A marker for Mabini

Abstract

A HISTORICAL marker in honor of Apolinario Mabini and other Filipino patriots was unveiled and dedicated recently at Asan Point Service Community, the site where they once lived as exiles. Last July 23 , the 97th anniversary of Mabini ' s birthday, the Philippine-American Council and its members made a pilgrimage to the historical monument and offered a minute of silent prayer. T h e council, through the initiative of the Philippine Consulate, sponsored the unveiling of the marker. The burden of gathering data from primary sources was undertaken by Very Rev. Msgr. Oscar L. Calvo, Guamanian prelate educated at the San Jose Seminary in Manila. Through Monsignor Calvo s painstaking efforts, survivor of the 52-man Mabini group, Maximo Tolentino, 84, was located. Now living at Sta. Rita, Guam, Tolentino furnished Monsignor Calvo with some names of their companions in exile. Tolentino also recited from memory a poem of “'Mabini which the sublime paralytic gave him before returning to Manila in 1903. This poem and other valuable papers, among them letters from Gen. Pio del Pilar and Gen. Ricarte, were destroyed during the war. In the Mabini group, according too Tolentino, were Gen. Pio del Pi lar, Gen. Artemio Ricarte, Gen. Mariano Trias, Gen. Mariano Llanera, Col. Maximo Hizon, L t. Col. Esteban Consorte, Capt. Juan Mauricio, Dr. Lucino Almeda, Don Pablo Ocampo, Don Julian Gerona, Don Leon Flores, Don Pancracio Palting, Don Silvesire Legaspi, Don Jaime Morales, Don Pedro Cobarrubias, Don Juan Villarino Don Norberto Dimayuga Don Mariano Barroga, Don Dorotco Espino, Don Eulogio Gonzales, and Don Macario Ocampo.