Our guiding light still shines, 25 years later

I remember the Sunday in the year 1981 when I first met her. It was the launching of the STAR! Monthly magazine in Club Filipino, and my schoolmate Marlu Villanueva convinced me to attend it because the new magazine’s editor Betty Go-Belmonte was a prominent name in the publishing world and had trained many writers. I remember the razzmatazz of the event, because the hottest young stars of the era were present (I recall among them were Jackie Lou Blanco and William Martinez). Betty Go-Belmonte was the editor of the magazine, and her firstborn, Isaac, the publisher. I remember how awestruck I was when I met Tita Betty. She wore a red dress and a gentle smile.

She gave me my very first paid writing assignment right there and then: Christopher de Leon. Since I was from UP like she was, she told me I had her vote of confidence. “I think you’re going to be a good writer!” I submitted my article through the kindness of her youngest son Miguel, now president and CEO of The STAR. I requested Miguel, who was also studying in UP Diliman at the time, to hand carry my article to his mother as fax machines and e-mail were nonexistent at the time, at least in the Philippines.

And my life has never been the same after that. I was hired by Tita Betty to be one of the STAR! Monthly’s writers, and eventually, its associate editor even though I was still completing my Journalism degree. It is my good fortune, nay, my blessing, that I hitched my writing wagon to the right star.

That is Betty Go-Belmonte’s legacy to me, but I am but a speck of sand in the expanse of the legacy she left behind — to Presidents she supported with her life, to the shoemaker outside The STAR building that she gave an “office” to do business in, to the employees that were the raison d’etre behind her efforts (sometimes business was a struggle, especially after the economic fallout of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in 1983) to keep their jobs; to the family she adored and taught the values of faith and service.

Her legacy shines on as brightly as The STAR she left behind, her radiance undiminished by time.

Once hailed as the “epitome of faith and friendship” by the late former President Corazon Aquino, Betty is cherished by her husband, Quezon City Rep. Feliciano Belmonte Jr., who told me once he always marveled at her “steadfast love and reliance on God.”

Betty founded The Philippine STAR with Max Soliven and Art Borjal as the country was teetering on its newfound freedoms on July 28, 1986, the 23rd newspaper on the block.

Armed with faith, she saw it through till it became the country’s leading newspaper, supervising its operations even as she valiantly fought cancer. She passed away on Jan. 28, 1994.

Betty accompanied her husband Feliciano Belmonte Jr. during his inauguration as world president of Junior Chamber International in 1976.

“Mom’s courage in the face of all the things that she experienced throughout her life is one thing I can never forget,” said her firstborn child Isaac, now the head of The STAR’s editorial board.

Betty founded the STAR on a guidance she received from a Bible verse, and she would face life’s many trials with discernment she got from the holy book.

“Her absolute, unflinching faith and devotion to our Lord,” is her second son Kevin’s most vivid memory of his mother, who passed away at age 60.

Her youngest son, STAR president and CEO Miguel Belmonte, continues to put his mother on a pedestal for her simplicity and selflessness. As she led the STAR to greater heights, she also made sure its success was also the good fortune of its employees and the less fortunate who sought its help. Betty established Operation Damayan, which Miguel continues to support staunchly.

“It seems like my mother’s whole life was dedicated to doing other things for other people, she was constantly helping those in need. Never did she put herself ahead of others,” Miguel shared with me on his mother’s 20th death anniversary. “And even if she could easily afford it, she never spent on material luxuries for herself, no expensive jewelry, bags, shoes or house. And yet she was one of the most powerful and influential women in the country before her death.”

Betty’s youngest child and only daughter Joy, now Quezon City vice mayor, says, “I learned from my mother’s example that it’s okay to be a working mom. She taught me that women can make just as much of a difference in the world as any man, and that we shouldn’t feel bad if we give up some of our time with our kids in order to serve God and country for as long as our kids understand the value of what we do. I am raising my son in the exact same way she raised me.”

Betty supported Joy’s decision to go to Mindanao as a Jesuit Volunteer of the Philippines when she was still in college and loved Joy’s students as her own, offering once to adopt all of them.

“I credit her 100 percent for molding me into the public servant that I am today. When faced with challenges, I often ask myself, ‘What would Mom do in my shoes?’ and immediately I feel guided in my actions and decisions,” Joy also told me.

New Year’s baby

Betty Go-Belmonte was born on Dec. 31, 1933, a day her father, the late Filipino-Chinese newspaper publisher Go Puan Seng (“Jimmy Go”), described as a “gay New Year’s Eve.”

“Sunny and sweet, she had brought us much happiness,” Jimmy Go wrote in his book, One in Faith, a chronicle of how faith kept the family going during the difficult war year in the Philippines.

Go’s description of his eldest child was prescient, for all throughout her life, Betty would exude an unmistakable radiance that lit up the lives of those who surrounded her.

Betty majored in English at the University of the Philippines in the ‘50s, and her love for the state university would endure until the day she died.

Betty was on a vacation to Baguio City when she would meet her future husband, Sonny, the son of a judge who was the friend of her father. They would marry in Taipei, Taiwan a few years later. The marriage was blessed with four children, Isaac, Kevin, Miguel and Joy.

Betty struck a healthy balance between home and career, and it would not be uncommon for visitors to see her bringing her toddlers to the office once in a while. Aside from being editor of the Fookien Times Yearbook, Betty would also later on edit the Movieworld, the STAR! Monthly magazine and The Philippine STAR.

Betty is perhaps the only woman with the distinction of having founded the two leading papers in modern Philippine history — The Philippine STAR and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which she left to establish The Philippine STAR in July 1986.

Betty Go-Belmonte was a beloved wife, mother and grandmother, daughter and sister, but her unshakable faith, generosity and patriotism took her from the bosom of her home to just about every cause that would uplift her countrymen — from poverty, ignorance, a shackled press and violence. She lived her Christian faith in every thing she did, and lived by it even when tested by physical suffering and death.

Twenty-five years after she passed away, Betty Go Belmonte’s legacy lives not just in The Philippine STAR. It throbs in the hearts of those who loved her, knew her, and were touched by her selfless greatness.

She will be remembered for being the guiding light of The Philippine STAR. She continues to be a star to those whose lives she has touched, her gentle, guiding light an eternal flame to them all. *

(You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)