Who’s Who in Bataan – Feliza Sevilla Baens

Feliza Sevilla Baens of Orani, Bataan
By Nieves Baens del Rosario
Photos courtesy of Mina Pe Benito & Lisa Fortun

She was the first child of Pablo Baens, a professor in Spanish, and Petra Sevilla both of Malabon, Rizal. She saw the first light of day on March 16, 1894 in Orani, Bataan and had seen better days during her childhood. Her doting father planned for this intelligent and beautiful child a well-rounded education possibly in Germany. As God willed it, her father had to close his two Spanish schools in Orani and Balanga when the Americans came. The family fortune dwindled and what the parents lost in material possessions were recovered in having many children, nine of them, the third one died at an early age.

She started the hard way of life in 1910, when she was barely 16 years, by entering the government service as a classroom teacher in Abucay, Bataan. Being the eldest in a family of eight living children, she had to stop schooling to help her parents rear and educate them. She was not even an intermediate graduate when she began teaching.

In 1913, when her father died, the whole family burden fell on her shoulders—her widowed mother, educated in the old traditional way, and seven young sisters and a brother. The youngest was only four years old and Feliza was then a young girl of 19. She assumed with her meager salary the heavy role of paying by installments the debts incurred by her father during the period of a lingering illness. What was left to her was an unfinished house where she and her mother guarded the youth of the brother and sisters and herded them together with tender love and devotion. She took the challenge and responsibilities with a brave heart and the proper spirit while engaged in that painful task of pulling all strings to keep the family together and educate the children. She managed to complete her education through summer courses and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the National Teacher’s College.

She was proficient in Spanish, English, and Tagalog. She played the violin. She brought up her brother and sisters with discipline and religion. She did not spoil them but taught them that the sweetest fruits of success are gained through merit and hard work. She found the greatest joy of her life in having had a hand in shaping the destiny and molding the character of the brother and sisters left to her charge, almost of all them valedictorians and honor students.

She authored the Abakada ng Bataan which was widely used in public and private schools. She was a principal teacher in almost all elementary schools in Bataan and later a District Supervisor. She retired as the English Supervisor in Bataan after 49 years of unblemished service to the public. She contributed her Abakada ng Bataan for the propagation of the National Language, set the example of self-sacrifice, showed an exemplary way of life of bravery and independence of mind, gave the nation at her own self-sacrifice educated citizens and leaders in the persons of her brother and sisters, to wit: Dr. Alfredo Baens, Josefa Baens Santos, Nieves Baens del Rosario, Luz Baens Arcega, Emilia Baens Santos, Dr. Juanita Baens Ramos, and Encarnacion Baens Santa Clara.

When her sister Encarnacion died in the Japanese bombing of Orani on December 31, 1941 together with her husband and four other children, Feliza played the role of a surrogate mother to the three surviving children of her deceased sister. They later became a physician, a
pharmacist, and a dentist. When her orphaned nephew was later widowed with five children, Feliza again helped to bring them up. Feliza passed away in April 1986.

Editor’s Note: The writer, Ms. Nieves Baens-del Rosario, one of the sisters of Ms. Feliza Baens passed away in December 1986, shortly after Ms. Baens’ demise in April of the same year.