“I’ve heard about you and glad we're finally getting to meet." This coming from a fellow graduate student at the Ateneo Graduate School campus, after one of the classes I attended in 1955. I learned that she was a graduate of St. Scholastica's College and was now pursuing a Master's degree in English Literature at the Ateneo Graduate School. I also found out that she had already been writing a regular column on food which, eventually, appeared in one of the Manila newspapers.
The course that I had hoped to pursue towards an M.A. degree I was enrolled in at the time was English drama. Since most of the Ateneo classes – grade school, high school, and college had already moved to their new location at Loyola Heights, Quezon City, the Graduate School classrooms were the only ones remaining in Padre Faura. The only classes still at the Padre Faura campus in 1954 were the Ateneo College of law and the Ateneo graduate school waiting to move to a spot on Salcedo Village, Makati City.
I must confess that greetings especially from young ladies hitting me frontally usually floor me and I am often left speechless. This time, however, I managed a self conscious smile and asked for her name.
“ Call me Doreen.” She said and added, “I am the older sister of Neal Gamboa your fellow Jazz lover.”
Instantly, I realized that at last I got to meet Neal Gamboa’s, sister. There were two of them: Doreen the eldest was next to Neal followed by Della. I met Neal in 1959 when I began teaching at De La Salle College after earning my A.B. degree (major in Journalism) from the Ateneo de Manila before it became a university.
I met Neal at our mutual watering hole even then already well- known as CAFÉ INDONESIA, where jazz and sate attracted many aficionados. Owned and managed by a handsome statuesque mestizo Dutch Indonesian gentleman named Pete Alfonso, Cafe Indonesia was a favorite hangout of Jazz aficionados and after hours executives who worked in the area in the '50s. At first meeting one might mistake Pete to be a movie star for his good looks and his imposing height (6’2”). But Pete was THE gentleman that he was through and through. Café Indonesia boasted of a nightly jazz combo led by Ariosto Toots Dila, a trumpet player who enjoyed clowning around as he played and led the combo.
After a semester, I decided to drop out of the course and thus saw Doreen less in the Ateneo Graduate School scene since, Meanwhile, I was invited by Fr. James B. Reuter, S.J. to act in his coming play written by James Barrie – DEAR BRUTUS. It was slated for presentation at the Law School auditorium on Padre Faura. Fr. Reuter was assigned for years at ATENEO DE NAGA and had just been transferred to the Manila campus for other duties like teaching and directing stage plays.
I was so happy seeing Doreen again and doing the thing she liked best – selecting music and handling the musical background for stage plays produced by Fr. Reuter. Actually, when Fr. Reuter began teaching at Ateneo in 1952 directly from his Ateneo de Naga assignments, Doreen was already doing the musical background for Fr. Reuter’s radio plays that were on every Tuesday over DZRH. The group was known as the AVE MARIA PLAYERS GUILD. I managed to act in supporting roles only.
"Dear Brutus" was well received by the Manila community who had already been following Ateneo drama ever since Fr. Henry Lee Irwin, S.J. had made a name in Philippine Theatre for his classical plays, many of them by Shakespeare.
In the coming years, I developed my friendship with the Gamboa family particularly because I had fallen into the “habit” of visiting their home on Estrada Street just two short blocks from La Salle College where I taught subjects in the Lia Com course. The fact is I was a daily lunch guest of the Gamboa household. I just could not have enough of the dishes prepared by their wonderful cook named Daling. By then I was already a close family friend not only of Doreen but of the entire family.
It was at this time when I developed the nightly habit of unwinding by going to CAFÉ INDONESIA and listening (and sometimes singing) with the Jazz combo. Soon we had a clique, so to speak, and among them was a young heavy set chap named Willie who preferred to spell his name Wili. He was a recent architecture graduate who liked Jazz and whose company I enjoyed. I did not know at the time that Wili already had some feelings for Doreen who also came to Café Indonesia Restaurant with her brother Neal and other friends. In time, Doreen and Wili Fernandez became a couple and regular habitués of the jazz cocktail lounge.
This friendship with Wili and Doreen went all the way through to the times when we began to start our families. Wili and Doreen became godparents of two of our five children. Over the years the couple would invite me and Chita to this or that restaurant in Manila and savor the new cuisine, for already Doreen and Wili had gotten involved with food not only of the Philippines but special dishes from other countries.
In time, Doreen began to write a column on food which was praised by many food magazine editors. Doreen had lots of energy despite the fact that from her youth she was beset with terrible ailments which included diabetes. But, Doreen the courageous and bubbly friend that she was, just took these medical problems in stride. She taught at the Ateneo University, teaching mass communications subjects and headed the communications department of the university. Doreen also produced several books on food while focusing on local Philippine dishes, especially the ones from Negros Occidental where she was born.
Doreen, no doubt was a gifted lady who wrote books in elegant English and took part in local and foreign conferences related to food and the culinary arts. Wili, on the other hand, established a firm that offered advice on interior decoration. This took Wili to foreign shores on assignment by clients who saw his artistic touch in designing hotel rooms and the like as well as their furniture. As luck would have it, Wili, like Doreen, also suffered from numerous types of ailments, but this did not prevent him from pursuing his artistic works that today still exist in foreign countries.
While Doreen and Wili were winning raves in their respective fields – she for her culinary arts involvement and classes in mass media at the Ateneo, Wili for his sought after designs, their bodies suffered continually through the years.
Doreen was active not only in drama, especially theatre production by Fr. James B. Reuter, S.J. where Ateneo and St. Paul plays were enhanced with the quality of musical background that Doreen had selected. In the field of food writing, a foundation was created in honor of Doreen’s memory known as the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award.
Wili passed on in the late 1960s and Doreen was left to manage her projects and the liquidation of assets of Wili’s design firm as well.
Then on a trip to New York where Doreen was to deliver a paper, she decided to bring along not a nurse for a change, but Della, her only sister. It was in New York just before she delivered her paper when she suffered the attack which brought her to the ICU.
She told Della that she was ready to go and not to try resuscitate
her anymore.
Doreen Gamboa-Fernandez died of pneumonia June 24, 2002, She was 67. Her death came as a shock to many at home, especially her friends, students and fellow writers of various disciplines whom she had inspired and supported through the years.
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