[16235] in APO-L
Brod Art Taca dead at 52 (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Randy Finder)
Mon Feb 17 04:44:49 1997
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 04:41:39 -0400
Reply-To: Randy Finder <naraht@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU>
From: Randy Finder <naraht@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
Information about a brother who helped in his own way bring down
Ferdinand Marcos as well as did many other things in his life.
YiLFS
Randy Finder
--
Leadership, Friendship and Service - Alpha Phi Omega
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 03:25:43 -0500 (EST)
From: MAXIMILIO@aol.com
To: apo-phil@calitan.msuiit.edu.ph
Subject: Brod Art Taca dead at 52
Brother Arturo "Art" Montemayor Taca, M.D., Eta '63A
February 11, 1945-February 11, 1997
Manila, Philippines-St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
On his 52nd birthday on February 11, 1997, Brother Arturo "Art" Montemayor
Taca, M.D., died due to complications from pneumonia he caught during his
recent visit of the Philippines.
Shortly after returning from his birthplace Manila to his adopted home in
Town and Country, a bedroom community of executive estates just a few miles
from St. Louis, Missouri, Brod Art spent February 3-7 in a hospital. His
widow, the former Maria Teresa "Tessie" Calvo, 46, said, "On the night of
February 10, before we went to sleep, he was complaining that he was not
feeling well. Then the next morning, I tried to wake him up before 8, and
he's gone."
Art is survived by Tessie, his wife of almost 28 years, and their five
children: Arturo Jr. or "Coco," 27, a third year medical student at the
University of the East in Manila; Antonio or "Toby," 26; Adelbert John or
"Dino," 25; Teresa Jr., 21; and Lisa, 20, all students in local colleges in
Missouri.
Art was the only son of Vivencio Taca, D.V.M. of Manila, and the former
Basilica Montemayor, D.V.M., D.M.D., of Pampanga; Art's three sisters live in
Manila and New York. Both parents were graduates of the University of the
Philippines. His father was a government veterinarian for the Manila
slaughterhouse in Bangkusay, Tondo. His mother was also a government employee
and was a veterinarian, dentist, and public health administrator of the
Manila zoo. Art grew up in Blumentritt, Santa Cruz, Manila.
Art joined Alpha Phi Omega at UP Diliman as one of the 14 members of 7-7
(Siete-Siete) Bulbas of the APO Cossacks, batch '63A of Eta chapter. He
studied B.S. Zoology at UP from 1960 to 1964. He later transferred to the
University of Santo Tomas in Manila (APO's Pi chapter). He credited Pi Brod
Dalmacio Francisco of encouraging him to take the Medical College Aptitude
Test (MCAT) at the Araneta Coliseum. Art remembered he was half-asleep,
feeling like a chimpanzee in training, during the examination, which
consisted of multiple choice questions. Just the same, he passed the MCAT. He
received his degree from UST and placed sixth in the medical board of 1971,
when eight of the Top Ten went to UST graduates.
Art and Tessie met at UST and were married on June 28, 1969. Senator Benigno
"Ninoy" S. Aquino Jr. was among their wedding godparents.
In March 1972, Art started to practice his profession as a resident physician
at Ospital ng Maynila. He had no desire of leaving the Philippines, but he
was let go from the government hospital soon after Martial Law was declared.
As luck would have it, he had applied to take the Educational Commission of
Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) examinations two days before they closed.
He was accepted by a city hospital in St. Louis and came over to the United
States with his family in 1973.
Art worked until 1979 with the Homer G. Phillips hospital. In the last 17
years, he was affiliated with St. Mary's hospital and Centerville hospital
while he maintained a private practice at the Doctors' Building in St. Louis
and the Venice Medical Clinic managed by his wife in Venice, Illinois. Tessie
was a 1973 UST graduate in Medical Technology.
It was in the early 1980s when Art walked into the pages of Philippine
history books. The Tacas hosted the Aquinos whenever they were in St. Louis
during Ninoy's stay in the U.S. Then President Ferdinand E. Marcos allowed
Ninoy to leave the Philippines in 1981 to undergo a heart bypass surgery,
only to be welcomed back in 1983 by assassins' bullets before he could get
off the airplane in Manila.
On top of his personal relationship with the Aquinos, Art credited Brod Ching
Jalipa of Alpha Mu chapter (San Carlos University in Cebu City) as an
influence in getting him involved in the Philippine political situation. Art
said, "Ching opened up my mind to explore the issues of the times."
