‘And so EZ put it this way: don’t feel sad or pity for me because I am paralyzed from the neck down; feel sad or pity for our country because our leaders are paralyzed from the neck up!’
TODAY, January 7, should have been Enrique Zobel’s 95th birthday. But he died at age 77, just as his grandmother told him. It’s “amazing” to think that he has been dead 18 years, because I can close my eyes and see him, albeit in a wheelchair, still engaged in a conversation of some sort. Or munching on something — he loved snacks which were fed to him by his wife Dee or his private nurses or by his loyal confidential assistant Evelyn Chotangco (now Villanueva).
I can still see him “holding court” either in his beloved Hacienda Bigaa in Calatagan, in his house in Ayala Alabang, or in his office on the fifth floor of Enzo Building on Buendia. In fact, whenever I remember the old, dark wood paneled offices we had, I can still see him walking from the main door of the office to his room at the other end of the floor, walking like a cowboy with his feet a little bow-legged maybe from all the horse riding, his gold ID bracelet with the diamond encrusted initials EZ on his left wrist, and a clutch bag in his left hand.
He would wave his right hand with its thick fingers at anyone who was there as he walked in, or as he walked out.
I started working for him in 1988, thanks to how the world works in mysterious ways.
Earlier that year I was team captain of the UP Jessup Moot Court team that lost in the national finals to Ateneo, meaning that they and not we were going to Washington DC to represent the country in the world finals that summer. I was, of course, devastated. So that summer, when I should have been in the US but was home in UP moping, our phone rang — it was Divine, secretary to former Assemblyman Renato L. Cayetano, my ex-boss — Divine said that “pogi” (our fond nickname for our boss) had a message for me.
Could I come to his office at PECABAR the next day? He had met Zobel at a party and the latter had mentioned that he was looking for an executive assistant. Cayetano quickly suggested me, and Zobel agreed to see me.
Long and short of it, I was accompanied by the elder future senator Cayetano to Zobel in the summer of 1988, and so instead of having been competing in DC I ended up with a job.
It was a job I held till 1997 when I moved to Coca-Cola; but it was a relationship that lasted till May 2004, 16 years later, when I delivered the eulogy for EZ — at his request — during the funeral mass at the Santuario in Forbes Park before his mortal remains were brought home to Calatagan for the last time.
Those 16 years were a blast. I may have ended up being paid far, far more at Coca-Cola and getting the chance to see much of the world as a beverage executive, but I saw a different side of the Philippines collaborating with EZ who, in his heyday was, as I put it, the “taipan of taipans” because in the 1970s and early 1980s he was chairman of Ayala and of BPI and vice chair of San Miguel Corporation all at the same time.
Today, however, I remember one line we collaborated on which we included, I think, in one of his many farewell speeches — this one I think to the Makati Business Club which he helped establish in the early years of Martial Law. He was a quadriplegic by then and would often tell me how he sensed people looking at him with pity, paralyzed as he was from the neck down. Well, I said, the sadder part is our leaders are paralyzed from the neck up! His face lit up and we knew we had a winner.
And so EZ put it this way: don’t feel sad or pity for me because I am paralyzed from the neck down; feel sad or pity for our country because our leaders are paralyzed from the neck up!
A statement as valid today as it was when it was uttered!
Happy birthday, EZ.
