits that Imelda
puzzled her. There were times when she
seemed too naive and too sweet for the
game her husband played. And yet she
has it from reliable sources that Imelda
could also speak ruthlessly. Once on a
campaign trip to Isabela, before some
political recalcitrants, she shook her
sweet head gently and sweetly, almost
flirtatiously, and said, “Tsk, tsk, kayong
bahala! (It’s up to you!)” Then she lifted
her finger to her neck and made a cutting
gesture.
It was not easy to define her character,
even for Connie,’ who had been close
enough to her. She admits that Imelda
was more complex than what she
showed to friends especially those she
made from the political world. She was
simple in that she was provincial in
many ways but complex because she
kept her motives to herself.
She boasted about her gowns and
jewelry to less affluent friends but
depreciated their value when she talked
to really rich acquaintances. When she
showed a Ramon Valera gown to Pacita
Manglapus of the rich Lao family, she
said it was worth P300; but to Connie
Manahan she said it was P2,000. If she
was crude, it was only because the game
of getting along with the affluent and the
influential was new to her; but once she
learned it, she would manipulate them
with aplomb, as she would later do as
her husband’s presidential campaigner
and as First Lady.
Imelda today strikes Connie as
different from what she used to be. “She
speaks louder, more confidently these
days. That, for me, is a great difference.
She goes night-clubbing, too, I hear.”
As a Senator’s wife, Imelda read a lot
of books during this period. She told a
woman reporter, “I read books on
Communism, Asia, and just about
everything. Ferdie finishes so many
books, I usually lag behind in my
reading, so I end up asking him a lot of
questions.”
She collected his speeches and
newspaper clippings about him, put them
in albums, neatly catalogued them for
ready reference. Any future historian
interested in her husband’s political life
will owe her for keeping track of daily
accounts in print of what he says and
what he does.
These were the years when she
learned that getting to know her husband
and his ambitions meant one challenge
after another. At the time, her politics
was as the innocent caring wife of a
senator, always helpful, always in the
background. She was not at the center of
the political stage and remained shielded
by privacy.
But there was something noticeable at
this stage of her development as a public
figure. It began to be talked about that
the senator’s wife was profligate, a
spendthrift who loved shopping. Her
frequent shopping was forgiven and
dismissed as typical of an arriviste,
someone new to wealth. How were they
to know that she was making up for all
those years of want and deprivation?
She seemed particularly obsessed with
jewelry and was said to own a fabulous
collection of pearls, diamonds, and other
precious gems.
She had come a long way indeed from
the time she twirled the apa ring (ice
cream cone ring) on her finger on the
first day she arrived in her cousin Daniel
Romualdez’s home.
In time, Marcos gave way to her wish
to refurbish the Ortega house with her
own taste for furniture, china, and silver.
He watched his once-provincial wife
with growing satisfaction as she found
her own place in the affluent Manila
world. She did not leave everything to
her own caprices, however. She always
consulted “Ferdie”.
She started to learn Ilocano, Tagalog,
and Moro songs. When she fully
recovered from her delivery of her third-
born, Marcos took her along on his out-
of-town trips. These were her first
lessons on how to campaign. She needed
the stamina to go through the gruelling
task of barnstorming all over the country.
To Marcos this had always been part of
his conscious plan to become president
— to show off his beautiful wife to the
electorate.
With Macapagal as president, the
Liberals were in power and Marcos was
a Liberal. Using his political prowess he
was now the president of the Senate,
making him the second most powerful
man (officially it should have been the
vice president) in the country. To get the
support of Marcos and the Ilocano bloc,
Macapagal in 1959 had promised him
that he would be the official Liberal
Party candidate for the presidency come
1965.
Imelda shuttled back and forth
between her two roles as mother and as
Marcos’s political partner. At this time,
her children were having their share of
baby sicknesses. Many times she had to
call her pediatrician, Dr. Florencio
Quintos, for consultations. It was either
Imee getting an attack of asthma or
Bong-Bong coming down with the
chicken pox. She did her own marketing
at the nearby Cherry Grocery, where she
was a famous customer. She pushed her
own carts, sometimes five to six at a
time since she had to shop for long
periods. With many social and political
demands upon her time, she had to leave
the cooking and management of the house
to a housekeeper. For her social
engagements, she had Miss Erlinda
Rigor to keep track of her daily
schedules.
She travelled up and down the
country, crowning beauty queens and
club muses. Her public exposure gave
her lessons on how to compose herself
in crises and how to win people over to
her side.
In 1965, Macapagal, reneged on his
promise to Marcos that he would be the
Liberal standard bearer for the next
presidential elections. Sources said
Macapagal had deliberately withdrawn
support of Marcos in the senate
presidential fight in 1963. This was way
before the open breach. When it became
certain that Marcos would have no
chance to be the Liberal standard bearer
in the 1965 presidential elections, he
resigned from his position as president
of the Liberal Party on April 21, 1964.
The alternative for Marcos was to run
for the presidency on the Nacionalista
ticket. It was a shrewd move because by
then the people had grown disenchanted
with the Liberal Party administration.
His war record may have emotional
appeal and his oratory had fire but it
was more likely that people would vote
for him if he were the opposition’s
candidate.
But as a stranger in the Nacionalista
Party, and with at least four or five
Nacionalistas seeking the nomination,
the odds were against Marcos.
Portrait of the Marcos Family, 1965 Imelda,
Ferdinand, Maria Imelda, Irene, and
Ferdinand, Jr.
CHAPTER XV

MASTERING THE
GAME: Imelda as
Campaigner
IMELDA’S SO-CALLED “POLITICAL
TRANSFORMATION” BEGAN in 1964 at
the outset of her husband’s presidential
campaign.
This “transformation” was
psychological rather than political. It
was about change happening within her
that would certainly not have been
known by others except those who were
personally close to her. But even those
who knew were loath to accept that
Imelda Romualdez- Marcos’s problems
of coping came from a deprived
childhood and her need to compensate
for it. This need became even more
pressing when Marcos started his
campaign for the Presidency. Politics
may have provided the means to fulfill
this need and the challenge to make
something of her own. She had to prove
her worthiness as the wife of the next
President of the Philippines. The
struggle was difficult because part of her
public image was to deny her past.
Marcos wanted her to be “with him”
as a political ally and a glamor image
for the electorate to marvel at and be
charmed by. To let her husband down
was also to let down the sensitive girl in
her past who suffered the embarrassment
and humiliations of being a poor relation
of a celebrated name and who desired
the material comforts of prestige and
fame her father could not provide.
