‘Lung Month’ in honor of Quezon

By Herbert Vego

THE month of August has been observed as National Lung Month since July 24, 1978, when former President Ferdinand Marcos declared it as such through Presidential Proclamation No. 1761 in memory of the late Manuel Luis Molina Quezon, the first president of the Philippine Commonwealth.

Today, we celebrate his 148th birthday. He was born Aug. 19, 1878, in Baler, Aurora.

It was on Aug. 1, 1944, when he succumbed to tuberculosis — an often-fatal respiratory disease in his time — at Saranac Lake, New York, at age 65.

No wonder the observance of National Lung Month focuses public attention on pulmonary health and the severe toll of respiratory diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, asthma, and lung cancer.

We Ilonggos call this month “tigkiriwi” (lean) because it falls during the gap between the end of the previous crop harvest and the next planting season, combined with heavy monsoon rains that slow down agricultural work, commerce, and income.

Unfortunately, some of us also remember Quezon because of his most famous quotation: “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to one run like heaven by the Americans.”

He said that in defiance of the “racist policies” of Leonard Wood, the United States governor-general in the Philippines. Such an open display of bravado against a foreign power made him a folk hero.

We now wonder whether we are run like hell by Filipinos. Otherwise, our youth would not go to the U.S. to seek greener pastures.

Anyway, in my youth, even though he had died six years before my birth, Quezon was such an idol that I took journalism at a private school named after him, Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU) in Manila.

So, it is not surprising that I have not forgotten anecdotes about Quezon.

I remember my Grade 4 teacher joking, “Don’t be like Quezon. He was a lazy student who disliked doing his homework.”

But she was quick to add that when the revolutionary forces of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo fought against the Spanish regime in 1898, “Quezon was among those who bravely took up arms.”

After the Spanish-American War, Quezon resumed his law studies at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

In 1903, Quezon passed the bar examination and set up a practice in his birthplace of Baler, Tayabas (now Quezon Province).

He gave up private practice to assume the post of provincial fiscal of Mindoro and later of Tayabas. In 1906, he was elected provincial governor.

In 1907, Quezon ran for the Philippine Assembly under the Nacionalista Party and won. In 1916, he was elected to the Senate and soon became its president.

In 1933, a bill providing for the future independence of the Philippines, the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, passed the U.S. Congress. Quezon opposed the new law because “America would still hold military and naval bases in the Philippines even after the latter’s independence, and, moreover, export duties regulated in the law would destroy both industry and trade.”

Quezon led a mission to the United States to work for a bill that would eventually be passed as the Tydings-McDuffie Act, providing for Philippine independence in 1946.

In September 1935, Quezon was elected the first president of the commonwealth, with Sergio Osmeña as vice president.

In November 1941, Quezon was reelected president of the commonwealth. When Japanese forces occupied Manila in 1942, he and his Cabinet fled the Philippines and set up a government-in-exile in Washington in May 1942.

His death in 1944 deprived him of the joy of witnessing the liberation of the Philippines and the surrender of Japanese forces in 1945.

President Quezon is also well remembered in Iloilo City for coming here on Aug. 25, 1937, to proclaim it a chartered city in accordance with Commonwealth Act No. 158.

He administered the oath of office to the city’s first appointed mayor, Ramon Campos.