Letty Shahani’s singular act of sweetness
On my way out of an event at the Asian Institute of
Management last November, former Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani crossed my path.
Instead of the perfunctory nod or hello, she stopped and told me, "I want
you to know that my father thought very highly of your lolo. He used to say
that Rod Severino was very useful to him in the foreign office."
It was a startling, heart-warming reminder of my beloved
lolo, with whom I lived as a teen-ager. Today, as we absorb news of Letty
Shahani's death, I recall that moment as a singular act of sweetness. She could
have just walked by; instead, my last memory of her was our fond reconnection
as fellow members of diplomatic families, even if mine was nowhere near as
prominent as hers.
It reminded me that long before she became the younger
sister of a president, she was the daughter of one of the country's foremost
diplomats, the former Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos, an original signatory of
ASEAN's founding document and a model of the urbane, lettered diplomat, which
his daughter would become, and which my lolo was as well, having served as a
devoted but little known foreign service officer. His son – my father, also
called Rod Severino – would follow in my lolo’s footsteps in the 1960s.
Shahani’s long career in public service arguably, and maybe
literally, covered more ground than just about any other Filipino in history,
taking her to head Embassies in several countries as well as to United Nations
leadership positions.
And all that was before a distinguished eleven years in the
Senate where she was known for legislation to strengthen protections for women.
But what I remember her most for in her time as a senator was a quixotic effort
to formally organize a "moral recovery" program, after she initiated
a serious study "to inquire into the strengths and weaknesses of the
Filipino character with a view to solve social ills and strengthen the nation’s
moral fiber."
Cynics might have smirked, but after the depravity of the
Marcos era, such an endeavor was probably more urgent than any legislation.
Long after she retired, she still had a public life in my
view, and that was her frequent appearances at Legaspi Sunday Market in Makati
where she sat in the heat for hours and, to anyone who cared to listen,
extolled the virtues of the carabao milk for sale from her Pangasinan farm. She
brightened even rainy days with her sunny demeanor.
That brief encounter at AIM last November when she recalled
my lolo defined to me her warm and gracious character.
But it was at the AIM forum an hour earlier where she
demonstrated her sterling qualities as an intellectual and patriot. She argued
forcefully but elegantly for the government to use the international tribunal's
favorable decision on the South China Sea to pursue the national interest. She
was plainly exasperated with the government's concessions to China.
What struck me and perhaps others in the audience was not
her principled position, but the fact that she could expound so lucidly and
firmly for someone who was supposed to be debilitated by an advanced stage of
cancer.
As ill as she was, she found the strength to tell us to do
the right thing.
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