By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
Last week I said that instead of explaining where the reported unaccounted or missing PHP380-million from the coffers of Vallacar Transit Incorporated went, the company president, Leo Rey Yanson accused his sister Celina of responsibility. His reaction was to obfuscate and divert the issue, a clever method as ancient as the time of those who wanted to be gods.
The Mass last Saturday had for its First Reading the story of Adam blaming Eve why he ate the forbidden fruit. Eve in turn accused the serpent for the temptation. In truth Adam and Eve could not have fallen into the temptation if not for their desire to be also like gods as the devil, the father of lies had told them.
The case the Yanson family feud is similarly rooted. When I discussed this “missing” money, I thought it was just a matter of somebody putting his hand into the cookie jar, to get rich, but it seems that it was just the beginning of a bigger plot hatched for a long time possibly even before the death of Ricardo B. Yanson. Indeed, the swiftness of the unreported withdrawals indicate a prior decision to unseat Ricardo B. Yanson from the pedestal of honor as the founder and genius of an unparalleled bus company.
As I wrote before, I don’t know him much or how things were in his family. But those things are unimportant until things cracked as what happened to his family. I study and write history, the main ingredients of it are people and how they lived and died. A writer of this sort must therefore be conscious of the “little” things that constituted the whole.
The video of the last birthday party of the patriarch Ricardo that I viewed last year, is focused only on two people – the birthday celebrant and his wife, Olivia. If a still picture speaks a thousand words, a video tells much more.
Ricardo was explaining, nay insisting several times, on family unity and harmony, as if he was saying goodbye and wanted to carry to the next world the thought of his family united and in peace with each other.
Indeed, he and his family spent hours and money to craft a unique document, the Family Constitution that I believe he felt was to be the guiding spirit and processes for the family and their descendants. I do not know of any other family that had taken so much effort to document the will of the father, not of wealth but of guidance on how the family should live in affection of each other. I think he knows something that he wanted to be avoided if his legacy was to be preserved and enjoyed by all of his descendants.
As he spoke during his last birthday, the video captured the nuances of what he was talking about. One can feel the depth of his words as one who was to leave. In a word, he put everything in their proper places, a credit to the man himself, as that of a man of vision.
There was something ominous in that video however. Olivia was seated, not beside Ricardo but obliquely, and a bit far even before the government coined the phrase “social distancing.” She was not sitting aright but bent a little backwards as if trying to be as far back as the lounging chair could carry her.
A person who loves, admires, or respects the person beside him or her would be looking at that person, expressing those sentiments. But not Olivia. She seems far away, her thoughts wandering afar as persons uninterested and wanted the proceedings to end.
There were moments she squirmed, fidgeted, showing in bodily language her impatient as if she wanted dinner or whatever should be served. It was if she wished Ricardo to end his monologue thinking perhaps “we heard that before” or “we already know that.” One can imagine kids telling their grandfather narrating his role during the war, “You told us about that before.” She seems in contempt of Ricardo and saying, “That’s what you think!”
That was then. The events and new information reveal more than what we initially thought.
Continued tomorrow.
