Raffy Marcelo, 1946 - 2014

At 11:45 a.m. on a gray and drizzly Saturday morning, Raffy Marcelo died peacefully on the way to the hospital. He was surrounded by his family and was four days away from his sixty-eighth birthday.

On the very same day, he was cremated. He asked that there be no wake. Only that his ashes be scattered in three different places by his second daughter, Baba (who was somewhere in Europe at the time): the foothills of Mt. Apo, the cemetery where his grandmother is buried – both in Davao where he grew up – and in the waters surrounding Mindoro where his mother’s ashes were also scattered.

When his eldest daughter Sam called, I already feared the worst because I had spoken to his wife Jenny just four days earlier and she’d told me that Raffy’s procedures had not gone well.

But when Sam said, “It’s Papa” – I lost it. More than twenty years’ worth of memories came back in a rush: Of me trying to decipher Raffy’s chicken-scratch notes on my script, of Raffy reluctantly voicing my special reports, of Raffy in a grim huddle with other newsroom stalwarts in the days leading up to the Marcoses' departure from Malacañang, of Raffy singing Sinatra’s "The Things We Did Last Summer" on "Uncle Bob and Friends", of Raffy eating my chili and beans (his special request), of Raffy digging up his scotch stash and whisky glass from his drawer, of Raffy moseying up to his chair in his cowboy boots and huge Glen Campbell belt-buckle…

When I joined the GMA newsroom in 1983, Raffy was already the voice of the late-night newscast and, later, the weekend news. He co-anchored with Tina Monzon-Palma and later Sharon Lacanilao and Jimmy Gil on the weekends in the 80’s and then alternately Georgette Tengco or Gin de Mesa in the 90’s.

He was also a working journalist, sent to pursue stories that only the foreign press dared go after at the time like the Ninoy assassination and the Ramos-Enrile breakaway.

He jointly presided at story conferences with then-news director Tony D. Seva; pitching story ideas, drawing up the day’s lineup with attention to how each story would run and making sure we had the best person on each beat the next day to follow through the rest.

At the time when GMA 7 was earning its reputation as THE news authority, journalists like Raffy put their careers on the line every time they produced and aired anything that was critical of the current administration or perceived by it to be injurious to national security.

The closest he came to being arrested was when he aired that crawler “Ramos and Enrile in complete control amid reports Marcos has fled the country.” A very angry President Marcos would later go on air at another channel, berating and threatening GMA 7. He was abruptly cut off when that network’s transmitter was disabled.

Before joining GMA in the early eighties, this AB English graduate from all over (San Sebastian in Manila, University of Mindanao in Davao) worked as a disc jockey in Davao for a time, transferred to Radio Veritas, and then ABS-CBN.

At GMA, he was production manager and executive producer for "News at 7," "The 11:30 Report," Saturday/Sunday "Evening Reports." He also covered sports and was late-night anchor. I was one of two news writers who trained under him and Tony Seva until my co-writer and I both made desk editor in 1988 in a concurrent capacity.

Around the newsroom, Raffy was well-known for his dry wit or humor. On my first week at work, he asked me without any preamble: “Totoo ba yang pilikmata mo?” Another time he remarked, “Ang laki pala ng paa mo, no?”  bringing me back a pasalubong of a hand-carved foot from Baguio after a sports coverage there. “O ayan – naalala kita. Binilhan kita.” And just before his retirement, he gave me his collection of elephantalia – “Sa yo na lang, mas bagay 'yan sa 'yo.”

The humor had a flipside, however.

Around crunch time every day when most scripts or tapes were not yet in, he would be surly or masungit. Literally, Mr. Assimo. I couldn’t even make myself ask him what corrections he wrote on my drafts (because his was the world’s worst handwriting) – and on at least one occasion, Tina had to referee a fight that broke out over how slow the scripts were coming! But after "News at 7" aired, the men would head off to Griller’s Inn for a beer – and he would be grinning from ear to ear with only slits for eyes. Happy hour na!

He also doted on his kids: Carlo and Jamie from a previous relationship and Sam, Moe and Baba with his wife Jenny. In the early days of his TV newscasting, he would tug his ear as a way of saying hello to his family. Their secret code.

He also always brought one of them along to work. Samantha – who was a child of 4 when she started tagging along with her dad – was my “baby.” My late husband, Larry, and I were just starting to go out together at the time and Sam was our chaperone. She sat on my lap while I wrote my scripts. We had engaging conversations together. We’re still friends now and share a passion for Neil Gaiman’s body of work. I remember the time Raffy showed me her prom photos – Sam in her beige sheath of a dress with a mermaid skirt striking a pose among the living room furniture. I couldn’t properly appreciate what a sentimental moment it was until I saw my own daughter in her prom dress in her junior and senior years.

Or the time Baba “wrote a book” at age 3-4 about a girl who lived in a cave that I thought was cute but which her father extolled for having all the five basic essential parts. And cry-baby Moe – who as a child would cry in a corner if he as much as lost sight of his father for a second. “My papa left me,” he would cry when Raffy went to the john, and nothing we said could console him until Raffy returned and carried him off.

Raffy loved to sing. I was told he used to end his radio broadcast with Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock.” And he loved Frank Sinatra and Glen Campell in equal measure. It’s a good thing I liked Simon and Garfunkel, too, so I sometimes joined in when he broke into song during lulls in our work. I also knew one decent Glen Campbell song, “Wichita Lineman,” but absolutely refused to join the chorus of “Rhinestone Cowboy.” (“It’s so baduuuy,” I’d screech.)

But ultimately, it is his passion for his profession that we shall remember Raffy by: for his refusal to compromise his principles (he made me write the entire newscast about the 1994 Metro Manila Film Fest scandal on my own; and used only newsworthy “political” stories during his time -- relegating the rest to the “oval office.”) My colleague Deo Bugaoisan – program manager for the Special Assignment Team – put it best:

“I was lucky enough to work with him at a time when showbiz and news were entirely two different things. He was my EP. I was his AP and headwriter, the last one he worked with before he left the network. He firmly believed in the power of the media to shape the reality of viewers, constantly reminding everyone in his fatherly baritone voice, to waste not this power. A true advocate of the social responsibility function of the press, he was averse to showbiz news (a misnomer, he said) and similar forms of content that he accurately observed were increasingly becoming normal and acceptable fare in newscasts. He believed that the business of news should be left to journalists and ratings should never determine its content. HBO's The Newsroom has its Will McAvoy. GMA Network News had Raffy Marcelo.”

I can just see him now – riding off into the sunset in his yellow pick-up truck, in a plaid shirt, cowboy boots and tacky belt buckle – singing “Rhinestone Cowboy” with his saddle bags packed with his Hemingway and Michener books, his Simon & Garfunkel, Sinatra and Campbell CDs and USBs, his scotch & whisky glass and – in a crock pot lovingly wrapped in a servilleta – my chili con carne with a wedge of French bread liberally slathered with garlic butter. — BM, GMA News

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