Chapter 3 – Luz Banzon Magsaysay

Mechanic

Ramon started as a mechanic at TRY-TRAN in early 1931 earning P35 a month. He and a couple of others were in charge of the repair and maintenance of all buses and vehicles of the company based in Muelle dela Industria in Azcarraga district, Manila. He plunged into his work with enthusiasm, helping the other mechanics at the shop while wearing a khaki or blue denim pants that transformed to a grimy and greasy mess at the end of the day. After a quick bath at the terminal, he slipped into a clean suit for his night classes at Jose Rizal College.

The new challenge and heightened tempo at TRY-TRAN brought a sudden change in Ramon: the depression of the past three years was gone. This time, however, his college studies at JRC definitely took a back seat. He probably read Popular Mechanics in and out of the shop more than the assigned textbooks in school.

Ramon personally checked every bus coming in from the province, particularly for engine performance and gas-and-oil consumption, and made on-the-spot adjustments or repairs. Sometimes, he road-tested the bus himself. He was firm and strict in enforcing proper care of the buses. His language towards the drivers was always to the point, but he rarely scolded them even after he was promoted as shop superintendent of the company. He knew all his drivers and men by nickname, and they in turn called him “Monching. Ramon Magsaysay, the quintessential mechanic.

Continuous development

To keep fully informed on new trends in technology, he would always ask visiting salesmen about personnel policies and practices in their business firms. Part of his administrative duties was the ordering of spare parts, supplies and shop equipment. He also helped out erring drivers apprehended by the police. He enjoyed his frequent movements in and out of the shop, and drove his own car or the service car assigned to him. The varied tasks that made up his job kept him fully occupied. And he shifted from one task to another with the zest and gusto of one who had discovered his real interest in life.

Unfortunately, he neither formally completed the requirements for the Commerce curriculum, nor paid his arrears in college fees at the Jose Rizal College. As students who did not meet their financial obligations were not allowed to graduate, Ramon did not get a college diploma at JRC even if he showed, by substitution and by the addition of his residual credits at U.P., that he had substantially satisfied the minimum academic requirements of the school.

Chapter 3

First eye-ball

RamonMagsaysay had gotten well into the swing of things at the TRY-TRANS bus company when he first saw the girl who was to become his wife barely two years later.

Sometime in July 1929, while at the TRY-TRANS terminal in Azcarraga, Ramon was tipped off by an office personnel that there was a group of girls inside the manager’s office upstairs. The girls, it turned out, were the Banzon sisters of Balanga composed of Encarnacion, Rosario, Consuelo and Luz — all of them beautiful. The four sisters were accompanied by their mother, Mrs. Lucila Rosauro Banzon.

The Banzons were at the terminal in connection with the sale of their father’s transport firm to the TRY-TRAN Bus Company of Manila. (Remember, Jose Mameng was the owner of what he described as a “modest transportation company” whose buses plied the Bataan-Manila route, as well as the Bataan-Olongapo route.) The Banzons went to the company’s office to collect one of the several installment payments due on the said sale.

It was here where Ramon saw the 14-year-old Luz Banzon and her other equally pretty sisters for the first time. He immediately thought of some way to introduce himself to them. When the business transaction of the Banzons was completed, Ramon stepped up and offered to take the women back to their city residence or anywhere using the company car. They gracefully accepted the offer. He drove the Banzons to their city residence, which turned out to be the dormitory of the Instituto de Mujeres located in Tayuman Street.

As Ramon was driving, he kept looking at one of the girls, Luz, through the rear-view mirror. Luz, somehow noticed the “impertinence” and ignored it completely. Once in their dormitory, she complained about it to her sisters.

“I’m sure he was looking at me… many times.”

“Are you sure,” Encarnacion, the eldest at 24, simply wanted to make sure.

“Yes,” Luz said and nodded. “He was really looking at me… many times.”

“But you’re only 14,” Rosario, the second child, exclaimed. “How can you explain that…”  “What do you mean by that?” Luz asked.

