A tribute to Dante Adan by Maricoy Obias-Bonnefoy
REST IN PEACE, DANTE ADAN
I’m very sad as I write this. Dante’s untimely death stunned me and I would be remiss if I did not share my personal story to honor his memory. Dante had a lot of friends and each one has his or her own story of how he touched their lives. This is mine.
My friendship with Dante Adan started in 2010. I had been living in the U.S for more than 30 years, was already retired and took turns with my siblings to go home to San Jose to care for our elderly mother. I was looking for a lawyer to represent my family in the settlement of my grandfather’s estate and I found him on Facebook. He seemed to be a good fit—being from the same hometown as me, speaking the Bicol dialect, and being familiar with the Partido area which was an important requirement for us.
His proficiency in the Bicol dialect was impressive. “Maogma akong maray na nakanupar nin mga arog saindo na may mga kaparehong kaisipan, may pagmakulog sa banwaan, asin may ginigibo ngani mabago an mga sala.” On our shared love for our hometown, he wrote: “nakalubong an satong inulnan sa trankahan kan satong harong na namundagan”. It didn’t take long for us to discover that we had many common interests—our soft spot for San Jose, advocacy for farming and poverty alleviation, the arts and literature. Whenever I’d go home, he’d come by and we’d spend hours talking about ideas for community development and looking back on fond memories of our respective childhoods in San Jose.
Dante loved poetry and composed poems in the Bicol dialect. One time he messaged me asking if I was in my husband’s hometown in Chile. “Are you in Santiago? I dream of going to Pablo Neruda’s Isla Negra, La Sebastiana, and La Chascona someday.” He got excited when I shared some anecdotes of Claudio’s personal encounters with the great poet.
As a lawyer, Dante was thorough in his research and comprehensive in drafting documents. When necessary, he even translated legal documents into Bicol. I’ll never forget the first document he presented to my family, a 25-page Legal Memorandum which was part family history, part legal opinion. When I praised him for its brilliance, he confessed that he went to the Camposanto and prayed to my grandfather to guide him in his work. He encouraged me to do the same—"talk to your Lolo, Manay, he was my inspiration in writing the Legal Memorandum.” That remark touched my heart and it will always stay with me.
We were disappointed when Dante had to drop his clients, including us, to be the Chief of Legal Staff of Supreme Court Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. We were happy for him, though, having reached the highest point of his professional life. A few years later, he returned to private practice, and came back into our lives.
During my mother’s long illness, my visits to the Philippines became more frequent but they were short stays of up to three weeks at a time. Mama was in and out of Mother Seton in Naga and Dante was kind enough to accommodate my busy schedule by meeting me in the hospital, in the hotel lobby, in SM, and a number of times even at the airport, to discuss legal matters. Even during this past pandemic year, I called him a few times when I had legal questions, but always the conversation would digress to topics of personal interest. A few months ago, he called me at 1:30 a.m. Philippine time to return a missed call. I said, “Dante, matanga na diyan. Makahalat man ako kang apod mo saaga.” He said he was wide awake since he had fallen asleep in the afternoon after spending an exhausting day working on his NGO.
The last time I saw Dante was on February 23, 2020, my last day in San Jose. He found out through my sister’s Facebook post that we were there. He came while we were having breakfast with visitors from the U.S. and Sorsogon. He told us about his newest endeavor, Group Initiatives for Better Opportunities (GIBO). (Dante had a flair for creative acronyms…he once suggested that the name of our family foundation should be OBIAS, and proceeded to tell me what each letter stood for, which I now wish I had written down because it was ingeniously appropriate!) He said that GIBO (which means “to make” in Bicol) will be helping farmers by organizing consumer coops in our province. He had brought two bottles of coconut aminos for Dulce and me. I could tell how proud and excited he was telling us about his NGO, of which the coconut aminos was one of the products. Not expecting that I had visitors, he went back home to pick up more bottles as gifts for my friends. Shortly thereafter, the pandemic shook the world.
In one of our recent Messenger chats, I asked how Tiang Ellen was and he said “Nanay is ok. We take all precautions na dai siya maka-contract ning virus.” I was shocked when last Friday he sent me a selfie from the ICU and asked for prayers. I had not been active in Facebook for a long time and had missed his health status updates. That’s when I learned for the first time that he was Covid positive and was already in the ICU. My heart sank when he said there was bleeding in his left lung, an ominous sign. I was devastated when I found out the next day that he had expired. His personal message was his way of saying goodbye.
Dante was a deeply religious man. His unwavering faith was the guiding principle for his strength of character and integrity. Years ago, Dante told me of his dream to someday take the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. He had it all planned to the last detail—which route to take, which stops to make, down to the inns where he would stay the nights. Little did I know then that he would take a short cut to heaven so early in his life. He still had a lot of things to do for the betterment of our community, his task was not finished, but his Maker had other plans for him. We lost him but heaven gained a good man.