The stalwart Titan from Dallas, Texas, Frederick "Fritz" Acuña was next to take in the applause. He and his wife Edna, a physician herself, choreographed the Titan's dance to showcase Class '57 during the alumni affair. it's a wobbly dance so uncomplicated it took Jane Orendain, the Class '57 flamenco star, a mere 15 minutes to show forth. "Just roll along," she said, "let it all hang," and Fritz, simply as well, gave away the plan of his classmates to turn into some dancing dwarfs:
12-4-2007 am writing this letter in carmen's computer amids the chatter of lilian, juliet, delai, lulu suarez, macario's snooring in the sofa. i am here to help finish the constructionof 6 giant cowboyhats that will cover the upper portion of the male's body from the nipples up to about 2 feet from the top of the head. we will be presenting a "suprise" number for the whole upis crowd on friday. the men's stomach will bepainted to look like our faces. we will look lie dwarfs by the time we marched into the stage at the tune of the eky breaky heart.
Many years ago, this Texan saw a sylvan paradise in the mountains of Luzon Island where he “walked under the canopy of century-old trees for days without seeing the sun.” He worked for Caltex, “calling on logging companies”, supplying fuel and lubricants to machines that cut down trees, and those forests were soon gone. Decades later, Fritz grieves that “due to greed, what was once a rain forest is now a row of wastelands that devastate the lowlands during the rainy season.” Fritz’s is a story of flight. From U.P. to U.E., thence to the timberlands of North Luzon and, finally, perhaps distraught of his collaboration in the extinction of the ancient woodlands, transplanted himself to America. Although, today, Fritz does not grow trees to make amends. He is building for the destitute homes made of concrete, not of wood.
He has been shuttling in the past four years between Dallas and the Philippines, putting up low-cost houses with his own hands and donating them to his homeless compai- sanos in Roxas City in the mythified Island of Panay. He has a vision to seed microcosms of respectability in his mother country, whose name Philippines is painted over with images of thieving politicians and stifling shanty towns. Fritz knows that, alone, he will not transform poverty. But he has nurtured confidence that a respectable home will breed responsible citizens. In his own way, Fritz sees to regain the country that he fondly calls Las Islas Filipinas, where lives his boyhood of coconuts and seascapes, his Philippine Islands.
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