“How old do you think Ramon is?” asked Encarnacion.

“I don’t know,’ Luz replied. “But he’s already ‘matanda’. I’m sure he’s older than you, ate…”

“If he looks that old, then how sure are you that he was looking at you, and not at me or Rosario…’

“Or me,” Consuelo, the third daughter quipped.

Lucila, the mother, merely listened to the four sisters talking about “tanda,” Ramon’s new nickname. As far as she was concerned, Ramon would really be interested to her older daughters, but not Luz.

Second meeting

Not long afterwards, probably a month later, Consuelo and Luz Banzon were back at the terminal office, this time to collect the balance due on the sale of their father’s buses to TRY-TRANS.

Ramon chanced upon the two women and managed to repeat his earlier feat. He asked for permission to drive the two sisters back to their dormitory and they agreed. Driving his car, he took the longer route this time, to have lengthy time to stare at his beautiful passengers. Consuelo was seated in front, Luz was seated at the back seat. Just like a usual scene in a romantic movie, their eyes met many times.

Ramon, after marrying Luz, admitted it was his practice of using the rear-view mirror inside the car to look at the other cars following behind him. It just happened that Luz was there, at the back seat, being younger than Consuelo who was seated beside him in front. He did not admit though that he was really looking only at Luz, or felt mixed emotions while driving the sisters to the dormitory. He remembered vividly though that upon arrival at the dorm, Luz immediately rushed out of the car without saying “thank you” and went to her room.

Ramon, this time, pulled out a box from the glove compartment and requested Consuelo to give it to her younger sister. She accepted it and thanked him for the ride. When Consuelo and Luz opened the box, they saw pastries and an accompanying note which read: “To Luz, from Monching.”

Courtship

The meeting between Ramon and the Banzon sisters continued until the balance payment was completed. The friendship between Ramon and the women from Balanga also flourished. But the actual courtship between him and Luz only began in 1931 when the latter was already sixteen years old. She had already started her third year high school education at the Instituto de Mujeres, or exactly two years after their first meeting at the TRY-TRAN bus terminal.

It was one Friday afternoon when Ramon appeared at the school’s dormitory to call on Luz. He admittedly posed as a relative of the Banzons to get past through the stern scrutiny of the matron of the dorm.

Luz was greatly surprised when the “relative” who was announced as her caller turned out to be Ramon. During this time, the older Encarnacion and Rosario were no longer studying at the Instituto de Mujeres. But the third sister, Consuelo, was still on her fourth year at the same school and staying with Luz at the dormitory.

Tanda, like clockwork, brought a box of pastries with a note which read: “To Luz, from Monching” and a bunch of flowers.

“These are for me?” Luz simply wanted to know.

“You can read the notes, I hope…” Ramon answered.

“W-why are you giving me these?”

“M-Maybe because I want you to be my friend…  I don’t know.”

“Why me? Why not ate Consuelo?”

Ramon hesitated to answer. He didn’t have to. During those times, he already knew that Consuelo was already engaged to somebody else. He knew it because he used to see Consuelo with her “boyfriend” every time she took the TRY-TRAN bus to go home to Balanga to visit her parents and other siblings.

Ramon’s first visit lasted for one hour. Thereafter, Ramon bid goodbye after asking Luz: “Can I visit and see you again?”

“Why not…”

Ramon left and returned to the terminal.

Ramon’s visit was repeated a week later. And it became more frequent and gifts of candy and flowers came regularly to the dormitory.

Luz’ suitors

In time, Ramon found out that Luz also had several  admirers courting her, both in Manila and in Bataan. It came to light after he officially started courting the lady from Balanga at the dormitory three visits later. Somehow, the competition challenged Ramon to continue the courtship.

Ramon’s visits certainly flattered Luz who, it turned out, kept the letters of all her suitors, including Ramon’s. (Somehow, Ramon finally learned of the actual names of Luz’ suitors only after their marriage.)

