Ambrosio de los Santos Magsaysay

My grandfather was second to the youngest of six surviving siblings. He was academically inclined whereas his siblings like their father Domingo engaged in commerce, tradescraft, or farmed which did not require much formal schooling (but at which they were successful). While attending high school at the Ateneo in Manila, he was singled out and chosen from among 20,000 bright students all over the country to be educated in America's best colleges. At 19, he and about 30 other youths left for the US in 1904 where he at first was sent to an agricultural college in Ames, Iowa. At Ames, he joined the Pythian literary and debating society. Part of a trio of musicians, he played at campus activities and parties. Preferring a career in civil engineering, he moved to Cornell in Ithaca, New York where he graduated in 1909.

After a short stint working in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, he returned to the Philippines and joined the City of Manila Bureau of Public Works as part of the irrigation department. Being gainfully employed, he and Amalia Corpus, niece of Filipino billionaire tycoon Teodoro Yangco, were married in July 8, 1911. Sometime during the year, he joined the faculty of the newly formed UP college of engineering replacing Jose Katigbak as part-time Instructor in graphics who left to become City Engineer of Manila. In recognition of his teaching and research, he was appointed professor of civil engineering until 1916 when he left to join the Bureau of Public Works. Around 1920, he helped run Lolo Yangco's businesses including the interisland shipping and logging operations. In1926, he reassumed his association with UP and his full professorship in civil engineering. He appears to have retained this association even while taking on advisory and fulltime positions in civil and business organizations, being appointed a special lecturer in the College of Engineering in 1936.

Prior to WWII, President Quezon called him from academia and asked him to head the new Metropolitan Waterworks Admininistration and to build the system that supples water to all of Greater Manila and the new capital Quezon City. His services to the public continued on even in his private enterprise. He co-founded A. Magsaysay, Inc., a pioneer in training and creating a demand for Filipino seamen to man merchant ships all over the world.