Domingo Duerme, 71 ‘We say Goodbye to our Childhood idol and model’

At dawn today, Domingo Duerme, a farmer, lawyer and late-blooming golfer, lost a brief fight with liver cancer.

Not very many people know him outside of the golfing community and the airline industry where he served as Vice President for Mindanao of Philippine Airlines.

Before he died, he was President of Planters Products, Inc., a sequestered corporation managed by the Department of Agriculture on behalf of the Filipino farmers.

In a little over two years, he led a dramatic turn around of the PPI which made it an earning corporation today.

He was actually my candidate to head the National Food Authority but when he failed to get it, I appointed him as head of PPI.

While not many people knew him, Atty. Duerme was our model and idol, an inspiration for village boys with sunburnt skin like us because he showed us how hard and honest work and perseverance could lift us out of poverty.

Uncle Sunday, a nickname he earned because of his name Domingo, grew up in the same village where I was born.

He was our father’s distant cousin but to us he was an older brother.

He was four years older than my older brother, Patricio, but we tended to our carabaos together and swam in the Bialong creek while our beasts were grazing.

We were all children raised in simple lives. We were poor but that did not stop Uncle Sunday from pursuing his dream to become a lawyer.

He worked as a cargo boy in the Cotabato airport as he studied at night and when he became a lawyer he rose to become PAL Branch Manager and later VP for Mindanao.

All through his successes, however, he remained simple and humble and to us he was an idol and model.

His death leaves a void in the PPI which his fellow workers say would be very difficult to fill.

But Atty. Duerme has given us an inspiring story.

He has shown that poor boys from the villages could chase a dream and actually realize it through sacrifices, perseverance and hard and honest work.

Thank you for this precious lesson in life Uncle Sunday.

(This selfie was taken last week with his permission in the ICU of Davao Doctors Hospital. Beside him is his wife, Connie.)