PETER’S PINOY PATTER – AUGUST 2020
BRIDGE GENERATION NEWS
BG Personality of the Month: Alphonso Hullana, 72, Merced CA
Fonso is the hardest working farm boy I’ve ever known! Not long after he learned how to walk and run, he was helping his pinoy father, Primo Hullana, and his Mexican American mother, Rose Hernandez, on the family’s 100 acre truck farm just a few miles from the Merced city limits. Whether it was harvesting tomatoes, bell peppers, egg plants, onions, or melons, Fonso was up before six and worked until sunset – except when he attended school. It was a routine learned from his father until his untimely death but carried on by his equally hard-working mother. Fonso was only in his early twenties when he lost his father. He took over running the farm and built it to the level it is today. Early on, he envisaged the farm’s growth potential. He quickly expanded its markets to a half dozen bay area sites in San Francisco and Oakland in addition to nearby markets in the Central Valley. Although expansion required driving truckloads of produce 100 miles to the bay area up to five times a week, it proved to be economically successful and is still practiced today.
As the eldest and only male of the family, one might have thought Fonso would leave farm work for less strenuous vocations as most BG youth did. But he loves the challenge of farm work and harbors no regrets over his hard working life. When asked how he learned to run a successful farm, he simply said, “Winters are slow.” I was to learn the discipline he learned from sports, his education at agriculturally-focused California Polytechnic University, and the year he spent in the private sector — all contributed to Fonso’s business acumen and success. It also helped that his family shared his love for the farm. His wife, the former Jeanne Drake, who he married in 1977, took care of the books and often accompanied him on bay area trips. His children and grandchildren all worked on the farm and were active in Future Farmers of America school programs with several of them earning national awards.
Like his Filipino-Mexican cousins (his mother’s sisters married Filipino men), Fonso was an outstanding athlete as a youth. Physically strong from years of farmwork, he also was fast on his feet. He starred as a 210 pound fullback on the football team at Merced High School and middle guard at Merced College. His prowess on the football field earned him a scholarship to Cal Poly where he was shifted to offensive (pulling) guard. Although his father’s death interrupted his college football career, he later became an assistant football coach at Fresno State University while completing his college degree. (Unlike his cousins, however, Fonso did not partake in the Filipino pastime of cockfighting; he was not a sabongero.)
Despite his heavy work schedule, Fonso finds time to be active in his community. He continues to volunteer as the adobo cook for the annual picnic hosted by the Central Valley chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society. He serves the same role in celebrations of the 100-strong Hernandez clan as well as for his friends.
Fonso’s early to rise routine to work in the fields reminds me that most Bridge Generation youth did the same in their day. How times have changed! Thanks to greater educational and employment opportunities, many BG individuals were able to leave the arduous life of farm labor. Thank you, Fonso, for continuing to model the traditional values of hard work in the same spirit of your Manong Generation predecessors.
Passings
Lillian (Juanitas) Medley, the eldest child of the pioneer Juanitas family that first settled in Stockton in 1916. Born in 1925 in Stockton “at home” as was the norm for many Filipinos at the time, Lillian lived most of her life in Stockton. At the age of 10, she and her three siblings became landowners, as it was illegal for her Filipino immigrant father, Cirilo Juanitas, to own property.
Happy July Birthdays:
Vangie (Canonizado) Buell, Beverley (Cabalar) DeToro, Carmen (Carido) Griggs, Connie (Dacuyan) Gin-Alcordo, Richard Gacer, Herb Jamero, Mike Nisperos, Tony Ogilvie, Nemisio Paredes, Roni (Roslinda) Calibjo.
