Let the good live after him

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”.

That was what poet and dramatist William Shakespeare had Mark Anthony say in his supposed eulogy for the fallen Julius Caesar. Caesar's friend was believed to be ironic as he said that, as most people believe he meant otherwise.

And that was so in the case of the late Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo. The good things he did will not be “interred with his bones” because they will surely live after him.

They will live in the idealistic young leaders who will come after him, and whose lives and work ethic he has surely affected with all the recollections of his life and his accomplishments as a public servant. They will live in his colleagues who may have been awakened to their own methods of governance and, even now, may be thinking of how, they, too, can perform so that their own passing will be mourned and their deeds held up as models for all who are serving, or are hoping to, also serve their country in a similar capacity.

They will also live in all officials and politicians like him, who have probably taken a second look at their own behavior as parents, and how they may have neglected their families with the excuse of being in public service, that is taking up all their time.

Many have declared, in the eulogies and homilies, as well as in the articles and columns written about Jesse Robredo, that his will be a hard act to follow. What he had done, and achieved, may, perhaps, not be fully duplicated, but surely, they now have a model, and example by which their own performance and behavior can be measured.

As another poet, Robert Browning had also said: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?”*