There’s little time left and children are busy preparing their dance routines for the annual Filipino Festival, held every August on the grounds of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on Woodman Road. The church basement is filled with people and the atmosphere is hectic. Instructors and parents hustle around the room, helping children try on costumes and arrange routines. The church has a large membership of Filipinos, around 60 families, and many of the children take Filipino cultural classes from teacher Maria Cielo Eugenio. The annual festival raises money for the church and the cultural programs in hopes that Filipino-American children can learn to feel proud about their cultural heritage.

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Grandpa's Girl

 

Filipino teacher Maria Cielo Eugenio is keeping her cultural heritage alive in Richmond

Whenever life gets tough, Maria Cielo Eugenio thinks of her grandfather. She can still recall when she was a 5-year-old growing up in the Philippine capitol of Manila, and her grandfather, Dionisio Quimosing, a survivor of The Bataan Death March during World War II, told stories about living in America in the 1920s and 1930s.

“He experienced racism and fought against all odds to earn his college degree as an engineer,” Eugenio said.  “Then he returned home, married, and began to teach other Filipinos and help with infrastructure and modernization.”

For him, anything most have seemed like a gift after surviving the infamous death march which claimed thousands of Filipino and American prisoners of war in 1941, at the hands of the Japanese.

Quimosing eventually helped organize the engineering department at a Manila university and trained generations of civil engineers. Eugenio said that his motto, “educate yourself first, then help others,” had a profound effect on her.

Eugenio, 46, is now following in her grandfather’s footsteps.  A busy single mother and nursing student, Eugenio is a well-known cultural educator in the small Filipino community in Richmond. In 2003, she began organizing her own cultural workshops so that local children and adults could learn about their native history, language, dance, music, and folklore.

The program is held at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, a Catholic church in Richmond on Woodman Road. The church is attended by 60 local Filipino American families—the most of any local Catholic church, according to another language teacher from the program, Rosario Igharas, whose diocese recently conducted a survey of Filipinos. Eugenio is the history and culture coordinator for the program, and she is often invited to speak at events around Virginia in cities with larger Filipino populations, such as Norfolk.

“She always accepts the invite to speak at events, and she offers to take any of her students who want to go,” said Igharas. “I’m always really impressed at her dedication and commitment.”

But it’s been a complicated path for Eugenio to find her calling.

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Many cultures have interesting dances, but you really ought to see the Tinikiling Dance (or Bamboo Dance as it’s commonly known)—a vibrant traditional dance from the Philippines. Mimicking the movements of the tikling bird as it dances out of farmer’s traps, dancers hop swiftly between long bamboo poles held by their friends, who increase the tempo while smacking the bamboo against the ground for a hypnotic percussion rhythm. Here, several instructors from the Filipino cultural classes held at Our Lady of Lourdes Church talk about the program and what it’s like being from an “invisible minority,” as one of a limited number of Filipinos in Richmond.

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Growing up, Eugenio excelled at primary school in Manila, learning English at an early age. She lost her father to a heart attack when she was only 13, which she claimed strengthened her resolve to make something of her life.  At age 15, she was the youngest pre-med student among 700 students at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

Still a teenager, she studied medicine at the university’s Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, which she described as a grueling process. During the summers she would go on surgical missions to provide free medical care to the poorest areas of the Philippines. She once wrote a personal essay about this period in her life.

“Coming from the upper class Philippine society where live-in maids and a personal driver were the norm, I was in for a big shock,” she wrote. “I saw barefooted mothers who walked for miles the night before carrying babies and young children, patients who stood in the hot sun for hours patiently waiting to avail of free medical care.”

For the next eight years, Eugenio trained in occupational medicine and worked first as a medical officer then as corporate executive medical officer for the Medical Department of the Social Security System of the Philippines.

Her position involved assessing and evaluating disability patients.  Most of the children she treated were malnourished and many of the adults were suffering from various stages of tuberculosis, she said. She can still remember how frustrated she was to know that many of those she helped would receive a prescription for medicine, but would not have enough money to get it filled, since food was their first priority.

By 1994, Eugenio had married another practicing physician, and they moved to America with their only child. After having two more children, Eugenio and her husband decided that she would give up her medical career and stay home to raise the children. That’s when she began to notice a trend among Filipino children in the Richmond community.

