A promdi’s journey fit for MMK

I put down the book craving for more. It seems to have left me cliff-hanging, just like a tearjerker on Maalaala Mo Kaya? (MMK) that reminds you to tune in next week, abangan ang susunod na kabanata.

In barely three hours, I breezed through My Journey: The Story of an Unexpected Leader by Charo Santos-Concio as I would a diary of somebody I thought I knew so well but turned out that I did not.

It’s easy reading, best done while reclining on the sofa on a lazy Sunday afternoon with good old love songs playing on the radio as soundtrack. Because that’s how Charo’s book makes you feel, especially the first half when she leads you on a nostalgic journey from the laidback rusticity of Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, to the heady whirl of Metro Manila, on to the mesmerizing glam and glitz of Cannes which is the pinnacle of stardom, with a stopover on KG Street off Kamias Road in Quezon City where Charo rented an apartment (it’s still there!) for her and her family while waiting for the Big Time to beckon.

Eternal beauties start the same way…from promdi beginnings. Prom di province, that is: Imelda Marcos from being Rose of Tacloban to being Miss Manila to being First Lady; and Gloria Romero from a small town in Pangasinan to being Miss Visayas to being Queen of Philippine Movies. Like them, Charo’s first claim to fame was being a beauty queen (Miss Calapan/Miss Green Race) to being Baron Travel Girl to showbiz to heading the country’s largest television network.

What a journey it has been, Charo wrote at the end of the book. Yes, it’s a journey, a long and winding road (as the Beatles put it), worth retracing.

Charo Navarro Santos-Concio is the daughter of Dr. Winifredo R. Santos, whom she describes as “a handsome and fair-skinned government doctor (who graduated from UST), originally from Baliwag, Bulacan,” who opted to live and practice in Oriental Mindoro, hometown of her mother, Nora C. Navarro, “a statuesque beauty, elegant and always well put-together, who could sing like Joni James” and who could have been another Pilita Corrales had not marriage got in the way, who graduated with a degree in Philosophy & Letters (Philets, now Arts & Letters or Artlets) from UST, and from whom Charo said she learned “the power of dreams and self-sacrifice.” Nora was a first cousin of Jimmy Navarro, one time program director of ABS-CBN.

Our family didn’t have much. A government physician’s salary could barely support a family of six children (including Malou Santos, head of Star Creatives). We learned to scrimp. We grew vegetables in our backyard and my father raised chickens so that we would always have food on the table. We ate mostly dried fish on weekdays. On weekends, when a whole chicken would sometimes be served, my father divided it fairly among us — each sibling getting his or her turn to receive a choice cut. Perhaps, a drumstick for Ate Suzanne today, then a drumstick for Malou next week, for Millette the week after, then it would be Mae’s turn, and finally, Joey. That’s how we learned the value of sharing.  

Very obviously, Charo adored her parents, putting them on a pedestal as her idols. I believe my father gave me the combined drive to help others and to tell their stories…

While their father was busy treating mostly poor patients, Charo and Malou would pass their spare time inside the moviehouse enjoying local movies and listening to radio programs including those of Tia Dely, Kuya Cesar and Eddie Ilarde, not knowing that someday she, too, would be dishing out sisterly advice on a similarly-formatted show that remains a top-rater up to this day, more than 26 years after it started airing. It was when Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos began appearing on Oras ng Ligaya that Malou and I really became full-fledged fans.

Then, she met fashion designer Rikki Jimenez and the life of “introvert and painfully shy” Charo was never the same again. She got to where she is today “all because of this one chance encounter,” starting from being a beauty queen to an award-winning actress (with an Asian Best Actress trophy for Itim, her first movie directed by Mike de Leon “from whom I learned a lot of what I would later use when I became a producer”) to being the president of ABS-CBN which she unflinchingly helped catapult back to No. 1 when the network suffered seemingly insurmountable setbacks spawned by the economic crisis, competition from a rival network and tragedies like the Wowowee stampede that killed more than 70 people.

Charo happily retired when she turned 60 and stays as the network’s Chief Content Officer and president of the ABS-CBN University. The book was written from a promdi’s heart, proving the saying true that you can take a girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of a girl.

Through it all, Charo raised two sons with Cesar Concio, 20 years her senior, who swept her off her feet by showing her “how to discern beyond what is apparent in the surface, I discovered in him an intrinsic and profound goodness. I was attracted to his inner being. I realized, in his presence, I became whole. Now, I feel incomplete without him.”

Cesar came from a failed marriage with children with his first wife. They got married at sunset in California. The May-December romance has grown even sweeter through challenges such as when Cesar suffered a stroke that rendered him wheelchair-bound up to this day.

What I found very touching was Charo’s recollection of her parents’ demise.

My father tried his best to be home from hospital duties every night and, in the morning, he lingered a bit longer before rushing off. I remember one morning when it seemed he could barely tear himself away. I was weaning sleep away on our living room sofa when he walked by to head out the door. “Bye!” he said to us cheerfully. A few seconds later, he was back in the door as if he had remembered something, but he just looked at us and then said, “Bye!” one more time. “Bye, Dad,” we chimed back. I watched him take a few steps outside, look up at the sky as if he was looking at something, and then turn back for a third goodbye. That night, after a stressful day of hospital rounds and meetings, he collapsed while having dinner at a restaurant. It was a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Looking at his dad inside the coffin, Charo promised to take on the obligation of being the family’s breadwinner.

A few days after Charo and her siblings hosted a big party for their mom’s 70th birthday, Malou found their mom blue and cold as she lay sleeping; she had lapsed into a deep coma induced by diabetes and hypertension. She was brain-dead when rushed to the hospital and soon taken off life support when the monitor went flat.

Charo recalled that during her mom’s last moments, “I cradled her for a bit longer before putting her down tenderly. Pulling myself away from her, I found yet one more truth. Her audacious love would be her lasting legacy within me.”

The rest of the book chronicled Charo’s struggle with the ups and downs of TV ratings while tending to Cesar and their growing sons. If and when Charo’s life story were serialized on MMK, it would take a dozen episodes.

I said that I put down the book cliff-hanging because Charo left out so much more of her colorful life, a good part of her journey that, if written in Book 2, would make people sit up and wonder, “It’s more amazing than all of the movies she has starred in and produced put together.” Suggested title: Ang Mas Makulay na Daigdig ni Ate Charo.

(My Journey, The Story of an Unexpected Leader is published by ABS-CBN Publishing, Inc., authored by Charo Santos-Concio with An Mercado Alcantara.)

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