ON March 17, 1957, a presidential plane crash at Mount Manunggal, the highest mountain peak in Cebu, Central Philippines, took the life of 50-year-old President Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay, the seventh president of the Philippines, and 25 others traveling with him.
It was a tragedy mourned by all Filipinos and Magsaysay's friends and admirers all over the world.
One Filipino newspaperman, the 31-year-old Nestor Mata of the Philippines Herald, survived the disaster.
He had suffered third degree burns, and some friends had given him up for dead when they first heard about the disaster. But with God's grace, which Mata never doubted, a strong will to live and the selfless compassion of so many caregivers, he miraculously came through.
As soon as he was mobile, he returned to journalism, and with the help of his colleague, Vicente S. Villafranca, wrote his emotionally stirring memoir, "One Came Back: The Magsaysay Tragedy" (Philippine Publishers, Inc., Manila, 1957). It was an instant bestseller and quickly went out of print that same year. In 2019, the memoir underwent a second printing by Art Angel Publishing and was likewise quickly devoured by Mata's devoted and hungry audience.
Mata spent the next 61 years as a newspaperman, covering international affairs and other major national events, until he passed on April 12, 2018, at 92. On his last birthday before that, we listened to his deep baritone voice as he performed his last arias from Puccini, a la Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, and Josh Groban, among others.
This year, on the 67th anniversary of the Magsaysay tragedy, friends and relations thought it fitting to issue a new edition of Mata's opus for the benefit of the new and future generations who have merely heard of the story of the Magsaysay plane crash and Mata's heroic escape from death and oblivion. This piece is a reprint of the Prologue I was asked to write for the memoir.
Mata's journey was not only epic but also biblical. He received a second life twice longer than his first one, which nearly ended at Mount Manunggal in 1957. And he spent it all until his ripe old age of 92, trying his best to answer the very question he had asked God and himself when he first realized he alone had survived the tragedy that had killed the president he loved and his 25 other friends. "God, what do you want me to do?" he asked. "What specific mission do you have for me?"
Scripture tells us about Lazarus, whom Jesus loved (Jn 11: 38-44), and a couple of others — a ruler's daughter (Matt 9:23-25) and a widow's son (Luke 7:11-17) whom Jesus raised from the dead. Somehow, they disappear from our view after the miracle. Not so with Nestor.
After his miraculous escape from the air crash, he went back to the Herald as its news editor and a regular daily columnist until the newspaper folded up in 1972 because of the martial law proclamation. From there he moved on to Bobby Benedicto's Daily Express as director until the 1986 EDSA revolution; then onto Manila Standard, where he wrote a column until 1999, and to Lifestyle Asia during the same period as executive editor; and finally to Jake Macasaet's Malaya, where he wrote his last column. He also became one of the country's pioneer trimedia practitioners with his radio program on dzHP and his TV program on IBC-13.
Between his regular occupations, he would be summoned to certain universities, like his alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, to deliver professorial lectures in journalism, political science and Philippine foreign relations. This was one of his ways of bonding with young journalists and keeping himself forever young.
I was 18 when Magsaysay died, and I first heard of Mata's survival. I remember joining the long queue of young people in Malacañang trying to pay their last respects to "the Guy." I was hoping to meet the lone survivor even then, but I had to wait for another six years before I finally met the most famous Filipino newspaperman. This happened at the Department of Foreign Affairs when I began to cover the beat for the Agence France-Presse (French news agency) as a foreign correspondent.
I was the youngest reporter in the group, so everybody else was my senior. After Mata, whom we simply called Nestor, these included his bosom friend Oscar Villadolid of the Manila Daily Bulletin, whom we called Oscar, and who later became Philippine ambassador to the Vatican; Amando Doronila of the Daily Mirror, whom everyone called Doro. Villadolid passed in Makati on May 29, 2009, at 79, and Doronila passed in Canberra on July 7, 2023 at 95.
These seniors tried to teach me things I did not know and took me into their confidence. At the end of office hours, we would walk back to our respective newspaper offices, which stood close to each other in Intramuros, 10 minutes away from the DFA. I usually walked with Nestor and Oscar, whom we called the "Katzenjammer Kids" to everyone's delight. Upon reaching my desk, I would get a call from one or the other, who would read to me what they had written for their columns the next day. I became a sounding board for their columns, although perhaps not a very good one.
Together we covered four foreign secretaries, all with a common newspaperman's background — Salvador P. Lopez, Mauro Mendez, Narciso Ramos and Carlos P. Romulo. We also shared friendships with some of our sharpest Filipino ambassadors — Leon Ma. Guerrero, Narciso Reyes, Jose D. Ingles, Luis Moreno Salcedo, Pura Santillan-Castrence, Pacifico Castro, Manuel Viray, Armando Manalo, Nicasio Valderrama, Rodolfo Severino Jr., Rudolfo Sanchez, Raul Rabe, Rosario Gonzales Manalo, Felipe Mabilangan Jr. and many others.
From 1969 to 1980, when I became press secretary, presidential spokesman, and secretary/minister of information, Nestor and the rest of my senior colleagues became my most valuable unofficial advisers. This was a carryover from our DFA days when, at the height of Maphilindo and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (Seato), we shared rare interviews with such personalities as Indonesian President Sukarno, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, Diosdado Macapagal, Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, and Seato's leading foreign ministers. Nestor's writing at the time, particularly on Sukarno's politics, drew significant attention not only in the country but within the region and beyond.
I believe his works should be made accessible to all. I hope that one day Nestor's children will find the time and resources to compile their father's more significant works during his 61 years of journalism. For now, I can only thank the UST Miguel de Benavides Library through its prefect of libraries, Angel Aparicio, OP, for assigning a place of honor in its Filipiniana section to Nestor's collection of old books, which his family has donated as a token of his affection to his alma mater.
fstatad@gmail.com
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