We were the smallest in our grade school class – not frail, weak or fragile – just small. We were among the youngest; he was born on April 5 and I, on May 4 – both of us refusing to age beyond 30 yrs.
I would deem it not too self-effacing if I describe us both as cute – not feminine cute but macho cute.
We all went our separate ways as all grade school and high school classmates do. He went to college in Manila as many of us did and we lost touch.
Somehow we of class ’60 managed to send signals home to Davao that not only were we alive – but flourishing. In fact, some of us couldn’t resist the charm and pull of home and were inexorably drawn back – salmons returning to the mother streams where they were spawned.
Dinky Munda spent years in the States competing in the rat race but, opting for a quiet life back home and starting over with a charming wife; Philip Kimpo honing the skills of a lothario on the West Coast, applying such expertise in the home ground – just to cite just a few of us.
But it was more glamorous Victor dela Vega Afable IV, or Vic Afable for short.
He lived his boyhood dreams and became a seaman. He traveled to exotic places with strange-sounding names in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He did not regale us much with his exploits on those journeys but just hints of the facts – deliberately, I surmise, coating these voyages to foreign lands in even more mystery.
Such was the nature of the man – taciturn, with a perpetual cunning but delightful smile on his face.
He will be remembered by his family, especially his ever devoted wife, Mila, his girls Grace, Jane and Mavic in ways intimate only to them; but one iconic image the class ’60 has of him will forever be itched singularly – a glass of cold beer in one hand and a microphone in the other while dishing out his interpretation of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”.
Vic is dead from a stroke. He was laid in state at the Angel Funeral Parlor, F. Torres St. and last Friday was interred at the Davao Memorial Park, this city.
He lived his life fully. [Lito Monico C. Lorenzana, a classmate]
