Leonila Dimataga-Garcia

Taken from the commemorative booklet of Pres. Ramon Magsaysay's Inauguration

LEONILA D. GARCIA, wife of Vice President Carlos P. Garcia, is a native of Cebu. She is a model Filipino wife: devoted to the home, efficient, good-natured, soft-spoken, and well-informed. She is simple and unassuming and expects no recognition in any social or political gathering o>spite her husband's prominence in public life.

Mrs, Garcia is a pharmacist by profession, having graduated from the College of Pharmacy, University of Santo Tomas, in 1928. She practiced her profession for some time in a drugstore in Tagbilaran, Bohol, owned by the Borromeos, which was then a fulcrum of social life in Tagbilaran, It was there that she met former representative Carlos P. Garcia and, after a conventional courtship, they were married.

Mrs. Garcia's hobby, besides reading, is gardening. She loves to work in her garden and finds it restful and soothing to spend hours attending to her plants. She prefers a quiet life but because of the career of her husband she finds time to attend to her social and other obligations in keeping with her standing in the community. When in Manila, Mrs, Garcia looks after their home, attending to her husband and their only child, young and charming Linda, who is a Liberal Ails student in the University of the Philippines.

Mrs. Garcia takes pride in the well-known integrity and fidelity to duty of her distinguished husband as a man and as a public servant Her philosophy is to be happy wherever fate places them. She is doing all she can for her family and for the people her famous husband has sworn to serve, trusting that God will do the rest. She is going to play a very prominent role in the next four years as the Vice President's lady. She has nothing to worry about because her education, disposition and experience as the wife of a national leader will stand her in good stead.