I WALK WITH HEROES

BY: CARLOS P. ROMULO

Never that my father was a governor we moved to Tarlac, the capital of our
province. I started high school there and life took a sudden leap forward.

Tarlac is described as a small city but it seemed large and cosmopolitan to a

boy from a country town. I expanded as social being there. We were a friendly
family, large and outgoing. My parents had a gift for making friends and our
outlaying family circles alone, would have insured generations of social interplay. In
our turn we children made friends and brought them home.

Life became fuller and more pressing. I discovered girls in high school, or
perhaps they discovered me, for I cannot recall a time when I did not know that girls
were in my ways more attractive than my boy playmates. I was still in my freshman
year when I narrowed this discovery to one girl and began “dating” seriously, as it is
called now.

A high school romance could not very serious in that well-guarded era. One
walked home with a girl after school, carrying her books and umbrella, hung about
her house on evening without courage to knock at the door, and dance with her
often as she would permit at informal affairs given in our homes.

Urged on my romance, I persuaded my sympathetic grandmother to give me

enough money to hire a four-piece orchestra, which played in honor of my love at
small dance given in our home.

Ours was an idyll of the teens. The girls was a minister’s daughter and very
pretty in my eyes; beautiful beyond description. Nevertheless I did my best to
describe my feeling, and in doing found my first true ambition and ultimate goal.

As we walked home from school I would see an envelope tucked into one of
her books which I was carrying.to be unaware of Without comment I would extract
the note, slip it into my pocket, replace it with another note filled with the emotion I
felt for her. Meantime we would chatter brightly, both pretending the exchange.

Once I had handed over her books and bade he3r a fairly formal goodbye at
he3r door I would rush home to read her letter in exquisite privacy. The sentences
were correct and spare, but I read into them all I longed for. Then I sat down to
compose my reply, when I could let my heart soar freely and write all longed to say
and hear.

The ecstasy of first love was in those letters. I was certain this attachment
was to last forever, and I poured into it my first love prose and my first poems of
love.
 She answered each letter via the book, but she never mentioned my poems.
This hurt because ambition was taking shape in my mind. I wanted to write. I would
be a poet, like Guerrero or Recto or Balmori.

I had now seriously determined to be a teacher. But why could not teaching
and writing go hand in hand? So in Tarlac High School, I began my preparation for
the career that would underline and survive all othe3rs-that of writing.

An outsider might have wondered where I found time for this demanding
occupation. School studies and homework, sports and social life apparently filled the
days. But I had short cuts to leisure.

In the first place my romance was not entirely without its practical side. My
girl was as smart in math as she pretty, and I was as hopeless as ever at numbers. I
had reached the conclusion that nothing dealing with numeral could eve3r be
absorbed by my mind, and I gave up any effort in that direction. The object of my
affections and several other classmates were generous seeing that I managed
passing grades in math, and in turn I wrote for them the compositions which I
excelled.

In doing this, I was actually competing against myself, but I saw to it that I
continued to get the highest English marks in the class.

In every subject except math I was what actors call a “quick study”, so
schoolwork never interfered with my interest in sports. I liked all our high school
games by my specialty was sand-lot baseball. I would play till late afternoon, one of
the shouting, running, swatting boys in our nine; then, at home and shut away from
the world in the privacy of my room. I became another being, dedicated, solitary. No
longer the teenage student, the player of games, young lover. I’m struggled with
the science of the words and their meaning.

I was trying to write. No one knew of this secret ambition. It had been born
during the siesta hours on our balcony in Camiling, when I had read to my father in
Spanish and English. Driven into me was an abiding in the sight and sound of words.

I had read them for this enjoyment and mine. The pleasure had proved of
further value. In school I was often asked to read aloud, and my teachers would
praise my ability. I liked to recite poetry. I had even archived a minor success in my
classroom’s elocutionist.

Now I had absorbed so much of good reading that I was filled with the need
to express my appreciation in writing. My growing emotions demanded expression.
The daily love letters and the almost daily poems-never acknowledge by their fair
inspirer-were part of this expression. But there were private confessions seen only
by myself and my love, and craved wider recognition.

If I had any gift for I determined to find it out and not hide my ability.

My first short story required much rewriting. When almost every world had been
changed many times, I decided it was pretty good. Now what did a writer do, after
his world was done? With much nervous pondering I mailed effort to a favorite
magazine, written for boys, in English, and published in Manila.

Not until it was in the mail did I realize that the Philippines Observer was a
Protestant publication, published by a Protestant minister!

I was ravaged by hope and fear in turns as I awaited each issue. The day
came when I opened its pages and the3re was my story, unde3r my name in
clearest type. It was the first time I had seen my name in print. I was an author!

The sense of accomplishment I felt was overcast by dread, for what would my
father say? What would this outstanding catholic governor of catholic province do,
when found his sons name a Protestant publication?

I need not have troubled my father. He had great respect for all faiths, for all
people. Weak with worry I watched him turn the pages of the magazine I had not
been able to hide from him; I saw his quick lance scan the fatal page. And his smile
grew. He looked at me over the magazine. “Why,” he claimed, “ this is wonderful!”
He read the story aloud to all who came.

The pride he showed was the starting bell that sent me on my way. Since that
day I have won a few literary awards and honors, but none have meant more to me.
I valued his praise because I knew his love and reverence for writing was deep as
mine.