Wilhelmina Schuck Montemayor Eulogy
01 June 2010

My family wishes to express our appreciation and gratitude to all
those relatives, friends and colleagues who came by to visit our
mother at her wake, sent over flowers, mass cards, emails, Facebook,
Twitter and text messages, phone calls, not to mention your valuable
prayers. We hope that you continue praying for our mom beyond today,
as these are indispensable to assure us of her smooth transition to her
place with all the other saints in Heaven. Though her body is
physically with us her soul is now in that particular place where she
no longer can pray for herself, so it is up to us to
continue these petitions and supplications to assure her entrance into
the arms of our Lord, His Mother and all the other saints at the
soonest possible time.

How can one even begin to describe the incredible 95 years of one
Manna Schuck Montemayor? Born at the outbreak of World War 1 of
industrious German immigrants and fierce Tausug-Samal nobility in the
paradise of islands that was and still is Tawi-Tawi, she was a product
of the American initiated public school system and Pilar College in
Zamboanga. Returning to Jolo, Sulu to teach Math and English at public
school, she met a persistent young clerk of court, a newly UP
graduated lawyer from Alaminos, Pangasinan. Though she had her fair
share of suitors in Jolo, Mamerto Ruiz Montemayor eventually won the
first dance with the beautiful Manna Schuck at the weekly Saturday ball
and a bit later, the heart of this feisty German mestiza, marrying her
73 years ago. Being Moslem,
she converted to Christianity much to the consternation of her Tausug-
Samal mother. They were together for 37 years through war and peace.

Her courage and industriousness first manifested itself when the
Philippines went to war with Japan, as she relocated to her husband's
hometown of Alaminos, Pangasinan still pregnant with her 3rd child
Marilyn and with her 4 year old son Michael and 2 year old daughter
Minnie in tow. She sold gasoline and made dresses to keep herself and
her 3 children alive with nary a clue whether her young husband
Captain Montemayor was still alive or dead fighting the Japanese along
the Abucay Line in Bataan with the 41st Division. After almost 6 months
of not seeing him she finally collected him in
the Capas concentration camp in the summer of '42 bald, emaciated,
lice ridden but alive, and they were a family again.

After Liberation Mamerto Jr came along, the first of three more baby
boomer Montemayor children: Monina 12 years later, then myself. She
made her home at Agno Street, Quezon City, designing dresses and gowns
mostly to friends, augmenting the income of her
husband, by then a military lawyer and trusted associate of Ramon
Magsaysay. In the 50s and early sixties she saw her first three children
graduating from college and obtain further schooling abroad, marrying
and settling both here and in the United States, happy with their
successful professional and family lives.

With her husband retiring from the military and joining Atlantic Gulf
and Pacific, she moved us to the house in Magallanes Village she herself mostly
designed 45 years ago, still sewing dresses, and raising her three
remaining children. Mert, Mona and I saw how she struggled when Papa
passed away unexpectedly 36 years ago with Mert still searching for his
professional roots and Mona and myself still in high school. She
invested in rental apartments and real estate from what she earned
from dressmaking, rented rooms in our Magallanes home, and maintained
a tight budget, eventually completing the mortgage of the Magallanes
house. Her younger children Mert, Mona and I never felt want and
deprivation as she made sure we were schooled well and led a quality
of life unaffected by Papa Dear's demise.

She was there for us in our problems and triumphs. She was there,
unquestioning and unfailing when we needed her. She was there as we
broke out and went our own ways in work and family life, remaining a
beacon in our troubled seas, worrying about our health, our loves, our
work. Through it all she remained beautiful and elegant, active with
the AFP Retired Officers Wives Association and Catholic Women's
League. Her time with her friends were spent on weekly luncheons and
mahjjong sessions which were socially sacred events.

As she aged she saw Mert and I married and Mona professionally
accomplished, complaining constantly about her failing eyesight,
missing out on her favorite Mills and Boon novelettes, gradually
withdrawing from her social circle as she did not want to be viewed by
her amigas as becoming eyesight deprived and socially irrelevant. She
was incessant in seeking a solution for her failing eyesight for which
there was no known cure. She chose not to engage in her usual social
activities. She still managed to be there to go to the US to stand
witness to her granddaughter Maia's wedding at the ripe old age of 83.

As her children themselves started to grey and the grandchildren and
great grandchildren came along she would say that she had nothing more
to live for as she had done her job as a mother. We would always
counter her death wishes by claiming, rather correctly, that she was
German built and was healthier than any one of her children, failing
eyesight and memory notwithstanding. She chose to pass on 72 hours
after her 95th birthday with her last wish having Mona provide her
with a son in law ASAP.


Then as now, Manna Schuck Montemayor defined love: tough and tender,
caring without expectation of compensation, a love ever forgiving when
we her children disappointed her and caused her extreme heartache she
so rightly did not deserve as she was as human as all of us. We forever will
remember her as forthright, God fearing and an ardent lover of our
Blessed Mother, as she was never without a rosary in hand. We pray
that our Blessed Mother will accept Mama Dear in her loving embrace
and eventually take her to that big mahjjong parlor up in the sky
where Papa Dear, Minnie, Anna Felici, Grandpa Billy, Ina, Uncle Pandy,
Tanti Caroline await expectantly. Her name Manna comes from the
Biblical word for “bread from Heaven”. Rightly so, she was our Manna,
our sustenance, our sign from Heaven that God indeed cares for us all.

We promise to honor you and your life
by being the best person we can be, full of love, unconditional,
unfailing. How can we possibly forget you, Mama Dear? You simply live
on in each of us.

Again, we thank everyone in helping us celebrate our
mother's wonderful, wonderful life.