MUSINGS
John Robert Lewis 1940-2020
I cried when Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president I ever knew, died in 1945. I cried when presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who I saw as bringing our divided country together, was assassinated in 1968. And I cried when John Lewis, a valiant champion of civil rights since the early 1960s, succumbed from pancreatic cancer on July 17, 2020. In the early 1960s, he was in his early 20s; I was beginning my career. I remember marveling in admiration as Lewis, one of the original black and white Freedom Riders, challenged interstate travel in the South. I marveled at his bravery as he led other like-minded young black brothers into some of the South’s most segregated communities to begin the ending of Jim Crow laws that subjugated black people since the end of the Civil War. Lewis was the youngest of the 1960s “Big Six” civil rights leadership. His main responsibility was leading his young group to serve as figurative shock troops to prepare the way for visits from more senior members of the “Big Six.” His success was not without personal suffering. He was arrested more than forty times and almost lost his life after being brutally savaged as he led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He was a founder and early leader of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee that coordinated sit-ins. Steadfast in practicing non-violence, he could be confrontational when it was indicated. It was this confrontational non-violence that featured his decades-long tenure in Congress. He could always be counted on to hold Congress accountable for equal justice for all People of Color. For his moral positions on racial justice and equal rights, he was called the “Conscience of Congress”. Ever forward-looking, he was an active supporter of the “Black Lives Matter” movement –even when he was dying of cancer. John Lewis was the last surviving member of the “Big Six” of civil rights. May his bravery, belief in non-violence, and morality live on within today’s civil rights leaders. In the present era of the pandemic and “Black Lives Matter” movement, never before has America needed strong leadership.
Black Lives Matter: A Filipino American Perspective
“Black Lives Matter” was largely a black movement until George Floyd was murdered on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Floyd’s murder gave needed impetus for other, mostly white, Americans to lend their significant support to the movement.
For a Filipino perspective, readers are urged to read two excellent essays by two young Filipino Americans:
“Why Filipino Americans Should Be In Solidarity with Black Lives Matter: Lessons From American History” by Bobby Dalton G. Roy provides a historical account of how the “Filipino community and the Black community in the US is intertwined.”
“Lolo and Lola, Black America is Mourning“ by Ador Pareda Yano is a thoughtful account on the skepticism felt by many post-1965 Filipino Americans regarding the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
I highly recommend reading both essays. My only disappointment is that neither essay recognized the Filipino American Young Turks of Seattle (FAYTS) for their coalition building with the black community as well as with other minority communities during the 1960-70s. Moreover, their activism on Filipino American issues was instrumental in bringing the Seattle Filipino community into the American socio-political mainstream. FAYTS participants, Bob Santos and Dolores Sibonga, were both arrested for their support of discriminated black contractors. Other FAYTS adherents were such well known figures as Roy Flores, Fred and Dorothy Cordova, and your faithful blogger. Regardless of the FAYTS omission, the aforementioned essays deserve to be read by concerned Filipino Americans during this era of “Black Lives Matter” and COVID-19.
Is Excluding People of Color in Favor of White Nationalism/Supremacy in America’s Future? Part X
One only has to look at the disproportional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Persons of Color to know the answer to this question is an emphatic, YES. My previous blog asked, “Are POC among America’s sacrificial lambs?” Again, the answer is an emphatic, YES. The Trump administration, especially its White Nationalist sympathizers in the White House, has done absolutely nothing to address the disparity. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, blacks constitute 22% of those infected with Covid-19 and 23% of those who have died from it — despite being only 13% of the population. Disproportional data for brown Americans (Latinos and Filipinos) are a bit less that of blacks as these groups typically are employed in food chain jobs and reside in multi-generational homes. Trump’s failure to effectively deal with Covid-19, has only served to exacerbate the issue.
PINAKBET — NEWS ACROSS AMERICA
Meet Stephanie Castillo
Castillo is a former Honolulu print journalist and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker whose work includes biographies, social and cultural histories and topics such as opera, cockfighting, and World War II’s First Filipino Regiment. Her first documentary film “Simple Courage” about Hansen’s Disease (the leper colony on Molokai) gained her an Emmy award in 1992.
###########