Art said he really believed in luck. It turned out that the National
Personnel Records Center was located in St. Louis. The center housed military
records, including those related to World War II, the Philippine archives,
and Filipino collaborators during the Japanese occupation. Since Art and the
records which could confirm or contradict President Marcos' heroic exploits
and medal claims were in the same city, Art started to visit the National
Personnel Records Center in March 1983. By October 1983, the Philippine files
were either being transferred or reclassified, and access to them was no
longer granted. The reclassified materials were moved in 1984 to the National
Archives in Washington, D.C.
Art documented his experience in "Marcos' war records put 'off-limits'" -- a
front-page article in The Philippine News of December 21-27, 1983.
Although it was the Pulitzer-Prize winning report of the San Jose Mercury
News on the alleged hidden wealth of Marcos that finally exposed the
Philippine strongman's vulnerability to global criticism, it is appropriate
to credit Art in that his research effort pushed the first domino. The U.S.
government took a hard second look at Marcos, and after almost two decades of
a one-man rule with Uncle Sam's blessing, the American fatted cow was no
longer sacred and was being readied to be sacrificed.
As an aftermath of Aquino's assassination on August 21, 1983, offshore
campaign to depose Marcos was sustained in the U.S. In 1986, Marcos conducted
a snap election with disputed results that led to his fleeing the Philippines
and leaving the reins of government to his presidential opponent, Corazon
"Cory" Cojuangco Aquino, Ninoy's widow.
Cory Aquino gave Art and Tessie Taca, in recognition of their efforts,
presidential citations at the Malacanang Palace in Manila. Art was considered
for high-level appointment in the Philippine government, and he accepted the
position of Attache to the Philippine mission to the United Nations.
Art was national vice-chairman and then national chairman of the Movement for
a Free Philippines. He wrote opinion-editorial columns for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, a Pulitzer Publishing Co. newspaper, and Filipino Reporter, a
weekly Filipino-American newspaper published in the Metropolitan New York
area. Among his professional organizations were the Philippine Medical
Association and the Association of Philippine Physicians in America.
Art was a urologist and later had to cut time spent on his practice when he
suffered from emphysema and asthma. He was smoking one pack of cigarettes a
day until he quit in 1992. Between April 17 and May 2, 1995, he underwent an
experimental surgery for his chronic obtrusive pulmonary disease (COPD) on
his collapsed lung.
After his operation, Art felt he had a new lease on life. He had seized each
day as though it was his last. It was time to slow down. Even then, he wanted
to take up carpentry or even political cartooning, if he knew how to draw. He
continued to provide the heart and heat to his hearth and home of a loving
wife and a brood of five young adult children, remained active in Alpha Phi
Omega, tried to write one to one-and-a-half hours a day, kept pace with
current Philippine events, and read the funny pages. "I couldn't live
elsewhere, because I'd miss the newspaper cartoons so much," he said.
There was a time when he was gasping for air and couldn't go anywhere without
his oxygen machine. However, Art had always been a fighter. He wanted to be
in the middle of things. Through thick and thin, he fought for his fraternity
brothers, his native country, his principles, and ultimately his life. He
took risks, and there was a time, he said, "When you feel you're invincible."
Art lived 52 years to the day.
Visitation was held at the Schrader funeral home, Thursday-Saturday, February
13-15. A memorial mass was said on Saturday at St. Anselm's church. The
funeral service was scheduled on Sunday at Schrader before Art's body was
flown to Manila. Wake at Funeraria Paz on Araneta Blvd. Ext. in Santa Mesa
will begin on Tuesday, February 18. Interment at the Manila North Cemetery,
where Art will be laid to rest beside his mother's tomb, is yet to be
announced.
Let's pray for our beloved brother. Please send expressions of your fraternal
sympathy to Brod Art M. Taca's family: Mrs. Tessie C. Taca, 977 Cabernet
Drive, Town and Country MO 63017-8340, Tel. No. (314) 394-7991.
Submitted by Brod Mel S. Gonzales Jr., APO-Eta, Zodiac 73D
Notes: Information came from my personal interview with Brod Art on November
2, 1995, at the J.F. Sanfilippo's restaurant, Drury Inn Gateway Arch, St.
Louis; from Tessie and children; from Art's articles published in The
Philippine News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Filipino Reporter; and from The
New York Times (which covered Art's research activities).
Additional obituary information was contributed by Brods Bernie Castillo,
Dante Castillo, Gary Hernal, Uly Maypa, JP Paredes, and Bryan Dumlao, who
forwarded to us the article on Brod Art in Filipino Reporter/New York City,
February 14-20, 1997, edition.
As a way to keep Brod Art's memory alive, please feel free to sanitize (i.e.,
soften the APO angle), use, or send this article to other publications.
In the next few days, I'm posting Brod Art's articles (around 10). The op-ed
columns are highly political in nature. Please send me an e-mail if you wish
NOT to receive these postings.
