Prof Recalls PMA Wards Who Are Successful Politicians

By Mortz C. Ortigoza 


As a former resident of the Philippine Military Academy at Fort del Pilar Baguio City in the late 1960s and early 1970s and late 1980s, I, my younger brother (a former member of the military’s Corp of Professor), and my retired military father attended recently the Sunday Worship Service at the Evangelical Church there.

The Evangelical Church at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City

After the service, it amused to see that about a hundred of cadets and cadettes of PMA and four dozens of mostly military men and their kin queued for cups of brewed coffee at the two stainless canisters and three huge plastic baskets of pandesals probably to reinvigorate their spirits after we exhaustively concentrated listening to the sermon of Chaplain Major Joel Flores and singing our lungs out with hosannas to the Lord.

From Left: The famous Susan of the Batchoy Canteen, Author, Christian Caingcoy
and retired Colonel Ordindo Caingcoy. Susan, according to PMYers, is so
popular that generals in the military and police could sentimentally remember her
during their cadet's stints.

When I bumped into Retired Colonel Orlindo C. Caingcoy and daughter Christian whose husband is Commodore Sam Felix (PMA Class of 1986 where Susan of the vaunted PMA Batchoy Canteen proudly told me na “mistah ni (PNP Chief) Bato si Sam”), my kasimanwa Professor Caingcoy told me he was a frequent visitor of Dagupan City where I resided after I left my work at the Public Information Office of the Premier Military School in 1990 for a professorial job in a university in the nearby Bangus City.

“I have my former students there who are now successful politicians,” he said.

He cited Pangasinan Second District Congressman Leopoldo Bataoil (PMA 1976) and former Pangasinan Governor and now Pangasinan Fifth District Congressman Amado T. Espino, Jr (PMA Class of 1972).

“I could not forget Espino when I was still a lieutenant while he was a cadet,” cited by Caingcoy who was an Engineer in Iloilo City before he was plucked to PMA in the 1960s.

He said Cadet Espino came to him in the early 1970s and requested him to become a soccer coach of the Academy. He said he acquiesced with Espino, who was a member of the footbal team, and was amused that once upon a time he (Caingcoy) was a soccer coach of the Long Gray Line in Barangay Kias, Baguio City.

My former neighbor at the 1970s in RFC, PMA and fellow protestant now Talogtog, Mangaldan Village Chief Godfrey Carbonel told me that Caingcoy is now a missionary.

“The good colonel is now a missionary Mortz. He and his group dropped by the house here in Mangaldan a couple of years back after a church planting mission somewhere in San Fabian”.

Talking about coach, I overheard my father telling old timers there about a contemporary and PMA Boxing Mentor ”Wonder Boy” Doyaoen.

When I worked at the Academy in the late 1980s I saw the rugged but courteous Doyaoen with his military and civilian sons working together at the P.E Department located at the Jurado Hall.

Another coach I saw at the office there was Taekwondo Instructor Jeff Tamayo who should be general if not then President Joseph Estrada, where he was a closed in bodyguard, was ousted from office and whose daughter became my student in a college at the University of Perpetual Help System in Las Pinas City, Metro Manila.

UPHS and its other chains of universities all over Luzon are owned by the Tamayos of Malasiqui, Pangasinan.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too attotomortz@yahoo.com)