By: Fred C. Amora

Boy Guingguing is gone - not on a vacation but to a one-way trip back home to his Creator. A media colleague texted me the day BG expired at the Borja Community Hospital Thursday morning asking in jest at the end of his message “if I feel happy?”

“Why should I be happy on BG's death?”

Well, I can't blame my peers in the media profession, both in print and broadcast, for all of them knew that there was a time that I was an object of BG's relentless tirades and was pilloried no end for something I did that offended him so much. But not known to many was that I was a product and a creation of BG, which could be one reason that he claims rights to “make or unmake” me of whatever had become of his creation. BG was my best friend, mentor in the deepest sense. He taught me the ins and outs of media maze that gave me this staying power and made me survive in this trade until these days. My first break in Bohol media was actually courtesy of Boy Guingguing, when in 1992, he gave me the chance to write for the Bohol Sunday Post, an English weekly newspaper that he ran as publisher and editor. That time I had just exited from an overseas contract job with Pepsi-Cola Al Qhatani in Saudi Arabia and decided not to go back there anymore. I could no longer stay there strong enough to withstand lonely days and lonely nights in Arab lands. Banking on my college days skills in writing, I took a dusty 84-kilometer trip to Tagbilaran from Guindulman and roamed around the city until I stopped and saw an office at the ground floor of DoRes Building located along M. Parras Street, fronting the old provincial hospital (now the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital). The place was Sunday Post editorial office, and as I went in, the first guy I met was Sen Guingguing (younger brother of BG), who briefly interviewed me and then pointed me to BG saying: “Adtoa Ingko, kamo estorya.”

The rest is history. I worked with Sunday Post for almost four years, in many capacities of newspaper work: advertising rep, field reporter, copy editor and even proofreader at the printing shop in the old LeCel Printing Press. It was the best times of my life. During Saturday nights when we all sweat together to finish the weekly edition of the paper, BG is always there up to the last wee hours in the next morning when the final page of Sunday Post comes out from the printing mill. We would then unwind, relieved and relaxed with the job completed, enjoying a hot smoking “batchoy” at the famous Aling Celia restaurant along Remolador Street, this city, or at the old Torralba market downing bottles of beer. The company usually includes BG's original buddies: Chito Fuentes, Ric Obedencio, Nilo Sapong and many others. There were even times that BG would take me to his house in Barangay Montaña, Baclayon after many rounds of beer to insure that I am safe and not wandering down the road. As I reminisce all these memories I really would feel lucky I had met someone like BG.

Proof to that luck is my numerous awards in news writing and my becoming an accomplished professional media practitioner (including broadcast), through which I was able to provide the needs of my family and send all my children to college. I found new life away from the “homesick vs dollar blues” sphere in the Middle East, by acquiring a profession that BG taught me. Even as a doting father to four sons, BG was with me in my first experience to have a son getting married. And at that time I was sort of “zero balance” -nothing was left in my bank account. “O... kaslon man kuno imong anak... waman ka magsulte naho... (your son is getting married; you did not tell me),” BG once said to me. With the words was a quick, snappy flip of his hands revealing an envelope which was containing P10,000 pesos in paper bills. It was enough to buy two lechon- and the wedding become grandiose. Grandiose in the sense that on wedding day, wine and foods flowed, provided by numerous “donors” (mostly mayors), whom BG called with his signature telephone mode of persuasion. What a guy. He is there when you needed him most. Not just that. BG can always feel if one of his workers or anyone close to him needs help.

“Gusto ka ug naay dugang income.... kuyog nako,” he told me one early Sunday morning after we checked that the Sunday Post copies were already peddled in the streets by newsboys. I found myself at the residence of the late former governor Erico Aumentado in Calceta Street, and we had breakfast together, no less, with the governor. As casual as BG usually pushes a proposal, he told the governor: “Gov nia koy e-recommend nimo nga maayo mosuwat... magamit ni nimo,” he told Erico Aumentado, who was also a veteran, meticulous journalist. The next morning, I was informed that I had been enlisted as a contractual worker at the Provincial Government Media Affairs (PGMA) media bureau and the employment lasted throughout the three terms (9 years) of Gov. Aumentado's time. His concern even goes for his lowly newsboys, giving them special day and gifts during Christmas. BG's generosity is also felt by those who need help, giving away money as if it is no longer useful the next day - virtues, wholly his own. Truth of the matter is “behind BG's ruthless, cold-blooded character, is a big stout, compassionate heart that forgives and forgets.” Boy Guingguing, in the summary of his life, is the best epitome of unpretentious living, spending life to the fullest, doing things his way. He can be your best friend, but could also be your worst enemy. In his last days, he remained the same BG - in touch with reality. In his many pronouncements, he practically left a message that “Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day.” Thanks for all these lessons I learned from you, Sir BG!

(Editor's Note): The author, Fred C. Amora, is the associate editor of The Bohol Standard, an English weekly newspaper circulating in the province of Bohol.