Cecilia Borja Santiago

Her Roots

Her Father, Dr. Gregorio de Borja was then the Health Doctor of Bongabon, Laur and Rizal (later on the maor of bongabon). He was a doctor of medicine, a graduate of the University of Santo Tomas who hailed from Pateros, Rizal and migrated ot Nueva Ecija sometime in 1914. Her mother Pacita mozo was sinishing school graduate of the Centro Escolar University in 1915. She was 20 at the time of my mother’s birth and was a woman who loved flowers and birds.

For Gregorio and Pacita, Cecilia was first born, as they had eight other children. They are Enriqueta (BS Music, St Theresa’s); Pacita (BS Education, PWU); Remedios (BS Pharmacy, PWU); Francisca (BS Pharmacy, PWU); Perfecto (BS Civil Engineering, MIT); Victoria (BS Education, PWU); Gregorio Jr., (BS Mechanical Engineering, MIT) and Jose (BS Medicine, UST). Our mother was pharmacy graduate of PWU at the age of 21.

Her Family

The Borja Family migrated to Cabanatuan City in 1921. Cecilia graduated from the Nueva Ecija High School where she was considered the class beauty.

Cecilia is a respectable tennis player. Her father often brought her to play at the DBP tennis compound located just across the other end corner of their family home on burgos Avenue. These tennis lessons with her father helped her a college varsity player at PWU.

Upon her graduation in 1938, she was given her won business which started as “Botica Borja”-a drug store fronting their house. Her tennis partner at that time is pharmacist Salud Paguio (now Sister Evita of Lourdes Hospital).

At the drug store and later at the DBP tennis compound she met her future husband, Aureliano Santiago – an active tennis athlete and a distinguished civil engineer working then at the District Engineer’s Office of the government’s Public Works department. He was the son of Basilio Santiago, a prominent government official as he was a national official as the Provincial Treasurer of Nueva Ecija. His mother was Rosa Francisco, who was also known for the way of cooking which her family loved.

Our father also hailed from a big family. He was the second of eight children namely Emiliano; Loreto (BS Pharmacy, PWU); Lucila (BS Medicine UST); Fidela (BS Pharmacy, PWU); Basilio, Jr. (AA, Ateneo/LLB Araulio); Fernando (AA, UP/LLB, UP); and Rosie (BS Pharmacy, PWU).

Our father and mother were introduced to each other by Civil Enginer Eliodoro Valenton, and Julio Soriano, an architech friend of our father and a high school classmate of our mother. They often saw each other at socials like the Depression Party, “Le Coterie”, Circulo Juvenille, and other parties.

They were engaged on November 25, 1939 and married at the Cabanatuan Catholic Cathedral on March 24, 1940. The Manila Bulletin and Taliba covered their wedding. Among the family friends who attended were the Ramosos, Castels, Baguio on their honeymoon and celebrated most of their wedding anniversaries in the City of Pine. They had their first child the following year.

War broke up months after and they evacuated in Angat, Bulacan together with the whold Santiago clan. They stayed there for months and transferred to Manila during “peacetime”. Auyreliano and Cecila returned to Cabanatuan before the end of World War II. Together with their two daughters they lost their their third child- a baby boy named Aureliano, Jr.), they stayed in an apartment in the church compound (along General Luna St.) and had a small drug/variety store catering to the needs of the locals and the Japanese. They joined the Borja family evacuation during the “Liberation”.

As their family became bigger, and as there were a number of rehabilitation/reparations construction projuects from 1946 onwards, our father started a construction business, together with his partner friend, Jose Llano, a civil engineer from Cavite. There he constructed numerous projects such as NARIC warehouses, public markets, roads and bridges and other government infrastructure projescts in Northern, Southern and Cnetral Luzon. This increase intheir incomes resulted in the constructionof our home on Del Pilar Street, in 1951. From that said house, our mother built her drug store now named “Farmacia Cecilia”. She continued to run the business until she decided to stop practicing her profession at age 58.

Aureliano had been quite successful in his career as a contractor, and he was named Builder of the Year in 1957. However, in the same year, he suffered his first heart attack (while playing pingpong on our terrace)-the following day the last of their eight children was born.

From then on, they went into the agricultural business. They ventured into cattle ranching (a 500 head/500 hectare cattle ranch in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija-1957), rice farming (a 36 hectare irrigated rice farm in Laur, Nueva Ecija-1965), and vegetable farming suh as onions and cabbages (in Bongagon and Rizal, Nueva Ecija).