Once upon a press club

1949. No one remembers the exact date but it was at the now-extinct San Fernando Restaurant in the capital town that the Pampanga Press Club was founded. 

There are also variants on the mediamen who actually formed the PPC. Eight names though are constant: Silvestre Songco, Romeo Arceo, Emerito de Jesus, Alejandrino Songco, Lino Sanchez Sr., Tomas San Pedro, Gregorio Sangil, and Armando P. Baluyut.
Coming soon after were Renato “Katoks” Tayag, Antonio Torres, Benvenuto Maglaqui, Ulpiano Quizon, Fred Roxas, Ben Gamos, and Hector Soto, the oral chronicler of the club’s early history.

Then followed Lito Pangilinan, Joe Roman, Lino Sanchez, Jr., Ram Mercado, and Max Sangil.

Eight. Seven. Five. Those first three batches we acclaim as the old guards of the PPC. But for Fred, Lino, Ram, and Max, all have written their 30s. 
The first “official headquarters” of the PPC was Camp Olivas, as it was the primary beat in the province, being the headquarters of the 1^st Military Area, comprising all the provinces north of Manila and covering all the major services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Sited in Olivas, the PPC provided more than an historical footnote to the transformation of the military geography in northern and central Luzon – from 1^st Military Area to 1^st Philippine Constabulary Zone, to 3^rd Regional PC-INP Command, to 3^rd Regional PNP Command, to the current 3^rd Regional Police Office.

The 8 Fathers

At Olivas, Beting Songco of Manila Times-Mirror-Taliba was the primus inter pares, famously for institutionalizing journalistic “SS” with his ever present “three of the fatalities have remained unidentified as of press time” on top of identified casualties at every report of Huk-PC encounters.
For all his sensationalized style, Beting had this aversion to tabloids. This was most manifest with a horrified Beting spitting out “Bastos!” at a picture – taken with a zoom lens – of an American girl peeing on a rice paddy along a highway captioned “American girl watering Philippine soil.”
There is not much of Romy Arceo I came to know of other than that he was editor of The Quezonian at the then Manuel L. Quezon Educational Institution, now MLQU. He came into local journalism with his brother-in-law Emerito de Jesus.
‘Marito of The Evening News covered the defense beat and soared to the post of Department of National Defense Usec for Munitions during the Diosdado Macapagal administration. It was during his PPC presidency in 1958-1959 that the PPC club building at the Capitol Compound was completed on a land leased by Gov. Rafael Lazatin to the PPC for 50 years.
‘Marito went on to become mayor of Bacolor and president of the Pampanga Mayors League at the time of Gov. Estelito Mendoza.
Toto Songco of the Philippine News Service started the PPC building construction as club president in 1957-1958. During the Marcos era, he headed the regional office of the National Media Production Center.
Lino Sanchez, Sr. of The Manila Times was known for his penchant for scoops. In the midst of coverages, he routinely disappeared for no apparent reason surprising his peers with the next day’s Times carrying his stories they did not know about.
It was Lino that coined “Huklings” in reference to young Huk partisans.
I got close and personal to Don Tomas San Pedro who opened his Pampanga Newsweek to my first column sometime in 1978.
Bren Z. Guiao, when he was governor, had the habit of teasing Don Tomas with his journalism roots traced to the latter’s Luzon Courier in the late ‘50s, only to remind him of his unpaid salary.
As broadcaster of dzAP, Don Tomas was most remembered for his thorough reading of the news, complete with “Continued on page…”
Yoyong was the best Sangil where writing is concerned. No apologies to his younger brother Max and his son Jay. At the Philippine News Agency where he was stringer, Yoyong wrote oh-so-slowly but oh-so-surely, his syntax and grammar ever in perfect synch.
Yoyong served as provincial information officer of the Capitol during the stint of his cousin, Gov. Juanita L. Nepomuceno, and later consultant to his Porac townmate Lito Lapid in his turn at the governorship.  
Don Armando P. Baluyut founded Central Luzon’s oldest running newspaper, The Voice in June 1954. A poet laureate with the nom de plume Arpiba, Don Armando never became president of the PPC – an “anomaly” corrected thrice over by his son Lincoln’s three terms in the presidency.

LAST TUESDAY, Aug. 28, the PPC celebrated its 69^thanniversary and induction of its new set of officers led by the double-termed, double visionary Deng Pangilinan of dwRW and Balacat News.

Anniversaries being milestones from where we look back, as well as we look forward, if only for balance, be it existential, intellectual, emotional give more than enough reason to reprint above the first chapter of the book Of the Press (1999), my “non-definitive” history of the PPC.
The PPC prides itself as one of the oldest, if not indeed the oldest, press clubs in the whole country, predating the organization of the National Press Club by three years.

As in the era of print and broadcast, the PPC stands tall anew in the dotcom age, being the first press club to ever set up and operate its own news portal – iorbitnews.com – which celebrated its second anniversary also last Tuesday.

Blessed am I not only to have been a part, and one-time president (1990), of this the grandest press club in the country but moreso, for having personally interacted with most of the founding fathers, worked with the succeeding generations of journos, and still be part of the continuing story of the PPC.