During the campaign, her “politics”
consisted of trying to “please everyone”
regardless of her feelings. She went out
of her way to meet people, depreciating
her obvious beauty with women,
enhancing her feminine charms with
men. If she did not have polish and grace
at first, she made full use of her natural
qualities — her unaffected manner, her
youth, her lovely face. Like many a
politician’s wife, Imelda’s campaign
was no different from the shallow
theatrics of movies stars and celebrities
except she had charisma that set her
apart from most women campaigners of
other politicians.
Long before the Nacionalista
Convention of November 22, 1964, the
Ortega house had ceased to be a family
home. On all hours of the day until late
at night, cars were parked outside. The
once-pretty garden, shaped like the
Trinidad Valley, in Baguio, withered: the
greens turned to browns, flowers
stopped blooming, the lawn parched and
trampled on.
Any one entering the house would get
the impression that the owners had shed
the comforts of privacy: bedroom doors
were flung wide open, meals were
prepared for 50 to 100 people. Strangers
were welcome even to private parts of
the house once reserved only for
members of the family.
The Romualdez-Marcos home became
the “headquarters” of a frenetic Marcos-
for-President movement to win the
presidential nomination in the
Nacionalista Party Convention.
Almost every morning and every
evening, a group of brilliant young men
would converge and discuss campaign
tactics with Marcos. Of that group, three
shared equally the confidence of the
presidential aspirant, and were thus
known as “The Troika”—Jose Aspiras,
who handled mass media and liaison
with provincial executives; Blas Ople,
who set the tone of the campaign; and
Rafael Salas, who served as
administrator and coordinated the vast
infrastructure to implement the strategy
for the campaign.
All three unanimously declared that
Imelda played a crucial role in the
Presidential campaign of her husband
from the convention struggle up to the
eve of the November 1965 elections.
Of the three, Ople claims that it is
hard to recall the specifics of that role,
because they did not keep daily track of
the progress of the campaign. “We
played it by year,” Ople asserts. He
cannot be asked to supply dates or
events nor recall Imelda’s tasks in
particular instances because they kept no
records. “If we had lost, then it would
have been different. We would have had
to re-examine the campaign step by step
and determine where we had failed and
where we could have done better.”
In almost all their huddles and
caucuses, Imelda was present. She gave
suggestions, freely discussed and
criticized plans, mulled over problems.
It had become apparent that she was
filling in the managerial position of her
husband’s campaign.
“She was a perfect political partner”
was not a glib description of her role in
Marcos political life then.
 “She waited for her assignments,” a
political aide recalls her attitude during
these caucuses. “If she had not been able
to attend the evening session, she would
be up early the following morning,
sometimes rushing to the airport before
Marcos (referred to as ‘Bossman’ by
aides during the campaign) would depart
for the scheduled itinerary for the day’s
campaign.”
There were 1,347 delegates
accounted for at the convention. They
ranged from governors garbed in coat
and tie to barrio farmers in their
slippers. But whatever trade or
profession the delegates represented,
every vote counted and each could spell
the difference between victory and
defeat.
To win the presidential nomination,
Marcos had to muster 60% of the total
number of votes. To track down all
1,347 delegates in their different
provinces meant conscientious,
exhaustive barnstorming.
To make things harder, he had angered
the Grand Old Man of the Nacionalista
Party, the late Don Eulogio (“Amang”)
Rodriguez, when he wrested the senate
presidency from him in 1963. After
President Macapagal reneged on his
promise that Marcos would be the next
Liberal Presidential candidate, Marcos
had to move to the only opposition party
— the Nacionalista. He faced the
formidable challenge of battling a group
of four other presidential aspirants, —
Fernando Lopez, Arturo Tolentino, Gil
Puyat, and Emmanuel Pelaez. All four
were vying for the presidency but
banded together to prevent Marcos from
getting the nomination. Of the four, only
Pelaez was not a hard-core
Nacionalista.
In the beginning of the Convention
campaign, the scuttlebutt among the
delegates was that Marcos did not
deserve their vote. They did not owe
him any favors and most importantly, he
was a stranger, a turncoat, an unfamiliar
figure in their midst. They distrusted him
and looked at his hard-driving
determination with cool reserve.
In the face of such difficulties, a
political star was born — Imelda
Romualdez Marcos. What took reams of
typewritten folios of political strategy to
explain throughout the islands took only
a smile or a touch of the hand from
Imelda to convince. Some macho
politicians joked that “only to see her”
was good reason enough. It was she who
filled that gap — that need to make her
husband more popular — because she
was not just a woman but also a
beautiful woman with disarming charm.
Marcos strategists made much of her
relationship to Daniel Romualdez, the
Nacionalista Speaker of the House, and
that the Romualdezes had always been
staunch Nacionalistas.
She gave glamor and verve to the
Marcos campaign but preferred to
explain her role in a modest light.
Whenever she was asked how she
helped achieve her husband’s
nomination as the Nacionalista
presidential candidate she put it simply:
“When Ferdinand was east, I was west;
when Ferdinand was south, I was north.”
That was her laconic answer when
people asked her to describe the role she
played in the campaign strategy of
Marcos. However, the answer implied
she not only understood but also
mastered “political strategy by
saturation.” Her husband originated this
style of campaign in the Philippines, but
she accomplished it to a degree of
effectiveness far beyond Marcos’s own
expectations.
He was stunned that she was able to
make quick decisions and survive
arduous physical obstacles.
“It was no exaggeration to say that she
used plane, motorboat, banca, and even
crawled on her hands and knees to reach
every single delegate who would have a
say in that Convention,” a political aide
recalls.
“I did not do it once but twice or
thrice over,” Imelda said later about her
endurance marathon. The aura of a
fragile beauty queen was deceptive as
she displayed at the same time the
untiring stamina of a hardy peasant.
Moreover it was she, not her husband,
who possessed the indispensable
charisma of campaigning for the
presidency of the Philippines. Yet over
and above her charismatic appeal, she
also had boundless enthusiasm for hard
work.
“I knew every delegate to that
Convention because I shook hands and
talked with each and every one of them,
visited each and everyone of them in
their homes, knew their names and the
circumstances of their families by heart.
I had to attend weddings, baptisms, and
birthdays. After they told me their needs,
I would return to fulfill my promise to
add the new roof, the new window, to
their modest houses. I had to say
compadre (someone close and familiar)
to the right name and person, to show
that I was not bluffing,” Imelda relates
the way she conducted her side of the
presidential nomination.
It would have been a wonder had a
man done the same feat. But this as a
woman, a fragile-looking one, at that,
who had barely entered into the political
scene — it was astonishing, if
unnerving, how she could have done it.
