Haskang buanga, Gab!
My wife and I had just gotten home early Sunday from Church where we sang an empathic Happy Birthday to Mother Mary after Mass at the Saint Francis of Assisi Parish Church in Jugaban, Carigara, Leyte, when she let out an OMG! A Facebook post by The FREEMAN sports editor Manny Villaruel leapt at her as she opened her phone. Unable to say another word, she handed over her phone for me to read Manny's post.
"Wala na si GabMal. Ang haya naa sa St. Peter sa Imus." That was all the post said. But to me it said an entire lifetime. GabMal is Gabriel Malagar, Gabby to most friends and relations, but GabMal to many colleagues in the profession. Gabby was a journalist for roughly 30 years. It was the only job he ever held. He settled on sports early on and never let go.
Gabby and I go a long, long way back. We started our careers in Journalism together in 1981 at the now-defunct Visayan Herald of Al Alinsug. I came on board just a few weeks ahead of Gabby. It was the late former press secretary Cerge Remonde who took Gabby and me in when Cerge was managing editor of the Herald.
Cerge later got an offer to manage radio station dyLA and took Gabby and me along with him. But it did not take me long to find out that I was not cut for radio. So I quit and went back to school where I eventually ended up editing the Visayanian, the school paper of the University of the Visayas, succeeding Elias Espinoza on his graduation.
But I did not stay long in school. Things happened at The FREEMAN which left it understaffed. Sir Dodong Gullas asked me and another Visayanian staffer, Jesse Bacon, to join The FREEMAN. Gabby, who joined Cerge in an unsuccessful newspaper venture, rejoined me in The FREEMAN. And that is where we stayed until our retirements.
I rose through the ranks to eventually become editor-in-chief and publisher. Gabby remained a reporter, largely out of his own choice. He hated editorial responsibilities. To him, setting policy and keeping people in line was tedious work and only made him angry. Better to enjoy watching games and writing about it afterward. To him, nothing was more fulfilling than sportswriting.
Gabby was a simple uncomplicated human being. He was as quick to laughter as he was to anger and it did not come as a surprise that he had only one expression to describe his feelings, one way or the other. If he was pleased, he would laugh out loud and say "haskang buanga." It would still be "haskang buanga" if he was displeased.
One thing in his favor, and everybody else's for that matter, was that it took a lot less to make him happy than it did to drive him mad. He would slam the door of a taxi just to make people turn and see him alighting from one. He would babble endlessly when a VIP picked him out of a crowd and called him out by name. He never wrote a story greater than his own life. Haskang buanga, my friend, tua na man ka. May you find peace with God.
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