Columnist, author Anita Meily dies of COVID-19

MANILA, Philippines — Former Panorama magazine columnist, author of three books and former president couple with her late husband, Joe Meily Jr., of the Christian Family Movement Anita Tagle Sayoc Meily passed away yesterday at the age of 94 due to COVID-19.

Although vaccinated last July 26 with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Makati Coliseum, she was apparently already infected with the virus.

Born March 14, 1927 in Imus, Cavite, Meily survived the World War II battle of Manila when a Japanese friend of her parents warned them to leave the city. Many of her friends and schoolmates at St. Scholastica’s College were killed by the Japanese, “bayoneted and shot,” after they were asked to line up one morning as the American Army approached, she later recounted.

Meily graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines and came in at number three in the national pharmacy exams.

She met the love of her life, Joe, while working as a pharmacist at a drug store after the war. Together, they served as president couple of the Christian Family Movement and embarked on a series of talks and marriage encounter sessions all around the country.

They began a popular marriage and family life weekly column called “Husband and Wife speak” in the Manila Bulletin’s Panorama magazine. They pioneered in the profession of marriage counselling with long lines of glum-looking couples forming at their house in Quezon City.

They published two books, “Husband and Wife Speak” 1 and 2, a compilation of their columns over the years.

When her husband Joe suffered a heart attack immediately following their talk at La Consolacion College in January 1993, Meily decided to continue the Panorama column under the title, “And Life Goes On.” Upon retiring in 2002, she published a third book titled, “And Life Goes On,” a compilation of her columns.

She is survived by her six children: Butch, president of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, IdeaSpace Foundation and QBO Innovation Hub; Rose, a public relations director in California; Tess, who is retired; Jim, a mortgage broker in California; Finina, a technical strategic writer in California and Susan, an entrepreneur in Manila.