Why had the wives of other presidential
wives not done what she did? It was a
question of endurance. She had prepared
a stoic face to meet the other faces she
met. It had become an obsession to win,
and she had to win to vindicate herself
for all those years she had known only
want and frustrations.
Throughout that campaign for the
Nacionalista Convention, Imelda did not
yet have a coterie of “Blue Ladies”
(society ladies who once snubbed her).
There were a few faithful friends, but on
the whole, she was frightfully alone.
After all, the Nacionalista Party was a
divided house; each was on his own.
The Nacionalista wives looked at her
with suspicion and envy. Why should
this outsider get the nomination? What
particularly irked these ladies more was
if Marcos won he would bring along
with him the most beautiful First Lady to
live in the Palace. That was enough to
cause envious remarks against her. But
Imelda kept her cool under the pressure
of intrigues. When the day of the
Convention came, she phoned some of
the Nacionalista wives to ask if she
could go to the Manila Hotel with them.
She remembers that she got a tart reply
from one wife, “We can all meet there.”
Marcos had left strict instructions to
her that no matter what happens, she
should be present on the stage. That, he
repeated, was a must. No excuse for
absence would be accepted. She was to
look her beautiful best. She put on a
white piña terno, touched her face with
light makeup to show the natural blush,
and off she went to the convention hall.
The program indicated that the time of
assembly would begin at 9 o’clock. But
somehow in the bustle of preparing
herself, time had slipped by unnoticed: it
was 10 o’clock when she arrived at the
Manila Hotel. She looked about the
lobby in search of Nacionalista friends.
They were nowhere to be found. Her
heart sank.
“I got cold feet,” she recounted to a
friend. Perhaps it was the rowdy,
sweaty, impersonal, chaotic atmosphere
of the convention hall that scared her. It
had was more comfortable to see the
delegates as individuals, but now they
were no longer merely the persons she
had talked to and charmed, but delegates
possessing the power to frustrate her.
She thought of the new roofs she gave to
their battered houses, the kind words she
spoke to sympathize with their problems.
Would her previous kindnesses matter to
them now? But she could not know what
went on in their minds now as delegates
with the power to nominate the 1965
Nacionalista presidential candidate.
To her, it was a hall that heaved with
uncertainty. Loudspeakers blared the
names of provinces — Aklan, Laguna,
Batangas ... All the names of places she
had known had become strange,
incoherent, and frightful garble amid
buntings and placards. She was lost. The
confusion of sights and sounds assaulted
her senses, assuring her of nothing. Not
having slept well for nights, she felt like
fainting from the heat. In her rush to the
convention hall, she had not even
bothered to eat breakfast.
But in her ears, Marcos’s words rang
loud and clear: “Whatever happens, you
must be on that stage.”
She had braved all those rivers, lands
and seas, and now here was a mere
convention hall, and yet she could not
bring herself to cross it to reach the
stage. The excitement, anxiety, and a
rush of adrenalin made her cheeks blush
to highten her natural beauty.
She had to be brave. With all the
regality of her bearing she walked
deliberately, slowly toward the stage,
waving her hand here and there in
acknowledgment of greetings.
At last she reached the stage. But alas,
every seat was taken. Even bodyguards
and maids of some of the Nacionalista
wives had taken seats. No one bothered
to to offer her a seat. She stood
awkwardly for a full 30 minutes. Once
in a while she would hear a giggle, a
sinister laugh, whispering behind her
back — she ignored these.
“I did not care. Ferdinand said I was
to be on that stage. Well, I was, who
cares if I were standing or sitting,” she
said later to friends.
That she could not find an empty seat
turned out to be a blessing. She became
more conspicuous. She stood out. All
eyes from the audience turned towards
her. Unwittingly she had made herself
the star of the show. From time to time
she nodded in silent greeting to each
delegate whom she recognized in the
audience giving the impression that she
knew him well.
 Finally, Mariquit Lopez, wife of
Senator Fernando Lopez of the powerful
Lopez family, saw her predicament. She
signalled to her aide to pull up a chair
somewhere for Mrs. Marcos. He got the
chair. But there was the problem where
to put it. The stage was crowded to
capacity. The only room left to
accommodate the chair was on the center
front. As she sat down Imelda looked
every inch a queen set apart from the rest
of the Nacionalista wives; in fact, she
looked like a queen with her court of
ladies behind her.
“It was such an awkward position but
I didn’t mind. If I stood up again, I
would have collapsed,” she said.
“I could hear my stomach grumbling
but I kept whispering, ‘Oh, my God, help
me, help me survive my ordeal.’ It was
already 2 o’clock but I held fast to my
seat.”
It was Mariles Cacho-Romulo who
came to the rescue. Would Imelda like a
glass of milk and a sandwich? Imelda
nodded and stammered her profuse
thanks.
“But I don’t know what came into my
head. The moment the milk and
sandwich were handed to me, I turned
around to the lady next to me and out of
politeness offered them both. And my
gosh! she accepted the offer.”
Her stomach groaned and groaned.
But she came to bear the discomfort until
it was time for the delegates to vote.
Marcos was somewhere in the 101
rooms of the hotel, closeted with his
supporters. Exactly where, she did not
know.
The delegates cast their votes. She
had done everything within her power to
convince them that with her husband at
the helm, the Nacionalista Party would
win. There was nothing more to do but
wait until the results were out. She
quietly slipped into her car, desiring to
be completely alone, and proceeded to
the San Agustin Church in Intramuros.
By then the sun had set. Sombre
colors hang over the horizon of Manila
Bay. The noise of the convention hall
grew fainter as the car drove away. No
matter how hard she worked, she
suddenly felt apprehensive: What if they
should lose? Defeat — to be in suffering
— was something she had always
known.
For a moment, her fatalism
overwhelmed her tired mind. When she
reached the church, the doors were shut.
As no one was about in the patio, she
went to the narrow door leading to the
priest’s quarters and asked the sacristan
if she could ask permission from the
kind priests to open the door.
The sacristan was surprised to see
this lady donned in a gown seeking
entrance into the church at such a late
hour. It must be important. He conveyed
her request to a priest who came out and
recognized her. She handed him a small
sum as a contribution to the Church.
Before she knelt down to pray, she
lighted five candles for five candidates,
and began to pray in the way her mother
had taught her to, generously and
humbly: “Lord, these five candles stand
for five men. They are all good. One of
them will win. I pray for that one
whoever he may be. But, Lord, may that
one be Ferdie.”
