George Bernard Shaw cracked, 'A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence, university education.' No wonder we have the Holy Name University (HNU). HNU, the Divine Word College (DWC) then, means real friends like Bobbsey Manding Buma-at and Lourdes Angalot, Jing Saniel and Charly Holganza, among a few precious others. It means teachers Mr. Loy Palapos, Mrs. Corazon Logarta, Mrs. Esperanza Neri, the Masamayors and the Manalos. And SVD Fathers Romeo Bancale, Leo Ortiz and Norbert Hessling. Attendance then was also like seeing both tradition and history unfolding as the school's founder himself, Fr. Alphonse Lessage, SVD, still graced the campus.

Martial law years had begun; the school's First Quarter Storm troopers had gone underground and the decade-old mini-skirt had peaked as micro-mini and could no longer go higher from the ground. Ang Tawo was staged, directed by Philippine theater's enfant terrible named Gardy Labad. The massive cast, to mention a few, had Clarocelso Alcordo as Tawo to Bobbsey's Bahandi, the main roles. Also in were the likes of Charly Holganza, Fr. Fernando Po, and two guys, Richard Uy and Jonathan Sarmiento, who didn't audition but were plucked from out the crowd for their towering physical circumstance to essay the role of Kamatayan.

It was one of the biggest and most insightful stage plays in the school, if not in the city. Which is to say that it merits one full, separate article by itself, if memory helps.

I believe that the school, then as now, like a school worthy of its reason for being, strikes a balance between arts and sciences, between cognitive and affective learning, in and out of the classroom, and as a policy favors decent education where everything is in moderation.

In those halcyon days when every young one seemed to strum the guitar and internet surfing belonged to an unseen tomorrow and I discovered Virgil at the school library, there was also Antonio Dejaresco, the unwavering fellow school paper staffer and real true friend besides, back when Peter his brother was a dark-haired boy. And there was Mrs. Logarta, the philosophy honcho who I often visited like an apostate in need of conversion at the feet of her master. When I think DWC, I necessarily think Loy the English teacher, stage director, and school paper adviser. He was a teacher's teacher inside the classroom and a friend outside who cracked, or so I was told, that I attended his Drama class only to check if he's still handsome. He took me as the principal actress of a

Showtime; I was faint with fright and darkness. I asked him to stand nearest the curtain for moral support. He did. I stayed alive through tornadoes in the stomach in Alberto Florentino's 'Cavort With Angels,' not knowing why. He gave me a barely passing grade in his Drama class anyway, much more than I deserved.

My DWC Secretarial diploma I owe much to the then chair of the department, the affable Mrs. Neri.

My spare class attendance (again) was paired with stenography, an art (or is it science?) that truly boggled the mind. Final exams meant taking her dictation down in steno strokes and submitting its typewritten version. But I could memorize her dictation and went direct to typing fast, escaping the shorthand part. She was too good a teacher not to notice it. Again I had a barely passing, diploma make-or-break grade, which I felt she gave after much agonizing and even much more charity.

Every school should take care of all its students; C students may one day buy the school, B students may donate the school bus, and A students may come back as professors, the yarn goes. HNU I must say never considered this yarn. I should know. Though more of an XYZ student, I passed through its portals and felt taken care of.

Many a kin had passed through DWC/HNU as well. I wish to claim the school as my Alma Mater too, if I could (high school was at Cebu City's USC-Girls' School and bachelor's was at Inmaculada), because one doesn't forget a school where one is roused to learn in the midst of one's sense of alienation. If my DWC Secretarial diploma could legitimize my claim, I'd be proud.