A Tribute to Johnny P. Jardin
By Cesar Reyes, QPHS 69


How does one cope when someone immensely loved is there one moment and gone the next? With great difficulty, if it is at all possible. I’m sure that’s how it must have been for Laura and her children: Kim, Marc, Wendy and Kevin last Saturday. Johnny was there with them one minute and a few minutes later he was gone.

The past week must have come like a tornado to them – a whirlwind so devastating that it has left them completely shocked and totally dumbfounded. The destructive aftermath can never be measured qualitatively.

The text messages breaking the news of Johnny’s passing were just as devastating to my family and me and to the many friends and classmates of Johnny in the Philippines, in North America and in Australia.

We all mourn the loss of Johnny. Our thoughts are with Laura and the Jardin children and with all those gathered at his funeral mass today. My family and I here in Sydney are with you in spirit.

As we grieve, allow me to reflect on Johnny’s life. Let us turn this mourning into a celebration of his life. Johnny and I were friends for more than 40 years, a quarter of that being our formative years spent in the Philippines. Along with three others we belonged to a gang we called RAJAH: (Please spell out.) R-A-J-A-H - the 5 letters standing for the first letter of our surnames: Reyes, Abcede, Jardin, Atienza and Hernandez. We were more than blood brothers. The many years after high school graduation have proved that to be so. While we were close, we were not an exclusive group. We blended with nearly everyone in our class. Our class, which we proudly call QPHS69 was and is one big happy family.

As young boys we were enterprising. Having come from large families with limited incomes, we had part-time jobs wherever and whenever we could: some of us in a motor pool, others in buy-and-sell ventures but Johnny had the best job – he was a projector technician in a movie house. Can you imagine the countless movies he saw! That perhaps explains a lot of things about the Johnny we all knew. And the generous friend that he was, all of us in the circle were able to watch nearly as many.

We managed to stay in the top class each year of high school with minimal study. School to us was more of a social club. No wonder after school each day, it was us friends again, playing basketball or bicycling or walking around town or spending the evening at each other’s house - listening to music or to Johnny playing the guitar with us singing along. No, Johnny didn’t have any formal lessons but he could play the guitar. Lest you get the impression that it was all play for us, I should mention that we were serious about this aspect of school: the Pre-Military Training. We took pride in being PMT officers. And at home, we shared in the chores – the main one was fetching water some distance away as water pressure was low in the area where we lived.

After high school, we were more studious. Johnny pursued his dream of joining the U.S. Navy while studying accounting at the local college. How excited he was when in 1972 he received words that his application was successful. He completed the forms carefully although he knew he didn’t have the US dollars needed either for processing or for medical check up. We approached a friend who had just returned from overseas. Surely she would still have some greenbacks? She did and the next day Johnny and Boy Abcede were on their way to Subic Bay.

It was goodbye to Johnny a few months later. Thoughtful by nature, Johnny got in touch with us
wherever he was, updated us with what went on at sea and on land including his meeting Laura, who turned out to be Johnny’s lucky star and guardian angel. In down-to-earth terms, Laura was the perfect wife and the equally perfect mother to their children. Years later, Johnny would be writing us of the birth of each child. Fast forward to the 80s. It was with great excitement and enthusiasm that I was reunited with Johnny in 1986 in their humble Echo Summit home in Vallejo, then again in palatial Topley Court also in Vallejo and more recently in their Via Panacea home in San Diego All meetings were memorable, warm and enjoyable. But I was bothered to find that Johnny was no longer as energetic and athletic as I knew him to be – because of his heart. That traitorous heart that robbed Laura and the children of a soul mate and a super Dad. Robbed many of us, too, of a much-loved brother and friend.

What a solace to us, his high school friends and classmates, that Johnny and Laura were able to attend the 35th year reunion of QPHS 69 last year. Apart from their presence, every class member at the reunion received something to remember Johnny by: two CDs of60s and 70s music that Johnny himself patiently and painstakingly burnt. In addition, he had boxes of various gifts – mostly the latest electronic gadgets - for his close friends.

Who would have thought that that would be Johnny’s  first and last attendance at a class reunion! All reunion attendees would surely treasure the few days that we spent together. No doubt we would be recalling every bit of encounter we had with him then. QPHS 69 are grateful for his generosity with his time and technological creativity in setting up our class website, helping produce the magazine to commemorate last year’s class reunion and taking countless reunion pictures that were compiled into a CD soon after. What a techno whiz he was!

So it’s goodbye, Johnny. You were a first-rate friend and brother to Mil and me and a solicitous uncle to our three daughters.

Our wide circle of friends and my family will treasure all that you’d bequeathed to us - the tangible and all that’s etched in our memory.

We are better individuals because of our close association with you.

Thank you for your legacy.

Cesar Reyes
Sydney, Australia
6July 2005

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