#memorialization

On March 5th, 1959, 69 African American boys, ages 13 to 17, were padlocked in their dormitory for the night at the Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville. Around 4 a.m., a fire mysteriously ignited, forcing the boys to fight and claw their way out of the burning building. The old, run-down, & low-funded facility, just 15 minutes south of Little Rock, housed 69 teens from ages 13-17. Most were either homeless or incarcerated for petty crimes such as doing pranks. 48 boys managed to escape the fire. The doors were locked from the outside and fire mysteriously ignited on a cold, wet morning, following earlier thunderstorms in the same area of rural Pulaski County. The horrific event brought attention to the deplorable conditions in which the boys lived. The boys all slept in a space barely big enough for them to move around & theyre one foot apart from one another & their bathroom was a bucket at the corner where they had to defecate in. In an ironic twist, the land in which the school stood is now the Arkansas Department of Correction Facility Wrightsville Unit. In 2019 a plaque was finally placed after 60 years.

—Kostiantyn “Kostia” Yuzviuk, fallen Ukrainian soldier

The rituals I have known through my life, which were wholly unsatisfying, involved putting a person in a casket, having a church service, and putting them into the ground, never to be seen again. Nothing followed that, except a period of grief we were expected to move on from in a few days to return to our normal lives.

As a child, this wasn’t a huge issue. I was not too close with those who passed, I am fortunate for that, but as I get older, I realize how hollow these rituals are to me.

Finding a ritual that works for you will involve effort, and will involve making sure not to engage in cultural appropriation (such as with the rituals of the Day of the Dead – for many of us, that is closed). I have started small, without even realizing this.

I ritualized either leaving one white rose with the dead, or keeping it, if I could not be with them or at their funeral service. I ritualized having chocolate upon learning of their death, and again after the funeral service if I could attend, or the day of the funeral service. Flowers for the dead, sweets for the living.

It has grown from there, into the future plans of hosting a memorial section in my house, which will go in my library when that is completed. I am making plans to celebrate their life and mourn their passing on birthdays, to donate to causes they were passionate about, to reminiscence with music and movies, to do work they would have done, and remind myself of the tastes they loved. The chocolate, and the rose, will still have their place in all of this.

My practices will be my own, private and personal.

Through this practice, though, and keeping it constant rather than “one and done”, I believe I will find a way to better cope with the fear of death, as well. Yes, my loved ones will be gone. Yes, it will hurt. Constantly. And yes – one day I, too, will be gone, and anyone’s remembrance of me can only help them…but while I live, I may be comforted by thoughts of it, and while I live, other people may be comforted by thoughts of how they’re remembered.

It also causes us to look at Death more, and to consider what the people in our lives mean to us, when we consider what we would like to do to come to terms with their loss.

Creating useful practices, for the religious and the non-religious, is a powerful tool at confronting the reality of death. We are not in the process of denying it, even by keeping our grief alive. We are giving it a space. We are giving it room in the conversation. We are acknowledging it.

My practice will not be for everyone.

According to historian Mabel Thompson Rauch, the first Memorial Day was on April 5, 1867, when the townspeople of Carbondale, Illinois, came to hear marching bands and speeches about the sacrifices made by the solders of the Civil War, which had concluded just two years before. The region had been torn apart by the conflict. While Illinois was a strong Union state, its southern part, which included Carbondale, also comprised settlers from Kentucky and Tennessee who fought on the side of the Confederacy.

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The UPAA and the Commonwealth Triumphal Arch

Optimism was high at the time before the inauguration of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935. It was year before, on 24 March 1934, when the Tydings-McDuffie Law was enacted by the U.S. Congress, setting into motion the creation of a 10-year transitional period for the Philippines to become a fully independent nation. Of course, there was also fear among the educated class of Filipinos, as the Philippines under the United States have become too dependent on the U.S. economically. But it could be said that the Commonwealth was a culmination of a dream of that generation that lived through the Philippine Revolution of 1896 against Spain, and who fought the Philippine-American War of 1899-1901. This same generation, having laid down their arms in acquiescence to the United States, brought the fight for independence from the battlefield to the realm of politics. Indeed, many of the Filipino leaders of the time who campaigned for the creation of the Commonwealth were also leaders of the numerous Independence Missions that campaigned for Philippine Independence in the congressional halls of Washington.

Historical documents don’t reveal much, but it was the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA), being the alumni organization of the premier state university in the country, that campaigned for a large monumental structure, the Commonwealth Triumphal Arch, to be constructed. The association finally announced it through all major newspapers in the country on 25 October 1935. It was to be on the scale, perhaps, of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile in Paris, France—a monument to the generation whose crowning achievement was Philippine Independence.

Having known that the rising Filipino sculptor Guillermo Tolentino was the one who designed the impressive Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan, the UPAA, led by UP President Jorge Bocobo, invited the renowned artist beforehand to make a design and maquette for all the public to see, pending the approval of President Manuel L. Quezon and the National Assembly. Tolentino, in explaining his design wrote that unlike monumental arches dedicated to the memorializing of military victory, his was “a tribute to Filipino achievement (in self government)” drawn from the inspiration of a singkaban or the Bulaceño festival arch, although in art deco style. There would be eight bas-reliefs that would depict historical milestones in Philippine history, to highlight the difficult road the nation took before achieving freedom. The pillars of the arch would depict men and women who appear to support the arch on their backs, similar to the concept of bayanihan.

Upon presentation to President Quezon, the design was immediately approved, but the project was touted to amount to PhP 500,000.00, a huge sum that the government at the time could not afford. But in support of the move, the National Assembly enacted Commonwealth Act No. 393 on 5 September 1938, approving the construction of the “Commonwealth Triumphal Arch in the City of Manila to commemorate the inauguration of the Commonwealth of the Philippines” and setting up the means to fund it, through the printing of commemorative postage stamps under the authorization of the Bureau of Posts and the Department of Public Works and Communications. It helped as PhP 350,000 were collected in two years. Two months after the law was enacted, First Lady Aurora Quezon laid the first trowel of cement on the foundation. The chosen site was the intersection of Padre Burgos St. and Taft Avenue, near the Manila City Hall and the Old Legislative Building (now the National Art Gallery).

But war was on the horizon. On 8 December 1941 (2:30 am Philippine time), Japan attacked the United States in Pearl Harbor, and immediately after that, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines commenced. With all government resources directed to emergency protocols, and with the subsequent occupation of the Japanese beginning in January 1942 to the destruction of Manila in February 1945, the dream of our very own triumphal arch was forgotten and was not to be. There were plans to resurrect the idea in 1958, but even that was overtaken by other priorities.

How different would the Manila skyline be if the triumphal arch was built! But even when the plan proved in vain, it is perhaps to the credit of the dreamers of the U.P. Alumni Association that they have dreamt of a gargantuan monument befitting the dignity of a people who refused to give up on freedom. Tolentino may have given the dream its shape through the blueprints left in the Tolentino archives, but it was the UPAA that initiated the dream. For the pre-war generation who answered UPAA’s challenge of a monument, the dream was worth it. Would we find the same worth in our monuments of memory?

Originally published in the Mga Haligi ng Lahi: 2018 UPAA Yearbook.