My Published Articles for ViewsHound: Biography Update: Dedication and Prologue

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Biography Update: Dedication and Prologue

I first wrote my autobiography in 2008 and updated it in 2011. There are several things that changed since 2011 in my family personal lives and a few significant events that is needed to be updated. I will include more photos so the articles will be not too boring for those who have already this post. Again, I will appreciate any comments positive or negative. I will highlights all the updates. Thanks for your time.

Photo taken during my niece wedding(D'Wanie Katague Gregorio,M.D.) and also my 74th Birthday. Note that Macrine's gown was designed and tailored by Rudy Diego-one of Manila's well-known couturier.

I am writing this autobiography for the benefit of my four children and six grandchildren here in California, United States of America. My children are:
Dodie( Diosdado), B.A. (Geography) UC Berkeley, JD (Law) UC Davis, CA (Married, Ruth Carver)
DinahKatague, B.A. (Sac State U), M.A (Paralegal) St Mary, Moraga, CA( Married to David King and now divorced)
David Ernst, B.S. Agricultural Economics UC Davis, CA, M.A, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon U, Pittsburgh, PA (Single)
Ditas Macrine, B.A Double Major Communications/Arts, UC Berkeley,CA, M.A. Government Relations, USC, Los Angeles, CA and Washington, D.C.(Married, Nick Thompson-now deceased)

My grandchildren and their ages as of this write up:
Ian Katague King Age 23
Elaine Katague King Age 21
Philip Winchester Katague Age 21
Alexandra ( Alix) Katague Age 20
Marina Katague Age 17
Carenna Katague Thompson Age 11

Grand Children, Christmas, 2013
Special dedication to Ian, Elaine and Carenna for their tolerance and patience during their hectic trip from US to Marinduque, just to attend our golden wedding anniversary celebration. I hope the memories of that trip will never be forgotten in their memory and that they will have favorable remembrances of the Philippines.
( For details of our golden wedding anniversary celebrations see Chapter 14)

I also dedicate this blog to all my brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives ("in-laws)" in the Philippines, Australia, United States and Canada. Also to my nieces and nephews all over the world in Iran, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, England and the United States, and also to all my sister-in-laws in the Philippines and United States.

In addition, I also dedicate this blog to all members and friends of Marinduque International,Inc. especially those members and nonmembers who had participated in the past several medical missions to Marinduque, Philippines. I am sure that those of you who had participated in the past medical missions believed in my favorite quotation." The time you have touched the lives of others is the time that you have really lived".

Moreover, I also dedicate this blog to my colleagues and friends at the Food and Drug Administration(FDA), Division of Anti-Infective Drug Products ( New Drugs), Silver Spring, MD specifically, Maureen Dillon Parker, Suresh Pagay, Milton Sloan, Andrew Yu and Vithal Shetty and several others that I will not be able to mention (you know who you are) because it will take at least two pages to mention your names. My 12 years career at FDA was the most challenging, productive and satisfying experience in my professional life. As a GS-14-expert on antimalarial drug products, I feel that I have contributed reducing the incidence of this disease not only in the Philippines but also world wide. (see Chapter 11 for details). My million thanks to Dr. Wilson (Tony) De Camp( my former supervisor) for selecting me out of the numerous applicants for a review chemist position in 1990 during a Job Fair in San Francisco and believing in my abilities to be a good review chemist and later a team leader ( first-line supervisor) in FDA.

Dave and Macrine-Photo by Agnes Apeles taken on August 22, 2009 during MI, Inc Dinner Dance & Reunion in Buena Park, California.

Last, but not least to my beloved wife of 57 years, Mrs Macrine Nieva Jambalos Katague, whose understanding, devotion, patience and love made this all possible.

This autobiography is divided into three time frames and posted in 17 chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 to 5: Life in the Philippines-1934 to 1959(Elementary, High School and College Years)
Chapter 6 to 11: Life in the United States-1960 to 2002 (Post Graduate and Professional Career Years)
Chapter 12 to 17: Life in the US and Philippines- 2002 to the Present( Retirement Years and Beyond)

I hope that my grand children will be inspired after reading this autobiography to do their best to achieve a successful and happy life, similar if not better than what I have experienced here in US and in the Philippines with my beloved wife of 57 years, Macrine Nieva Jambalos of Boac, Marinduque, Philippines.

PROLOGUE
To other readers who may also be inspired by my experiences, I salute you! I know that there is one individual not related to me who indicated that without my knowledge I had been his role model during his childhood and formative years in the Philippines. At present, he is a Professor at the University of the Philippines in Iloilo. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii.

University of the Philippines Visayas, at Miagao, Iloilo

Several years ago, while visiting my hometown in Barotac Viejo,Iloilo, I asked my sister who was still residing there at that time, if she knows of any Ph.D. graduate from our town besides myself. She said there was a recent Ph.D. graduate from our town who is now teaching at the University of the Philippines in Miagao. So, I ask her if I could met this guy and my sister said, let us look for him at the university right now. We immediately drove back to the city and then to Miagao. We went directly to the Administration Office and they gave us directions to his office and classroom. He was not there, but his secretary said he is at home on sick leave. We ask the secretary to call him and ask if we could visit him. To make the story short, we met him at his residence and start introducing ourselves.

The moment, I saw him I feel very close to the guy, even though this is the first time I've seen this guy. He was very friendly in spite of his cold. After 5 minutes of preliminary talk, he blurted out. He said, "I have been wanting to meet you also in person all these years. Without you knowing, you have been my role model during my childhood years and your story has been my inspiration". I was shocked and surprised. Then he explained that his grandmother that raised him has been brainwashing him with my life story in the US. His grandmother told him, he must also study for his Ph.D abroad. He said yes, without even knowing what is the meaning of Ph.D. It turned out that my mother and his grandmother were good friends and my mother has been informing his grandmother all the details of my life and graduate work at the University of Illinois in Chicago. I hope others who read my autobiography will also be inspired to work hard to the best of their ability to fulfill their dreams.

Allow me to end this introduction to quote my "Philosophy in Life".
"Where there is God and Love, there must be Faith,
And where there is Faith, there is Peace indeed!
Where there is Peace, there must be God, and where there is God,
There is no Need! Where there is no Need, there is Paradise
In Paradise, there is bliss, contentment and delight!"

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Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Biography Update: Dedication and Prologue

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