Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro plants a narra sapling named after him in the lot donated by Dr. Romulo Davide to Colawin Elementary School. (CDN PHOTO/VICTOR ANTHONY SILVA)
Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro asked the Argao municipal government last week to rename the Colawin Elementary School after one of its founders, the late superintendent Hilario Davide Sr.
“This is to cement the love he and his family have for this school,” Secretary Luistro told students, teachers, and local government officials during the school’s 50th anniversary celebration last Jan. 14.
Colawin Elementary School’s anniversary also coincided with the 111th birth anniversary of Davide Sr. Luistro said he can only make the request but the option to change the name is the municipal government’s decision.
Present during the announcement was Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III and his family, local officials of the Department of Education (DepEd), Argao Mayor Edsel Galeos, and Vice Mayor Stanley Caminero.
Luistro was in Cebu to receive on behalf of the DepEd a lot donation by Dr. Romulo Davide, one of Davide Sr.’s children, to the elementary school.
Davide Sr., fondly called by his family and friends “Noy Undo,” helped establish the school in 1946.
He is the father of former Supreme Court chief justice Hilario Davide Jr. and grandfather of Governor Davide.
Governor Davide said his grandfather had been among the first teachers of Colawin Elementary School, even before a school building was constructed.
Before the war, he said his grandfather used to teach children in the mountain barangay how to read. “They still used gas lamps then,” the governor added.
The elder Davide used to teach on the same site where the Davide ancestral house now stands, a few meters away from the elementary school today.
In the 1920s, Undo was a teacher at the Talaga Elementary School in Argao where he met his wife Josefa who worked as a teacher in the same school.
Their union resulted in the birth of seven children, all of whom went to Colawin Elementary School and later on became professionals.
He was later appointed as district school supervisor, which paved the way for the construction of primary schools in the town during his stint. Noy Undo also became the first school superintendent of Lapu-Lapu City after it became chartered, in 1969.
He then founded the Colawin Education Foundation which he headed until 1990. He was 101 years old when he died on June 17, 2006.
Mayor Galeos said the municipal council is aware of the secretary’s request and an ordinance has to be passed to change the name of the school.