What a magical day it was to receive four fine women, all of them luminaries in their respective fields, three of them Constantino Foundation partners, thanks to the IYAS and one who was a close personal friend of Letizia Roxas Constantino, and, in her words, a proud student of Renato Constantino.
This was the second visit of the esteemed feminist scholar and writer, Rosalinda Pineda Ofreneo, who had joined the opening of the exhibit last April 9, the birthday of the woman honored in the event. At the exhibit’s opening, Tita Inday, as her legion of students, friends, and fans call her, had to wade through over 150 people who had turned up, and she knew she saw too little of the displays, letters, and artifacts of Letizia, who reciprocated Tita Inday’s generous affection.
Tita Inday’s second visit was not only more calm. She was also with three other women who wielded similar magic: Marjorie Evasco, Susan Lara, and Grace Monte de Ramos.
It was moving to see Tita Inday stand beside her words, which accompanied the first display at the very entrance of the exhibit. After refreshments there was a lot of book-signing as Marj, Grace, and Susan asked Inday to sign their copies of her biography of Renato Constantino, and Lourdes asked Marj and Susan to sign hers – the newly launched boom Vital Signs. Joining the table was family friend Dani Suratos and the foundation’s managing director Red Constantino.
The exhibit’s opening panel displays the words of Ofreneo, who explains in her essay how Letizia was on her way to a concert pianist’s career, and then she met her future husband, and we’re all the better for the twist of fate.
Tita Inday wrote the biography Renato Constantino–A Life Revisited, with Letizia closely supporting the writing and the writer. Ofreneo’s book is full of personal and political insights, because of her friendship with Letty, as she called Letizia, and because she was also close to the man whose life she was writing about, her teacher.
Grace Monte de Ramos, celebrated poet, teacher in Silliman and an esteemed panelist of the IYAS National Writers Workshop, described Ofreneo as “her mentor.” They had met earlier for lunch with Marjorie Evasco, poet and Professor Emeritus of Litereature in De La Salle University, and Susan Lara, a writer, poet, and another multiple recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
It was truly a magical day as the four women spent time together at the exhibit and later over merienda with a shipload of laughter and stories and Lourdes “Dudi” Constantino, a writer herself and who Letizia considered not just her daughter in-law but her friend and confidant, as well as Rio Constantino, winner of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature grand prize for essay.
Throughout the conversations shined the memory of Letizia and the art of letters she embraced, not just through the books, articles, and speeches she wrote and edited, but also through the relentless chronicling that was her companion in life: the numerous the diaries and journals she kept, and the decades of letters written and delivered to friends and family–each one, or maybe all of it, in totality, an affirmation of the woman’s way of writing, as Tita Inday softly reminded everyone.
#LetiziaALifeInLetters #IYAS #constantinofoundation