She told friends later how she knelt
there for three whole hours, gazing at the
altar, almost in a daze. The five candles
melted as seconds, minutes, hours
passed. Her burning ambition as wife of
a political leader warmed the stone
coldness of an empty church. She had
endowed that ambition with a magnitude
as no other Filipino woman had. If
Marcos should win, she, too, could
claim victory.
When she returned to the convention
hall, the results of the first balloting
were out. As expected, none of the
aspirants was able to muster the 60%
majority. But Imelda was jubilant.
Although Marcos garnered only 541
votes, he led the others, with Pelaez
trailing behind with 381 votes. The
Marcos lead was sufficient to work on
for a mass switch or a bandwagon trend
in favor of either of the two leading
nominees.
The Pelaez boys made a bid to delay
the second balloting for 11 hours while
Marcos lieutenants insisted on a
marathon voting to ensure party unity
after the convention. At this point, he
was already confident of victory to
break the impasse and prevent a third
balloting. A suggestion was raised to
reduce the required majority to 50% of
the votes plus one.
Pelaez got his request for a stay of
balloting until the next day, but it did not
stop the strong pro-Marcos faction from
turning the tide of the Convention in their
favor.
Long before the results of the second
balloting were out, Pelaez acceded to
the reduction of the majority vote to 50%
plus one. He had perhaps foreseen
defeat. At the second balloting, Marcos
got 777 votes and Pelaez 444. During the
Convention proceedings, Marcos
appeared to be the underdog, with all the
other four candidates conspiring to
support whoever of them garnered the
most number of votes to prevent a
Marcos victory.
The anti-Marcos alliance, however,
failed to come through. Delegates from
Laguna, Negros Occidental, Cagayan,
Iloilo, Batangas, Cavite, Pampanga,
Aklan, and Antique switched their votes
in favor of Marcos.
When the announcement of Marcos’s
victory was made, tears fell on Imelda’s
face. But they were no longer sad tears,
but happy tears. Imelda is one of those
few people who can summon her tears at
will. This time, the tears came
spontaneously. As they fell, she
experienced new reserves of energy. She
no longer felt sick and tired of the
political turmoil of a pa. She began to
have a taste for winning: to win once is
to try to win again and again.
Another challenge had to be tackled
that evening. Who was to be the vice-
presidential candidate for the
Nacionalista Party? It took only a few
hours to answer that. The choice was
made — Fernando Lopez — by virtue of
his unquestioned leadership among hard-
core Nacionalistas. Behind him was the
power of the sugar bloc, as some of the
wealthiest men from the south were
called.
The role of emissary to persuade
Lopez to run for the Vice-Presidency
first fell on Speaker Jose B. Laurel, Jr.
But he was unsuccessful. Former
President Carlos P. Garcia was next
asked to approach Lopez. He was close
to the Lopezes. Surely he would be able
to persuade Lopez to be Marcos’s
running mate?
“No, no,” Lopez declared. He said it
more kindly to Garcia but it was still
“No”. He said he was sick and tired of it
all, and that was that.
The strategists racked their brains on
how to convince a political head of the
oldest and largest family fortunes of the
land. His brother, Eugenio, the other
head of the partnership, was the business
tycoon who masterminded political
moves to ensure the fortune of the Lopez
clan.
Yes, of course, Imelda, the last resort.
She should be able to convince Lopez.
She sent a note to Fernando Lopez
asking for an appointment. She wrote
that she wanted to talk to him if he was
not too tired and busy. She would pay a
call at his suite. Lopez, the gallant
gentleman that he was, wrote back and
replied that he would go to her suite if
she wanted to talk to him.
And sure enough, Fernando Lopez
came knocking at her door, accompanied
by two of his sons.
“Here I am, what is it you want from
me? “ Lopez asked.
She pleaded with Lopez to accept the
vice-presidential nomination.
“You don’t know how difficult it has
been for me, for Ferdinand, working for
his nomination to uphold the principles
for which the Nacionalista Party stands,
and now we are being abandoned,” she
said, appealing to his sympathy.
To which Lopez replied obliquely:
“I’m very tired. I am already old. I do
not wish to go through all this politics.”
Imelda was quick with her answer,
but she watched his reactions cautiously.
Now that her husband had won the party
nomination for the Presidency, all that
stood in the way of certain victory was
this man. She wanted to perform well.
What approach would she use? These
may have been in her mind when she
said, “You say you are old and tired, but
you allowed yourself to be put up for the
presidential nomination.” He was the
first candidate of the sugar bloc. She
was slightly taken aback by the boldness
of her remark. Would he be offended?
But he did not show any sign of anger.
He was pensive and silent.
Lopez was silent for a full five
minutes. Finally, he shook his head. It
was still “no”.
Imelda burst into sobs. She was again
in a situation similar to her wanting to
win the Miss Manila title. This time,
however, the odds were greater.
Lopez was bewildered. What was he
to do to stop this lady from crying? He
held her hand and comforted her. He told
her not to cry because he had a heart
condition and it was causing him pain to
see her like this.
“Oh, you have a heart, so you will
have the kindness enough to be the NP
vice-presidential candidate.” Then she
sobbed again and, with one eye on his
shoulder, the other watching the reaction
of Lopez’s sons, it suddenly occurred to
her that they might resent this unseemly
display of feminine weakness.
She continued to cry.
Finally, Lopez, who earnestly wanted
her to stop crying, asked: “Well, what is
it you want?”
She quickly rubbed her eyes, dried
her tears and pulled out a paper: “Sign”.
It was a paper accepting the nomination
as the Nacionalista Party’s vice-
presidential candidate. She had learned
her lessons well from Marcos, the hard-
driving negotiator with the documents to
sign popping out at the crucial moment.
To achieve a coup, one must never leave
anything to chance. In a circumstance
such as this confrontation with Lopez, a
signature would be a good guarantee. At
the same time, she was aware that
Lopez’s commitment to run would not be
attributed solely to her intercession in
that room. She knew that his capitulation
had previously involved hard political
bargaining particularly with the sugar
bloc. Still, that little scene lent a human
touch.
Mission accomplished. The
newspapers and radio-TV blared out
that Lopez had accepted the nomination.
With Lopez on their side, the
Nacionalistas indeed had put up an
unbeatable team. Brilliance and youth
combined with experience and wealth
augured a Nacionalist Party victory in
the November election.
Lopez accepted the vice-presidential
nomination by an unprecedented
acclamation to restore Party harmony.
He accepted the nomination only after
the four other vice-presidential aspirants
had withdrawn in his favor.
Marcos knew the importance of
having Lopez as his running mate
because he was a hard-core
Nacionalista. He needed him to ease the
ruffled feelings of the Party’s Grand Old
Man, Eulogio ”Amang” Rodriguez.
