Mama Nene was so easy to like–and love

THE SAMPAGUITA Pictures matriarch was a scrupulously reliable chronicler of facts.

Ever since we got to know Sampaguita Pictures matriarch, Mama Nene Vera-Perez, we liked her. She was soft-spoken but spoke her mind, gracious but in a natural, totally uncloying way—so easy to like!

And, when we researched and wrote our book on the fabled and fabulous movie studio (it should be coming out shortly), our appreciative and fond estimation of the dear lady went up another level—and we found ourself loving her.

So, when we learned last Wednesday that Mama Nene had passed away at 96 years of age, we mourned and missed her deeply.

As we worked for years and years on the Sampaguita book with Mama Nene’s eldest daughter, Manay Ichu Maceda, and Lynn Pareja, we were often at the studio, its film archive and the Vera Perez residence, and all those visits enabled us to get to know Mama Nene much more personally.

She took an active interest in the book’s progress, and when we finally submitted the entire manuscript, all 600-plus pages of it, she was excited! In fact, when we asked her some days later for her reaction to what we had written, she spontaneously exclaimed that she loved it—and, even more candidly, she beamed, “In fact, I didn’t sleep—I read it all in one night!”

After working so hard and long on the manuscript, Mama Nene’s spontaneous revelation was a wonderfully sweet and bracing affirmation—it made our entire year!

Even after we had written the Sampaguita Studio manuscript, we kept in touch with the Vera-Perezes, attending some of its family occasions and celebrations, including Mama Nene’s birthday dinners, which her loving children, Ichu, Gina, Lillybeth, Chona, Pepito and Kokoy, “produced” with much verve, imagination and fun.

Stories

Among our many Mama Nene stories, the one that we love recounting, because it reveals a side to her that few people know, is about the diary she scrupulously wrote throughout World War II:

We discovered the existence of the “wartime diary” when Lynn Pareja found it and gave us a xerox copy, knowing that its “eyewitness” account would help us in our research for the Sampaguita book.

Well, it did much more than that: We started reading it—and we couldn’t put it down! Not only was Mama Nene a scrupulously reliable chronicler of facts, but her diary was also full of insightful character sketches, the flavor and color of historical events brought down to personal moments. Mama Nene was a darned good writer!

Personal reminiscences

In fact, we would tell our friends and colleagues that her diary was “our ‘Gone With The Wind!’” We were gushing, of course, but that’s how much Mama Nene’s well-written personal reminiscences had affected us. (We hope that it can eventually be published separately, so that others will more fully realize what a gem it is.)

To us, the best and most telling entry in the diary is Mama Nene’s personal account of the birth of her eldest child, Marichu. As we told Ichu, she was so lucky to have her natal day written about so beautifully—by her own mother!

Of course, Ichu and her siblings are blessed in many other ways to have had everybody’s Mama Nene as their very own and real mother!

We who were in the periphery of that uniquely choice relationship have been similarly fortunate, and assure the Vera-Perezes that Mama Nene will continue to be cherished in our heart of hearts—she will not be forgotten.