T A M P O Y TALES
by Nunilo de Leon
Foreword
In
this foreword, I will only use nicknames as using full names and including
other personal data would be too cumbersome in a foreword. Nevertheless, more information about the
persons mentioned here will be found in the following chapters and in the accompanying
“De Leon Clan Data Bank”, which may be used as reference material. The
following narrative and the clan data bank are a unit and better read and
understood as such.
How the seed
for a family tree was first germinated -
In the late 1990s, after a few
postponements and some debate, a reunion of the De Leon clan was held in
Tampoy, under “Tessie’s” auspices. “Tio
Toniong” and “Tia Lily” were still around then and “Tessie”, who was born and
raised in Tampoy, was insistent on the reunion since we had become strangers to
one another. “Marami na tayong hindi kakilala
sa pamilya”, she said. “Yoly”
and I, with some experience in the dynamics of such group gatherings, prepared
the activities and other materials which would help the attendees know a bit
more about the clan and its members. The
attendance was, surprisingly, quite satisfactory and we were able to gather a
good deal of information from those who were present, some of whom had set foot
in Tampoy for only the first time. We
brought the data home and promptly forgot about them.
A couple of years later, “Boy”
and “Tessie” hosted another clan
reunion, this time in their home in Doña Faustina Subdivision, Culiat District,
Quezon City, with “Tio Toniong” and “Tia Lily” also present. Attendance was just as good and included some
who were absent from the Tampoy reunion.
Talk got around to a family tree and how useful it would be if someone
could prepare a “clan tree” of the De Leons.
“Meya” mentioned that there was such a tree of the Santos clan, which
included the De Leons as one of its branches.
Someone else said that “Tia Monang” had started to prepare a tree but it
seemed no one knew where it was or if one actually existed. As one of the senior members of my
generation, I was drafted to coordinate the preparation of a clan tree. “Meya” promised to secure a copy of the
Santos’ material and send it to me, which she did. It followed the general layout of a
traditional family tree and included eight generations. It was quite large, having the same surface
area as a king-sized double bed.
Our clan tree’s preparation
slowly got off the ground and proceeded in fits and starts. The first step was compiling the data which
had already been collected, tediously gathering some more and then classifying
the data into generations and smaller family clusters. A copy of the initial data bank was sent to a
few relatives, mainly those from my generation, asking for their feedback. The common feeling was that the data bank was
much too voluminous and, therefore, quite hard to follow and understand. Presenting the data in the form of a “tree”
would be better.
The Family
Tree becomes a Clan Data Bank -
I was faced with two basic
alternatives; go for the traditional pictorial “tree” or continue with just a
data bank. The “tree” would, of course,
be easier to look at and understand but would be unwieldy, occupying too much
space and very difficult to update or correct.
The data bank would be a harder read but would be more easily
disseminated, handier and easier to update.
I exercised the author’s
prerogative and opted to continue with the data bank. Individual family clusters may then withdraw
the data they need from the bank and then build their own smaller “trees” for
their branch of the clan. The data bank
can be the source of the data for these subsidiary “trees”. Perhaps, a combined pictorial “tree” and data
bank of the entire clan can be produced in the future, with the use of some new
technology, by relatives who would be more techie.
The clan data bank contains a large
amount of statistical information but it provides little background information
about the roots of the clan, particularly about those in the first three
generations. Although those in my
generation, the fourth, possessed bits and pieces of these information, these
were sketchy and not in an organized form.
Knowledge of the clan was being passed on mostly in the form of “oral
tradition”. The generations, which
follow ours, know almost nothing about their ancestry. Obviously, the data bank could not, by
itself, provide all the needed information.
Accompanying narratives would be essential.
The Clan Data
Bank branches into the “Tampoy Tales” -
And that is when and how this
account about Tampoy started. It began
as a short description of who our early ancestors were, beginning with a brief
account about “Inkong Tasio”. Additional
impetus and inputs came when “Boying”, who had been way ahead of me in this
historical search, sent me a copy of his “All That Have Been” autobiography
early in 2008. “Inkong Tasio” ended up
as a much longer narrative about those whose lives once revolved around Tampoy. We might say that it now has more than one
author, as it now includes the valuable inputs of not a few relatives, who
added to, subtracted from, or made revisions to the original account.
The account is not intended to
be read continuously or in one seating but in stages, even one chapter at a
time. Some information, as a result, appear in more than one chapter, which
sometimes make the narrative somewhat repetitive but, hopefully, easier to
understand.
There are suggestions that
these materials be printed in a more permanent form, such as in a booklet. This
is laudable but might not be immediately necessary. “Tampoy Tales” and the clan
data bank are “alive”, still being updated and corrected. Besides, the jury is
still out on the fate of the print media, whether or not it will be made
obsolete by recent technology, and how soon this is going to happen. For the
present, using the internet to spread and store the materials might be the
better option.
Other members of the clan can
add to our clan lore and history, not only by adding to the data bank but also
by writing their own self-narratives and sharing these with other clan
members. The data bank and the narratives
can be kept alive and can continue to grow and expand. This will help us, and all future
generations, know ourselves and one another better.