Rodriguez had walked out of the
convention hall. He would not listen to
his colleagues’ arguments that the
acceptance of Marcos as the NP
presidential standard-bearer would
redound to the interest of the party.
Although an extremely practical
politician, he had succumbed to the
suspicion that the party he had nursed to
new life almost single-handedly through
its critical phases had turned its back on
him. He might have been the last man to
imagine he could ever be sentimental
about his Party, having gone through
ruthless politicking. But age had caught
up with him. He had tears in his eyes,
observers said, as he left the hall.
Vice-president Emmanuel Pelaez was
equally bitter. But being younger, his
anger was easier to assuage. He gave
free rein to his anger during the whole
proceedings of the convention, yet many
people who heard of his comments and
who knew him well agreed that his
outbursts of dissatisfaction were
temporary and that he would come
around to accept it. No politician’s
politician as “Amang” was, Pelaez, in
the opinion of convention observers,
would sooner or later be able to get over
his disappointment and let post-
convention bitterness run its course.
(Subsequent events proved such
predictions right. Not long after the
convention, “Amang” Rodriguez died, of
old age or bitterness, one cannot really
tell. It could have been both. Pelaez has
been a relatively loyal ally of President
Marcos in Congress.)
Throughout the two weeks following
the convention, husband and wife went
about “repairing political fences”
appeasing other presidential aspirants
— Lopez, Tolentino, Puyat, Pelaez — all
those who had lost, assuring them of his
loyalty to the Party’s cause.
When Imelda and Marcos went about
uniting certain factions in the
Nacionalista Party, they had formally
entered the second phase of the
campaign — bringing in voting blocs to
their side. These voting blocs ranged
from industrial groups (sugar and
tobacco) to religious (Iglesia ni Kristo)
to social (National Federation of
Women’s Clubs) to labor groups
(Lapiang Manggagawa). To win these
groups required political hardsell and
shrewd diplomacy.
Marcos moved swiftly to appease
both men. Almost as soon as the results
of the second balloting were known, he
made personal calls on Pelaez and
Rodriguez to placate any ill feeling that
might have resulted from the animosities
that had arisen during the convention.
As if that were not enough, Imelda
also made personal calls to both men. To
some political observers, her visits
would seem to have laid the final basis
for reconciliation, which eventually led
to rumors that she wielded too much
political power as a wife.
A political aide has this to say: “It
would be false to assume that political
reconciliations are Imelda’s sole doing.
Imelda merely moves in for the ‘human
touch.’ which comes from her warmth as
a woman.”
Moreover Imelda’s grace seals a
commitment and makes it harder to take
back. That is a facet of her personality
that Marcos had understood so well and
used to his full advantage. Her acts of
reconciling warring political groups
were complementary to her husband’s
grasp of Realpolitik and his refusal to be
flustered by political grudges.
 Imelda dealt with the leaders of such
blocs as a follow up. Strangely, it was
Imelda’s presence and charm that would
prove incalculable to seal commitments
made to the Marcos-Lopez cause,
blocking any chance of defection in the
Nacionalista convention. Her campaign
did not stop there.
Even after the convention she never
missed a chance to call on important
supporters of her husband on their
birthdays or wedding anniversaries.
While other candidates’ wives were
content on merely sending out flowers,
gifts or cards, she would come
personally to grace the affair and make
the celebrant feel important.
Besides her stamina, she had a
remarkable memory for details. She took
the trouble to know what the celebrant
would particularly like for a gift, what to
say to please him, all the little things that
easily escaped notice.
When “differences” with the leaders
of such blocs arose during the course of
the campaign, Imelda was invariably
assigned the task to restore harmony. She
knew how to get at the problem quietly
and effectively. She would come
unannounced for lunch, for merienda,
(tea), or dinner casually and then
proceed to work out a reconciliation.
She spared her husband from attending
to such mean tasks.
She also began to acquire the knack
for raising funds. Donors could not
refuse her charm and determination.
Besides dealing with political blocs,
she also had to court the “free” voter.
These voters are more difficult to
persuade. A candidate guesses his
chances with this voter, and he is
anyone, anywhere. To get him to vote, he
has to be reached, he has to be talked to.
That can only be done through what an
analyst described as a campaign by
saturation.
In the cities as well as in the barrios,
the ordinary man is not easy to entice
away from his daily schedule. He
prefers to sit around after dinner. He
knows “all about politicians”; he could
not care less if a hundred politicians
passed by his house. He would still
prefer his quiet evening. But to see a
beautiful woman is another matter
altogether. It is not often that a woman as
beautiful as Imelda would visit barrios
or towns with the teeming poor of the
Philippines to make an appearance and
sing so generously when requested.
Even at the early stage of the electoral
campaign, the often-heard remark about
the prospects of a Marcos victory was,
“Well, whatever kind of president he
will make it is certain that if he wins, we
will have the most beautiful and
youngest First Lady.”
Campaign strategists were quick to
capitalize on that image of Imelda and
incorporated it into the over-all strategy
of the Nacionalista campaign. Imelda
must appear at all times at her ravishing
best. It did not matter whether her
audience was city or poor barrio folks:
she was an actress putting on a stage
appearance. She wore ternos even for
appearances on small, rickety makeshift
stages of rough wooden planks covered
with nipa leaves. That is how the Imelda
brand came to be.
Because she had to travel from barrio
to barrio, sometimes in a matter of
minutes, she learned to sleep sitting
upright, closing her eyes so she would
not need to re-do her hair. She learned to
keep her corset or tight jeans no matter
how uncomfortable. People who did not
know her well wondered how she could
have slept in third-class hotels swarming
with cockroaches or endure the hardship
of driving on rough dirt roads. Only a
few knew that Imelda could go through
these discomforts of hectic campaigning,
simply because she had a high threshold
of pain she had learned from childhood.
A group of women at this point
converged around her “to help” her in
the campaign. They were called the
“Blue Ladies” because they wore blue
uniforms.
As wives of men whose fortunes
would be affected by the results of the
elections, they campaigned vigorously to
ensure they would be part of the winning
team. By Christmas season of 1965, they
were an organized group. They divided
themselves into subgroups, to help out in
the campaign. Imelda had them put on
uniforms of blue ramie to distinguish
them from the ladies of the opposite
camp — Mrs. Macapagal’s Lakambinis.
As the campaign progressed, the
Lakambinis became less and less and
the Blue Ladies more and more.
That Christmas, the Blue Ladies
assembled at the Vera-Perez gardens.