After living in America only a few years, she saw that many Filipino-American children had no knowledge of their native culture. Her long latent desire to teach, once inspired by her grandfather, suddenly came into focus.

“I wanted my children as well to know about their culture, but I could not find anything here in Richmond,” she said. So she began to recruit local teachers who could help her give lessons at the church.

Language instructor Ernesto Mina, another teacher with a love of his native Filipino culture, coordinates the classes with Eugenio. Since meeting her by chance several years ago, he said that he has been impressed by her detailed historical knowledge, especially of the Spanish and colonial periods of Philippine history.

“The students like her a lot, she’s friendly and accommodating,” Mina said. “We try to keep the classes from becoming monotonous by getting the kids to actively participate. I don’t hear any of them complaining.”

Mina agreed with Eugenio that a major benefit of the program is the feeling of community that it creates among the younger students. The program meets for several hours every other Friday night from September through March. 

While there are adult classes, the bulk of the students are teenagers. Mina added that the parents appreciate knowing that their children are doing something constructive and not watching TV at home, or getting bored and getting into trouble on the streets.

Seaver Inocencio is an 18-year-old student at Hanover High School who has attended the Philippine cultural classes for several years. He said that he has learned a great deal from Eugenio and the program, but he readily admitted that the “coolest part” had been the dancing.

“The classes are really inspiring and motivating,” Inocencio said. “Maria Cielo is really easy-going and she is able to relate the past to today so that you can understand the lessons better.”

 Inocencio added that he plans to attend nursing school in the Philippines this coming August.

One of the important traditional customs that her classes teach is “respect for one’s elders,” Eugenio said. This tradition is missing from many American families today, “mostly due to societal changes and modern lifestyles,” Eugenio said.

Beginning in 2005, Eugenio became closely involved with the Richmond Filipino Festival, an annual cultural event held on the Our Lady of Lourdes church grounds in early August that is currently in its third year. Last year, she served as the main stage director.

Having recently divorced, Eugenio is now raising her two American-born children, Jon, 12, and Jan Marie, 5, as a single mother. Her oldest child, Alvin, 23, has a family of his own.  She sees her son's family whenever she can find the time, which hasn’t been often lately. Besides her teaching duties, Eugenio has also revived her medical career. Two years ago, she entered the nursing program at Bon Secours Memorial School of Nursing and has been on the Dean’s List with a 3.6 grade point average, she said. She was not originally considered a doctor in this country because her medical degree from the Philippines did not transfer professionally.

“I don’t know how she does it,” said Igharas. “She juggles raising two kids, teaching, and going to school and getting A’s.”
The love and respect she still holds for her grandfather may be a major reason why she refuses to give up on her dreams. Eugenio said that one of her greatest joys is getting to see her two young children taking her classes and learning about their Filipino culture.

“Most importantly, we try to teach all of the kids pride in their heritage,” she said. “It’s good to make the child feel ‘whole,’ I believe.”

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Facts about Filipinos

 

Filipino Americans originated from one of the 7,107 islands that form the Republic of The Philippines in Southeast Asia—and they are commonly categorized as Asian Americans. Over 80 percent are Roman Catholic, and most Filipinos learn to speak fluent English in their home country.Those that immigrate to the United States have been called the “Invisible Minority,” partly for the ease with which they assimilate here. But the tag is also due to the lack of a significant number of Filipino Americans holding elected office, as well as few prominent role models in the media or national spotlight, unusual considering Filipinos are the second largest Asian American group in the United States at 2.4 million—just behind Chinese Americans.

The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau lists 47,609 Filipinos in Virginia, with the vast majority of them living in the Virginia Beach area. Many Filipinos serving in the U.S. Navy decided to settle in this area, which is one of a handful of U.S. cities to have what is known as “Little Manila,” a concentration of Filipino businesses and citizens. Richmond has a very small Filipino community. In fact, its one Filipino restaurant, Manila! Manila! has even closed its doors. Our Lady of Lourdes Church at 8200 Woodman Road has the largest number of Filipino families in its membership, with roughly 300 Filipinos, or 60 families.

(Reported in July 2008)