Time: 2:00:00 PM
Maria Corazon "Cory" Cojuangco Aquino (January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009)Corazon Aquino, the country’s first woman president, died yesterday at 3:18 a.m. at the Makati Medical Center after an 18-month battle with colon cancer. She was 76.
She had fulfilled her mission to lead her people from the oppression of a dictatorship toward democracy. And, once there, she never let her guard down. The world honored – and continues to honor – her for this.
“Our mother peacefully passed away at 3:18 a.m., Aug. 1, 2009, of cardio-respiratory arrest,” Mrs. Aquino’s only son Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III announced from the
lobby of the Makati Medical Center around 6 a.m. yesterday. Even as Senator Aquino spoke, thousands of yellow ribbons fluttered on the streets around the hospital, the avenues winding through the metropolis, the thoroughfares crisscrossing country. Yellow was the color of protest against the Marcos dictatorship and Mrs. Aquino ascended to the presidency clad in fighting yellow.
The girl who would be president
According to Mrs. Aquino’s niece Marisse Reyes McMurray, “My grandfather’s family would always associate the year of Cory’s birth, 1933, with some very happy memories. The blessing of their new house, which was finally built from scratch on Agno Street, coincided with her baptism.”
When she grew up, Cory was transformed from the shy child to the school achiever. “Unnoticed as the sixth child (of Jose and Demetria Cojuangco), Auntie Cory’s mettle was strengthened by the furnace of war. Her oldest living brother Pedro had always been the star, the perennial honor student. During the war years, Auntie Cory had found a prescription for attention: ‘To be noticed in a large family, you would have to excel in your studies.’”
She majored in Math and French at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York, but her law studies were cut short when she met the dashing Ninoy Aquino. On their wedding day in 1954, a dove from the ceremonial bell at the reception landed on Cory’s head, and people saw it as a good sign that Ninoy would be president.
Mrs. Aquino would later confide that no one knew then the dove landing on her head would mean she, not Ninoy, would be president someday.
Thirty-two years later, that day would come to pass. - By Joanne Rae Ramirez (Philstar News Service, www.philstar.com)