Loyalty Day 2024 – How UPLB Loyalty Shifted From Loyalty To The Americans To Loyalty To Serving The People With Science

This is a story of shifting loyalties! And I UPLB alumnus can tell the story most credibly – because it was my writing that was the cause of it all. I, the writer that shook a whole 49-year old university!

The UP Oblation shown in the top image from the Facebook page of UPLB, shared by SEARCA, implies that UPLB’s Loyalty Day is now celebrated with wide openness. And whom do you think UPLB owes that to? Me, Frank A Hilario! Here’s the story.
(top image from unescoghana.gov.gh, lower image from Jerry Yapo’s Facebook sharing)

The history of UPLB Loyalty Day changed majorly starting 10 Oct 1967 when I, a BSA alumnus (major Ag Educ, 1965), came out with an open letter deploring the celebration, and I myself handed out copies to unsuspecting alumni coming in via the old carabao gate of the UP College of Agriculture (UPCA) now UP Los Baños. The letter was titled “What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?”

That letter explained, in so many words, that the 10 Oct 1918 volunteerism act of the faculty and students of UPCA was in fact a show of loyalty to America and not the Philippines, because World War I was occurring in Europe, nowhere near Asia.

As I did not expect, my letter caused outrage among the faculty and alumni of UPCA, especially among the Loyalty Day volunteers, and I got booted out from the teaching staff – my appointment as “Substitute Horiticulture Lab Instructor” was discontinued.

I brought that bad fate upon myself – where to go now? I applied to colleges of agriculture from Luzon to Mindanao, and Dean Fr William F Masterson of the Xavier University College of Agriculture. accepted me as lecturer in Horticulture. (Thank you, Fr Masterson!)

Undaunted, at Xavier, I wrote 4 original lecture syllabi for organic Horticulture: Floriculture (flowers), Landscape Horticulture, Ornamental Horticulture, and Pomology (fruit trees). Mind you: All Organic. And what happened? I am glad to tell you that 35 years later, my favorite organic believer Xavier student Nicanor “Nicky” Perlas Jr won the international Right Livelihood Award in 2003, said to be equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize. (Thank you, also, Xavier!)

Wasn’t I an alumnus of UPCA/UPLB serving my country with honor, literally?!

I write this today, Saturday, 05 Oct 2024, “World Teachers Day,” and I can only say that my 1967 open letter that changed the nature of UPLB Loyalty Day from loyalty to the Americans to loyalty to the aims and aspirations of UP Los Baños, is a teachers’ lesson in being true to one’s calling. Miscued, the 1918 UPCA faculty and student volunteers must have damned me to high heavens!

Today, thinking about my alma mater initially rejecting my teaching it a lesson in loyalty to one’s calling, I have forgiven its act of betrayal to me.

Teachers Of Tomorrow (teachersoftomorrow.org) says the 1^st quality of a good teacher is being a “great communicator” – wasn’t I great with just a single open letter?!@517