With their delicately manicured fingers,
they prepared individual packages of
assorted items from cloth materials to
canned goods. These were contributions
from their husbands’ factories and
companies to be distributed to the poor.
It was a merry group, chattering about
and keeping busy, looking more like a
schoolgirls’ social. I was one of the Blue
Ladies as part of the Lopez contingent
because my husband worked in one of
their companies.
Imelda had not yet arrived as she was
coming from a trip abroad, but when the
telephone rang announcing her arrival,
the women were in a flurry;
interestingly, these were the same
women that had once snubbed her as a
mere provinciana.
When Imelda finished with her
dramatic entrance, each of the women
vied to win her attention. The talk on the
whole was completely trivial, if not
nonsensical. Imelda, by now a seasoned
organizer, quickly discouraged the
chatter and reminded them of the great
work ahead. At a signal, the girls were
ready to ride in the waiting buses to go
to Congressman Augusto Francisco’s
house, which would be the first site for
distribution of the gifts. They were to
proceed next to Malate Church, another
distribution site.
Imelda thought it was an
accomplishment to organize these ladies
to do something good for the country:
some of them represented their
husbands’ contribution to the
Nacionalista candidate.
Close to the end of the presidential
campaign, the Liberals were confident of
victory. On the last stage the Liberals
fumbled, unable to deliver the knockout
promised by reviving the Nalundasan
murder case. No less than the son of the
murdered man was asked to appear on
television to narrate the details of the
sensational case of more than two
decades ago. He said Marcos was guilty
but had been allowed to freely run
around, and worse, to aspire for the
highest office of the nation.
The bright boys of Macapagal had
miscalculated the effect of the
Nalundasan case to the campaign. They
had thought that bringing out the details
of the murder would influence the minds
of the electorate. But with the murder
case resolved a long time ago by the
Supreme Court, it was a dead issue.
Imelda did not escape the dirty tricks
department. The Liberals were
convinced that Imelda was Marcos’s
“secret weapon.” She charmed the
masses that swarmed the town plazas to
see her because she was like an actress
and could sing.
Copies of a photograph of her in the
nude were circulated. In a bitter election
campaign, the Liberals were accused of
the heinous deed, which they promptly
denied.
When she heard of the smear
campaign against her, she was so
bothered she could not sleep. At 3
o’clock in the morning, she summoned
trusted political aides to the house of her
younger brother, Alfredo, on Lieutenant
Artiaga Street not far from the Marcos
house. Although she was obviously
bothered because no one assembles a
meeting at 3 o’clock in the morning,
those who joined it claim that she
appeared admirably cool.
She looked at all of them and asked,
“What shall we do about this?”
She had not seen a copy of the
photograph, a cheap photographic trick
that grafted some other woman’s body to
Imelda’s head. The political aides
mumbled a few embarrassed
suggestions. It had seemed to some of
them that she did not expect answers to
her questions. At the end of the caucus,
she shrugged her shoulders and quipped,
“Well, at least I hope that the body they
put for my face is nice.”
The meeting broke up in a jovial
mood. They knew that she must have
been shocked, embarrassed, and pained,
but instead she managed to appear light-
hearted, finally shrugging off the whole
cheap trick with quiet aplomb. The nude
photograph that was aimed to demolish
Imelda’s charismatic and innocent image
had failed. Towards the end of the
presidential campaign, Imelda had
acquired a sense of authority and had the
confidence that could rise above petty
tricks however nasty.
As for the Liberals, their campaign
methods during those last days were not
working. They banned Iginuhit ng
Tadhana, a movie biography of Marcos;
the ban only won more sympathy votes,
even as the V-sign, Alis Dyan (Get out of
the way), and “Imelda” as Marcos
campaign slogans caught on with
masses.
By the last week of September, all
through October up to the eve of the
election in November, the Marcos
campaign rode a high crest toward
certain victory.
With Ms. Gloria Romero who portrayed her
in the movie version of the biography of
Marcos
CHAPTER XVI

FULFILLMENT:
Imelda as First
Lady
ON DECEMBER 30, 1965, IMELDA
ROMUALDEZ-MARCOS, the girl who
lived a wretched childhood in San
Miguel, Manila, became the First Lady
of 32 million Filipinos.
While it is true that she worked hard
to campaign for the victory of her
husband, there were many circumstances
that she could not have willed. She was
fated to be the First Lady of the
Philippines. After all she had suffered
and deserved to claim her reward in
life’s lottery. The twists of fate that
finally came together for that purpose
were beyond her.
When this book was published, it was
called a Cinderella story — a rags to
riches story with beauty as its
handmaiden. Fairy godmothers come in
one form or another, in all sizes and
shapes to make good on what had
seemed impossible. The fairy godmother
in Imelda’s Cinderella story was the
strange combination of events that made
possible her journey from poor little girl
from Tacloban to the most powerful
woman in her country. It is a rare story
but it happened for a reason.
The sun had not yet risen, but already
streams of Filipinos wended their way
to Ortega Street, San Juan, where the
President-elect lived. Some of the more
curious onlookers climbed trees which
lined the street. trying to get a view of
what was happening inside the house.
Others, mostly people from the
provinces, carried their lunchboxes,
ready for the long wait to see the
President-elect and his Lady come out of
the gate on their way to Luneta, the site
of the inauguration.
Inside the courtyard stood an
improvised altar, where Mass was being
said by Father Gansewinkle, who was
Rector of St. Paul’s College, Tacloban,
when Imelda was a student in that
school. She had invited him to come
from Bonn, Germany. Only a few
friends, relatives, and members of the
Marcos family attended the Mass
immediately preceding the departure for
the inauguration ceremonies. While the
Mass was going on, the people outside
waited eagerly to see them leave the
Ortega house. They could hear the faint
sound of music being played inside: it
was “Plegaria”, (A Plea) composed by
Norberto Romualdez, Imelda’s uncle, the
first successful Romualdez. To the
crowd outside it was just a song. They
could now know of its symbolic
significance to the story of Imelda and
the Romualdez family.
Those who were able to climb the
trees beyond the walls were able to get a
better view of the proceedings, a Mass
being celebrated on an altar decorated
with gladiolas. They noted a regal
Imelda wearing a plain sheath of
embroidered piña and an exquisitely fine
face-veil over her head. They watched
the guests nodding at each other in
admiration of her queenly beauty as it
has been praised in society pages, “If
there is anything the incoming
administration can boast of, it is having
the fairest and youngest First Lady to
live in Malacañang so far.” When the
Mass ended, the guests prepared to
leave.
The President-elect, the First Lady,
and their children went back to their
rooms for the final touch-up. Marcos
went through his inaugural speech with
his political lieutenants.
