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Two Noels – Part 2

Just because it took me more than a year to pick up where I left off on this blog, that does not signify that the impact the second Noel had in my life as an APO is in any way lesser. If Noel Frias Hipolito was instrumental in my becoming APO, Noel Melchor Cura Yap influenced my being APO.

Noel Yap was my first cousin and, as I lived with him and his sisters in one apartment, he was inevitably my room mate as well. Countless nights were spent just yapping it up with him, dreaming our big dreams and being full with ourselves. We called those sessions “cow” talk – as in because we were “cowsins”.

He was an elder brother, too, in the sense that he joined the Alpha Phi Omega two years ahead of me. He was part of Theta 84A, along with Alex L. Castro and P.G. Osmundo N. Capunitan. Their batch produced two GCs, Alex in 1986 and Noel in 1988, and one PC (Ding).

Noel as GC epitomized the LFS inculcated in us during our pledgeship. He was at once our leader, friend and servant. I am fairly certain that many of us his contemporaries in Theta would somehow like to claim that some of him rubbed off on us as well.

By the time I had become Theta’s GC myself, Noel had already left UPLB and was on his way in the real world. Still, he’d frequently visit us and hang out with the brods at our puno in front of the Men’s Residence Hall on campus. And perhaps to many of us living on a student’s allowance, his visits were most welcome as Noel was always a generous visiting brod.

It was, thus, with no small measure of grief that we received the news of his untimely demise when on that tragic summer he and his father were among the victims of an NPA ambush in Zambales. They had been there to hunt and simply got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Practically everyone from Theta was there when father and son were interred. We performed the APO necrological rites for Brod Noel and served as his pallbearers. That was the saddest I felt singing the APO Toast Song and it was evident that all my APO brods present at that time shared the same sentiment.

To this day, I still wonder what he and I could have accomplished together had his life not been snuffed out so senselessly just as he was hitting his stride. Who knows what else we could have achieved. Because at the end of the day, we thrived on each other’s ambition, each one serving as the impetus of the other.

Some 15 odd years later, Noel’s presence in our lives is still sorely missed.

Two Noels – Part 1

Two Noels had an immeasurable influence on my young adult life and on my becoming and being an APO. Noel Frias Hipolito of Eta and Noel Melchor Cura Yap of Theta. As I mark my 20th year in the fraternity, I feel it timely to honor these two men and acknowledge the influence they had on my life. Noel Hipolito introduced me to Alpha Phi Omega when I was just in high school. I got to know Noel through my cousin Nina, and in knowing him I got to know about Alpha Phi Omega. In fact it could be said that it was Noel’s influence that found myself and four cousins becoming members of Alpha Phi Omega at Theta. Noel Hipolito was unabashed with pride when talking to me about his fraternity. Perhaps he found that the principles and ideals of Alpha Phi Omega reverberated at the core of his being that he just needed to speak about it to anyone who cared to listen. Or perhaps he felt that he discovered something so ennobling that he was compelled to share this with those he knew. It is perhaps likely that he found me a captive audience of one who listened interestedly to his stories about Alpha Phi Omega. Whatever his reasons were, I am thankful that he shared what he knew of Alpha Phi Omega with me.

I was then just a scrawny probinsyano kid who found himself in the Big City, away from family and friends, simply because he got admitted to the Philippine Science High School. By the time I met Noel Hipolito, I was already struggling to make the grade at Pisay. I had moved out of the Boys’ Dorm on campus and Noel and his siblings willingly adopted me as a boarder in their apartment, first on Mapagkawanggawa Street in Teachers’ Village and then later along Kalayaan Avenue. I shared one room with Noel and his elder brother Ronnie, also an Eta brod.

Our room was plastered wall to wall with posters, many of which were for projects of Eta Chapter. In that room, I learned about the history of Alpha Phi Omega and discovered the principles and ideals set forth by our founder. To this day, I find it strange that some brods would be so secretive about Alpha Phi Omega whilst my experience with the Hipolito brothers was anything but that. To this day, I wonder why we view our membership as an exclusive privilege when Brother Frank fully intended for the fraternity to be an inclusive organization. In that room, I learned about Leadership, Friendship, and Service. In that room, I learned about the Twelve Jewels. In that room, I learned the meaning of our great seal. In that room, I received my unofficial indoctrination about Alpha Phi Omega. And in that room, I made up my mind, even at that young age, that when I got to university I would be joining no other fraternity but the Alpha Phi Omega. My older cousins joined the Alpha Phi Omega earlier than I did, but I could say that I decided to become APO well ahead of them.

I would have become a brod at Eta as I was actually admitted to the Diliman campus, but since I had already spent four years of high school in the metropolis and with all of my cousins already studying at UPLB, I immediately requested a transfer of campus and started my freshman year in 1986 at the foothills of Mt. Makiling. The apartment I shared with my cousins along Lopez Avenue was tambayan central for the brods and sisses of Theta and three batches of neophytes came to our apartment to report to my cousins during the first semester of 1986-1987. I purposely deferred my pledgeship until late November because I wanted to be initiated as part of an anniversary batch.

And so more than three years after having first learned of Alpha Phi Omega from Noel Frias Hipolito, I officially became his brother in Alpha Phi Omega. Needless to say, I already knew by heart what Alpha Phi Omega was all about. It simply became a matter now of being actually able to live it out as a brother to all who came before me and to all who would come after me.

20 Years in Alpha Phi Omega

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!”
-Lord Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

On 12 December 2006, I shall be celebrating, together with my batchmate Capt. Carlo A. Ferrer (Philippine Army), our twentieth year of striving to live out the principles of Leadership, Friendship, and Service. Time has inexorably marched on, and while often in its passing it appears to take forever, the twenty years that elapsed from that dark December night when Carlo and I were initiated into the brotherhood of Alpha Phi Omega at the bath house of Baker Hall inside the University of the Philippines-Los Baños, home of Theta Chapter, seem more like the blink of an eye in retrospect.

In celebrating our 20th Anniversary as men of Alpha Phi Omega, I have made it part of my personal commemoration to set up this blog not only as a tribute to my experiences as a brother in Alpha Phi Omega but also as a medium for communicating my own personal thoughts and ideas about this great fraternity. In time, whether slowly passing or fleetingly fast, I hope that this blog serves to inspire, reinvigorate, and catalyze brothers and sisters to continually live and practice the timeless principles and worthy traditions of Alpha Phi Omega. To thine ownselves be true!