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Luis T. Centina Jr. was an educator for 34 years in the Philippines. When World War II broke out in the Pacific in 1941, he entered the Army as an intelligence and counter-intelligence non-commissioned officer. He served his country against the Japanese Imperial Army under the United States Army Forces Far East during World War II. After the war ended in 1945, he stayed in the Army for a few more months as an investigator of the War Crimes Commission that sent collaborators and war criminals to prison. From 1972 up to his retirement in 1982, he worked as Chief Division Statistician in the Division of La Carlota City Schools. Prior to that, he was a grade school teacher since 1948. He died on July 18, 2015.
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• Read his gripping account of life as a USAFFE soldier and guerrilla leader, ALMOST ON THE CARPET.
• Read his flash fiction, THE TRAGIC BALLAD OF MAESTRO BONDOC.
• Read his flash fiction, THE TRAGIC BALLAD OF MAESTRO BONDOC.
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Until her death on December 15, 2014, Eva Ramos Centina, family matriarch, was the anchor of the artistic Centina clan. She was a descendant of Fernando Salas, her paternal great grandfather whose brother, General Quintin Salas, was the last Filipino military leader to surrender to the Americans in the island of Panay (more info about Salas here and here). Her grandfather, Samuel Salas Ramos, was appointed the first Filipino judge of La Carlota City, breaking a long line of foreign judges under Spanish and American colonial regimes. A cousin of her father, Rafael M. Salas, served as the executive secretary of President Ferdinand E. Marcos before becoming the first director of the U.N. Population Fund in 1969.
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Romeo Ramos Centina (1945-2011) was a poet. He attended La Salle College-Bacolod (now St. La Salle University) on a scholarship, earning a BA in political science and sociology. He spurned lucrative job offers in favor of teaching at St. Joseph High School in Bacolod City to help troubled kids upon the invitation of a La Salle brother. While working at Ateneo de Manila University, he obtained his law degree from Manuel L. Quezon University in 1978.
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From 1988 to 2007, he worked at the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office as a legal investigator, helping poor veterans’ families receive long delayed benefits. While there, he obtained a master’s degree in public administration. His social activism earlier got him in trouble with Martial Law. In 1973, he was arrested and subjected to torture at a military camp (Crame), a traumatic experience that eventually led to various health problems. A nationally published poet, he attended the Silliman Writers Workshop. He and his brothers Fr. Gilbert and Pierce made literary history as the only three brothers to have been accepted to Asia’s oldest literary workshop. His love of poetry was rivaled only by his fondness for classical music.
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Louella Centina Garnado studied painting at the Philippine Women's University in Manila. In her final year in college as a Fine Arts major, she dropped out to raise a family. She has six children, one of whom is a writer of popular romantic Tagalog novels in paperback. She illustrated Search, an Augustinian cultural journal published in the Philippines, during the editorship (2002-2005) of her older brother, Fr. Gilbert Luis R. Centina III, OSA.
Click here to view some of her artworks. |