Bataan visits

The courtship that started at the dorm continued even in Bataan. Ramon kept visiting Luz every weekends even in Balanga on summer vacations. He usually arrived in Balanga from Manila so early in the morning he had to wait at a friend’s house in Barrio Cupang just to see Luz sometime during the same day.

Like most young men everywhere when they were paying court, Ramon was very kind and respectful to Luz’s parents, sisters and brothers. He easily won the old folks’ hearts by being helpful too. During every visits in Balanga, he would immediately inquire if the Banzon family car was having trouble and he would immediately repair and fix it like new, sometimes even before he saw Luz.

“He was really very good with machines,” Luz recalled. “He made sure he earned my parents’ admiration.” It took all these premeditated gestures, the persistent visits in Balanga or at the Manila dormitory despite Luz’ initial refusal to see him. It was the unfailing presents of flowers, sweets, Chinese pancit, and magazines that finally wore down the young lady’s resistance.

Luz’ feelings for Ramon were also fanned by her parent’s undisguised liking for the humble and hardworking mechanic (later on shop superintendent) of TRY-TRAN. Ramon’s unaffected simplicity all the more impressed his future father in-law who, incidentally, also knew that Exequiel and Perfecta Magsaysay were prominent couple in their own province.

Ramon remembered: “Luz was always jolly and fun-loving. She always appeared demure in the company of strangers. She was also a bit chubby and dark, with a short, pug nose that was described as chata, and thick straight hair that she wore in two pigtails. She has a pair of bright beautiful eyes that crinkled at the corners when she laughed.” In the end, he was right in thinking that the innocent-looking girl from Balanga would become even lovelier with the passing of time.

Stop schooling

Pressure of work and his mounting offensive in the romantic field forced Ramon to finally stop his studies at the Jose Rizal College in 1932. He and Luz began attending parties and dances, along with the other Banzon sisters, in Manila and Bataan. But the two never danced together, according to witnesses. He did not approve of dancing in the first place. “I have two feet, both left,” he said jokingly.

Luz, on the other hand, was also not permitted to dance being under eighteen. But she admitted that she danced a lot at the dorm and at home with her sisters as partners. Even when Luz came “of age,” she and Ramon remained mere spectators. It was enough for them to be together watching the dance while properly chaperoned.

Twice, Ramon serenaded Luz while she was vacationing in Bataan. He brought along three old friends from Zambales. One of them played the violin and the other, the Hawaiian guitar or ukelele. The third one  was the band leader who did all the singing.

“Ramon also sang twice, I remembered…”  Luz admitted in a later interview. “They were both English songs. What was the title of that song again? ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’?  Yeah, that’s right.”

“I know some Tagalog songs, too…” Ramon interjected during the same interview.

Luz laughed out loud. “Yeah, right…”

Boyfriend

Initially, Luz was having second thoughts on accepting Ramon as a boyfriend. She was deeply worried about their age gap. She was only sixteen while Ramon was already 26. She was still in high school while Ramon dropped out of college without finishing his Commerce degree. He even admitted to Luz during the courtship that he had no more plan of going back to school.

“What’s the need? I already have a steady job right now, earning more than what a Commerce graduate is receiving from any big firm in Manila. I can make more money if I wanted to…” Ramon explained. “At this point in time, I know I can already raise a family and sufficiently feed them without a problem.”

Luz also worried about another thing: she was a Tagala and he was an Ilokano. Ramon had a ready answer to that. “That’s no big problem. All of us in the family speak Tagalog. My parents and all my siblings use Tagalog in our house in Zambales every day. We only utter word in Ilocano when necessary. If she (Luz) doesn’t want to live in Zambales, that is fine with me. I can stay and live in Balanga if she wanted me to.”

Ramon is tall while Luz a bit shorter. A problem? “No. That’s no problem too. We don’t have to dance together every day. And I can buy her shoes with heels. That would solve everything, “Ramon said.

Just like a valiant knight, Ramon, also called “Monching” was able to show Luz his distinct qualities that finally captivated her heart.

….to be continued…