Delivered by Rolando M. Solis, M.D. at Pope Pius X Catholic Church, Dallas, Tx , July 9, 2009.

In Memoriam

Ramon M. Solis, Sr.

1910-2009

On behalf of our family I wish to thank everyone for taking their time to attend thiscelebratory mass for our father, Ramon M. Solis, Sr.Papa was born on January 10, 1910 and died peacefully on July 6, 2009. Ninety –nineyears and a half is indeed a long time for anyone to live in any epoch. I wonder howmany of us will survive this long or would like to live this long?Did you know that it was in the year of his birth that Father’s Day was first celebrated inthe United States? And that Mother Teresa was born in the same year? Or that the RitzHotel in Madrid opened that year? The first US patent for inventing traffic lights wasawarded and Theodore Roosevelt became the first US president ever to fly in an airplanethat year also.Papa was born in the town of Looc, province of Romblon. His father was quite prolificoutliving two wives. Our father was from the third wife. Our paternal grandfather literally populated the town with Solises and perchance if you wander into this place, you willfind out that all the Solises came from this one source. He lived to be 102. And withoutthe benefit of modern medicine!Papa’s elementary schooling was initiated in Looc and high school in the provincialcapital of Romblon, which had the only high school in the province at that time. Heobtained his law degree at the Philippine Law School in Manila. He married our mother,who was a school teacher in his hometown. He practiced law for a while which wasinterrupted by the Second World War when the Japanese occupied the country. At thattime he already had 3 sons, with me as the youngest, having been born a year before theJapanese Occupation. They would eventually have seven children with an only girl,Victoria, the youngest of the brood. I have a vague recollection of our family hiding inthe mountains then, and moving to another town to get away, as the invaders had burnedthe whole town including our house. We traveled by horse as this was the only means of transportation. We found safety, but life was quite difficult, to say the least.After the war there were now four sons and Papa was assigned as a circuit judge to cover 3 municipalities in the island of Sibuyan, which is one on the three main islands of the province. This was around 1946. We traveled by sailboat because there was nomotorized sea transport then. We initially lived in the town of Magdiwang and eventuallysettled in the town of Cajidiocan where we spent our childhood years. The family movedto Manila in the late 50’s.