It was 10:15 that morning when the
First Lady and her children, followed by
the President, emerged from the house in
official cars that would bring them to the
Luneta grandstand. For those who stood
outside the Ortega house, it had been a
full five-hour wait. They got a good
glimpse of the radiance of the First Lady
on that morning, the thousands of people
who would attend the rites would not be
able to see.
In Luneta, the incoming President and
his First Lady sat at the center of the
grandstand. Across them, the mixed
crowd of unknown Filipinos, most of
them poor folk, were roped off across
the divide of the wide street fronting the
grandstand. Present were dignitaries
from 35 countries, government officials
and Manila’s power elite.
In that charmed circle were Vice-
President Hubert Humphrey of the
United States, Prime Minister Chung Il-
kwon of Korea, Foreign Minister Thanat
Khoman of Thailand, Prime Minister
Kishi Nobusuke of Japan, and
representatives of Laos, Malaysia,
Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Ceylon,
Spain, Vietnam, Australia — a long list
of countries on friendly terms with the
Republic of the Philippines.
Imelda could see the other side, the
unknown Filipino — anonymous men,
women, and children, from the very old
to the very young, struggling to break
through the cordon of soldiers.
“Just to see, just to see!” they had
screamed in mob fashion: it was very
little they asked for. For it is true that
most people who had gone to the Luneta
grandstand that morning were there to
see the celebrated beauty of the new
First Lady of the Land. No matter how
eloquent the new president sounded as
he delivered his inaugural speech, it was
never easy to stand and listen to
grandiose rhetoric under a scorching
sun.
 Even as they heard the President
declare, “This nation can be great
again,” a marvelous slogan calculated to
impress the public mind, they preferred
the soft smile of the Lady by his side.
That was easier to understand. She wore
a terno of white embroidered piña of
paisley design. The sleeves and the
bodice were also embroidered and so
was the inverted tulip skirt consisting of
two overlapping petals. She would
wave once in a while at the crowd, but
most of the time she was in animated
conversation with former President
Carlos P. Garcia at her side and Vice-
President Humphrey behind her. She was
a picture of dignity. The official
souvenir program distributed only to the
exclusive crowd in the grandstand
described her family as one of the
mightiest clans of the country.
There was too much excitement, too
much ritual at the time for Imelda to sit
back and ask: What is it all about? What
is it to have been so poor and now so
rich and powerful?
On that grandstand, she projected an
unforgettable image glowing with
success. “Such dignity, such regality,”
the press would adulate.
In their enthusiasm for her youth and
beauty, image-makers sought to create
parallels between Imelda and Jacqueline
Kennedy. She was to be a Patroness of
the Arts, a woman of leisure, wealth,
and powerful origins. As Patroness of
the Arts they lined up projects such as
the construction of a Cultural Center and
the restoration of historic sites.
Under the blaze of the noon sun, after
the oath-taking ritual and the inaugural
speech of her husband were over, Imelda
Romualdez-Marcos became the sixth
First Lady of the nation.
The vast distance had been traversed:
from the impoverished childhood in a
garage on General Solano to a life of
glittering prominence in Malacañang
Palace.
It is ironic that the physical distance
between the house on General Solano
and the presidential palace is only a few
dozen steps.
The First Family
 With Pres. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson
during the state visit to the United States in
1966
With Lady Bird Johnson again, during Asian
Summit held in Manila
 With Queen Sirikit of Thailand

With King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit during

a state visit to Thailand
First ladies in Tagaytay during the Asian
Summit held on 1966 in Manila
The ladies during a Cultural presentation
EPILOGUE

WHEN IMAGE-MAKERS SET OUT TO

create the myth of Imelda as a woman
born with a silver spoon in her mouth,
they miscalculated the power of her past.
The past is like a jealous lover. In the
name of love, it is vindictive and furious
when betrayed.
It cannot be destroyed by the present.
No, because in a sense the past is the
present. The poor child that was Imelda
remained in her for the rest of her life
and will forever want security and
acceptance.
The priceless gem of this fabulous
woman is not her face, nor her political
prowess, nor her charm, nor her
intelligence, but her past.
Imelda’s past is her grandmother,
Doña Trinidad—the archetype of pride,
endurance, devotion to duty. Imelda’s
past is her uncle, Don Norberto—his
ambition, his forthrightness, his
successes. Imelda’s past is her father too
—his bohemianism, his failures, his
hopes, his weaknesses. Imelda’s past is
her mother, Remedios Trinidad—her
martyrdom, her faith, her selflessness,
her tragedy. Imelda’s past is Lourdes,
Estrella, Siloy, the Benedictine sisters,
the house on General Solano, Singian
Clinic, the cathedral across their house,
Calle Real. The food she ate. The food
she did not eat. The joys she had. The
joys she did not have. It is about tears,
laughter, silence, sleep, wakefulness that
made up her life. Everything that she
saw, heard, touched, felt before she was
First Lady of the Land. It cannot be
wiped out by a fiat from image-makers.
The garage she knew as a child in the
house on General Solano is no longer
there. Except for the roof and the stairs,
the house has been remodelled
completely by it present owners, the
Antonio Ricaforts, heirs of the Eulogio
Ricaforts. Instead of the old garage,
there is now a modern carport. Showing
through chinks of the new cement
flooring are the red-and-white tiles of
the original house.
In Tacloban, the “ancestral home” on
Gran Capitan Street has been renamed
Justice Norberto Romualdez Avenue,
after Imelda’s uncle. Instead of the
“ancestral home” there now stands a
sprawling one-story building housing the
Philamlife and the Philippine Air Lines
offices. Except for a few old houses and
the Price Mansion with a marker that
General MacArthur once lived there, the
street is entirely modern and
commercial.
Calle Real is still Calle Real. There
are a few two-story houses but the nipa
hut is still the predominant structure. In
the midst of those nipa huts stand two
houses which conspicuously stand out as
landmarks. One is a low, city-type
bungalow Imelda built and curiously
called “The White House.” Kokoy, the
governor, has built a sprawling “modern
edifice,” completely air-conditioned and
modelled after the structure of a nipa hut
he called “The Nipa Hut”.
The street before the St. Paul’s
College and parallel to Justice Norberto
Romualdez Avenue has been renamed
Imelda Avenue. Some of the neighbors
who knew Vicente Orestes and his big
family are still there, but they are very
cautious about talking. They would not
like to offend the First Lady by saying
that they once knew who she was and
what she was.
