Juan Macaraeg

There were three pensionados who carried on a regular correspondence with my dad. Two of them, Jacinto Kamantigue and Juan Macaraeg, came over on the same boat. The other was Vicente Villanueva, who came over a year before, but hailed from the same province as my dad. He went to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Kamantique, the most prolific card writer, received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Macaraeg went to the Lewis Institute in Chicago, an engineering school which later became the Illinois Institute of Technology. In one postcard, Macaraeg asks "cuantos Filipinos estan alla" or how many Filipinos are there (in Urbana)? He observed that there were about 50 Filipinos in Chicago! (There are tens of thousands today.) He addressed my dad differently each time, from "old boy" to "old man" to "dear friend." Macaraeg's daughter Eva would become the second wife of thewidowed Diosdado Macapagal, the Philippine president from 1961­-1965. Diosdado and Eva's daughter is Gloria Macapagal, president from 2001 to 2010. Although my dad never served under the elder Macapagal (dad was 72 and already retired in 1961), Charito recalls that Eva and Diosdado were always friendly and gracious to our parents. Now we know the reason. From Macaraeg's and other postcards from Chicago based pensionados, we have a collection of Chicago buildings as they were in the first decade of the 20th century. There's the the public library, Post Office, State Street and the Pullman Car Company. Macaraeg's last postcard asked my father if they could return to the Philippines together after their graduation in June, 1911. It was not to be, the Superintendent of Students instructed Macaraeg to proceed to San Francisco, while my father received permission to go through Europe.

Juan Macaraeg and Irenea de la Cruz civilly married on February 24, 1913 in Mangatarem, Pangasinan.

Source:

Men of the Philippines (1931)

http://www.orosa.org/PensionadoPostcards.pdf