Sunday, 3 June 2018
Lolit Compas
There
are two faces to the same coin – the face of terror and the face of
humanitarian aid. This is not your
typical prime time telenovela, that is to say, the usual story of poverty,
sorrow, tragedy, marriage, or sexual encounters of a Filipino overseas worker,
but a story of heroism beyond the call of duty
On
September 11, 2001, Lolita B. Compas was working at the Cabrini Hospital, a
mile away from the World Trade Center Building. Immediately after the first
plane rammed into the tower, the hospital called out the standard signal
marking “Disaster alert.”
Emergency
rooms were set up, and equipment was brought out into the street outside the
main lobby. Medical aide workers hauled out disaster carts as a swell of black
smoke covered Manhattan.
Lolita
Compas, posted inside the hospital, “was numb” all through out. “We saw the
wounded in a state of shock and with cuts walk in to the emergency room. A
makeshift shower facility was built outside the hospital entrance where New York
City victims with only minor scratches and wounds can clean themselves… It was
devastating.”
Lolit
remained in the emergency room throughout that day and the night, even the
weeks after 9-11. Very few Filipinos know this story that it was a quintessential
Filipino nurse who was in charge at the service of others.
This
is a Filipino success story -- a story of how a nurse had immigrated to the
United States; and returned home for Christmas to receive the presidential
award for outstanding community service from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Known
as “Ate” to many younger Filipino nurses, Lolit finished her Bachelor of
Nursing at St. Paul College of Manila in 1967. She also obtained a Master of
Arts in Nursing from the prestigious New York University in 1977.
Daughter
of Vicente Compas (from Alitagtag, Batangas) and Luisa Compas (a full-time
housewife), Lolit is the seventh in a family of 11 children. “Nine out of the
11 children are college graduates: 2 became nurses, 2 accountants, 2 engineers,
one became a lawyer, and another became a medical technologist.”
“Ours
is a big family,” explains Lolit, “So the older siblings had to help raise
money for the family. My parents did not finish high school; we had to borrow
money; everybody had to help each other. Naging very close kami, kasi
nagtulungan kami.”
Lolita
started as a staff nurse at the Cabrini Medical Center in 1969, when she
followed the footsteps of her older sister, also a nurse, who had already gone
to the United States.
“The
idea of becoming a nurse came from the desire to help my own brothers and
sisters. The idea came also because I was touched by my mother’s devotion. My
mother took care of every body. She attended to us with love. She nurtured us…
inculcated in us the value of love and respect. She developed in us a strong
Catholic faith just through her actions and sacrifices.”
Lolit
recounts: “Once, as a child, I got sick with very high fever. And the whole
time my mom was at my bedside with a towel. I felt I was so loved. At that point,
and because of my family’s circumstances I promised to do my best and later to
give back to my family and to my community. I promised to be just like my mom,
to be of help to others and to be an instrument to the healing process. Kaya
after high school I took nursing kaagad.”
Lolit’s
young years living here in the Philippines turned out to be the perfect
training ground for a successful life in America. She narrates each event
without any qualms or regret in her voice. “We had no television then, so
instead we talked to each other and prayed the rosary every night… money was
hard to get which is why I learned the value of money at an early age.”
In
high school, Lolit had no money to spare for movies or shopping -- preferring
in its place to go straight home in order to help the family with the household
chores. There were no trips to the disco or late-night dates, only laundry and
cleaning as substitutes. “Nakatulong kasi nasanay sa trabaho. Discipline
and education were my only inheritance from my parents… This also why when I
left for the United States, I wasn’t afraid, I prayed a lot. My mother prayed a
lot, asking help from Santa Clara.”
Now,
thirty-four years later, Lolit is president-elect of the New York State Nurses
Associations. The very first Filipino-American, the very first Asian American
at that, to head the oldest, largest, and the most innovative State nurses
association in America.
For
advancing the cause of the Filipino community, Lolita B. Compas -- a native of
Candelaria, Quezon -- received the “Banaag Award” at the Malacanang Palace
recently with a host of other presidential awardees that included the renowned
Josie Natori and Mayor Michael Guingona of Daly City, California.
Institutionalized
by then President Corazon Aquino, the biennial Banaag Award “is conferred on
Filipinos and foreign individuals or associations for advancing the cause of
Filipino communities overseas or for supporting specific sectors in the
Philippines.”
Jose
Molano, Executive Director of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, explains:
“More than seven million Filipinos have gone to live or work in many parts of
the world, (yet) they continue to demonstrate a consciousness of their origins…
and maintain a common active interest in life and progress at home.”
And
of the many Filipino nurses leaving the Philippines for the different parts of
the world, Lolita Compas clearly stands out for her dedication to helping
uplift the lives of the rest of America’s immigrant nurses.
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