 In Tolosa, she built a luxury rest-
house, certainly a far cry from the shed
to which Vicente Orestes used to bring
the children for weekend picnics by the
beach. In 1967, when Imelda made a
triumphant return to Leyte, she built a
“cabana” adjacent to the big house to
accommodate an endless parade of
members of the diplomatic corps,
politicians, business tycoons,
industrialists, and their wives. A detail
of soldiers was assigned as a security
force for the guests. Food in quantity
was brought in for the fiesta. The poor
townsfolk of Leyte were awed by the
grandeur of it all. They came in droves
to get a glimpse of the festivities. One of
those who inched her way to pay
respects to the hostess was Estrella, the
once-faithful maid of Remedios Trinidad
in those tragic years of life in a garage.
She hesitated at first to impose herself
and remind Imelda who she was. After
all, Imelda was just a child at the time
that her mother promised her that when
her children were better off, they would
help her. At the Tolosa Resthouse
Estrella introduced herself, encouraged
by a few friends who knew that she had
once taken care of Imelda. These friends
were the guards, the cooks, and other
maids employed in the resthouse.
Instead, one of a bevy of social
secretaries told her to leave.
“The First Lady is resting,” she was
told. Estrella waited at the gate till late
in the afternoon only to be told that it
was useless for her to wait any longer
because the First Lady could not see her.
No reasons were given. Estrella did not
understand protocol, ignorant of the
sophisticated ritual of officialdom. To
her what was foremost in her mind was
the promise Remedios made to her: she
felt it was time to see that promise come
true.
“I would have waited much longer but
it was gettting dark. The last trip of
jeepneys commuting from Tolosa to
Tanauan where I now live was at 7
o’clock. If I had stayed longer, I would
have missed that trip,” Estrella relates.
That same year Imelda invited the
sisters of Norberto Romualdez, Jr. to a
luncheon in Malacañang. It was then that
she revealed the plans of her brother
Kokoy to run as governor of Leyte on the
Nacionalista ticket. Since the incumbent
governor was Norberto, Jr., a Liberal,
Imelda pointedly told her cousins that it
would be better for their brother not to
run for re-election.
“I don’t think it would be that easy to
convince him,” was the reply of Loreto
Romualdez-Ramos, youngest sister of
Norberto.
“Then convince him,” Imelda replied.
“It will be useless for him to fight
Kokoy, who will be backed up by the
Nacionalista Party. Kokoy will have the
money and the entire machinery of the
party in power. How can Norberto fight
that?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll try and talk to
him,” Loreto replied.
“Call him, tell him I want to talk to
him.”
“I don’t think he will come just like
that,” Loreto continued.
“Then fetch him. Tomorrow morning I
will send a plane just to fetch him.”
Early the next morning, true enough, at
the appointed time and place, the plane
— an air-force plane — was ready for
their use to fetch their brother.
Norberto, Jr.’s reaction to Imelda’s
call was cold. He knew what it was all
about. He had heard it bruited about and
the step Imelda took was all part of a
pre-election scheme.
 “Well, just talk it over,” his sisters
reasoned out. Norberto Jr. agreed.
On the plane trip back to Manila,
Norberto told his sisters that he refused
to go to Malacañang to see Imelda. If she
wanted to persuade him not to run, then
she should come to his house to meet
with him. Loreto called Imelda and told
her that Norberto had arrived.
In a few minutes, Imelda was at
Norberto Romualdez’s house in Biak-na-
bato, Quezon City accompanied by
security men and screaming sirens. She
had come in an official manner, as the
First Lady of the Land, not as Imelda.
“She talked tough,” Loreto recalls.
“Imelda said in no uncertain terms that if
Norberto Jr. ran for re-election he would
only suffer devastating defeat.
According to Loreto, Imelda said:
“Kokoy will run. With the backing of
power and money, how can you fight
him? Besides, Berting, you have to be
practical. I will use every available
means to ensure Kokoy’s victory. The
whole weight of Malacañang will bear
down on your shoulders.”
To which Norberto Jr. replied: “Name
all your aces, Meldy, I will still run.”
The man had been pushed against the
wall. Even as he said he would run,
Norberto Jr. knew he would lose. He
was not that stupid to underestimate
Imelda’s power. But he resented the
manner in which he was being told not to
run. He knew that if he were only told
more courteously, then he might
graciously agree to bow out. He had said
time and again that the governorship
would be useless if the administration
was not on his side. But he also
remembered his father’s motto of “Leyte
above self ” and was willing to act on
the noble implications of that motto.
Imelda left in a huff.
The following week, she called
Father Almendra, a priest from
Tacloban, whose studies in the seminary
were financed by Governor Norberto
Romualdez Jr. For four consecutive
days, the priest and Imelda held
conferences to determine how to
convince the governor not to run. Having
lived closely with the governor, Father
Almendra correctly advised that Imelda
had to change her mode of approach.
Meanwhile, Loreto insists, despite
Imelda’s threats, Norberto Jr. made up
his mind to run as a matter of principle.
The next time Imelda went to see the
Governor, she was teary-eyed,
remorseful, pleading — and terribly
effective.
“I come not as First Lady,” she began,
“but as a humble cousin, a Romualdez.
Please try to understand why I am doing
this.”
Norberto Jr. had no choice this time
but to capitulate. Despite his pride, he
had sense.
“I do not want to fight my own blood,
I’m tired of Romualdezes fighting
Romualdezes,” the daughter of Vicente
Orestes said to the son of Norberto.
Imelda had indeed come a long way
from the demure, shy girl of Tacloban.
The power and affluence associated
with the Romualdez name that used to be
such a source of embarrassment to the
dreamy-eyed aspirant for a paltry Miss
Manila contest were no longer illusions.
Both power and affluence were hers to
command at the snap of her fingers or
nod of her regal head.
Illusion became a reality at last.
For all her prestige, she has not
reckoned with a few ghosts of her past.
One such ghost is the woman who spent
10 years of her life serving Remedios
Trinidad and who cradled Imelda as an
infant and saw her grow up. This same
woman now wonders if the promise of
recognition that Imelda’s mother, had
given her will be fulfilled.
The name is Estrella, but it might as
well have been Imelda’s gift to all
Filipinos. Imelda, as First Lady, could
have inspired hundreds of thousands of
Filipinos by reckoning her past as an
example that there is hope for the poor
of this country.
 Copyright © Carmen N. Pedrosa 2013
Cover design by Adam David
ePub design and production by Flipside team

First published in 1969

by Navarro Pedrosa Publishing

eISBN 978-971-9951-85-8
k12

This e-book edition published 2013

by Navarro Pedrosa Publishing
and Flipside Publishing Services, Inc.
Quezon City, Philippines.

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