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Agustin San Nicolas Duenas: Manggåfan Kaila

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Written by: Agustin Perez Duenas

Published: 23 October 2013

Agustin San Nicolas Duenas
January 23, 1912 - March 24, 1984

(This article and pictures was written and submitted, respectively, by his son, Agustin Perez Duenas)

This article is about my father. It presents some of the important milestones in his life, but also contains my recollections of our life back in the 1950's till his death in 1984.

Agustin San Nicolas Duenas was born on January 23, 1912 as the middle child of 5 children to Jose and Michaela San Nicolas Duenas. As is the custom back in those days, he was given his mother's maiden name as his middle name. His older siblings were Jose F. Duenas and Eugenia Duenas (later Eugenia Duenas Wirick). His younger siblings were Antonio S.N. Duenas and Vicente S.N. Duenas. All the children were achievers with Jose eventually retiring as a manager at the Commercial Port of Guam, Eugenia as the Assistant Postmaster of the U.S. Post Office, Antonio S.N. Duenas serving multiple terms in the Guam Legislature, and Vicente retiring from the U.S. Navy. The family name of "Kaila" was derived from my grandmother Michaela. We always used to call her Maman Kaila.

My father's early childhood is somewhat sketchy, but tales told later by various relatives indicated that he was something of a prankster. He and a close friend of his, Antonio "Gaga" Cruz, frequently collaborated in all sorts of mischief. My father told me how he and his friend would raid chicken coops for eggs. Antonio, being the smaller of the two, would sneak in while my father kept watch.

The Guam Recorder issue of April 1928 listed a Department of Education Intermediate School Eighth Grade graduation ceremony with Agustin S.N. Duenas as the valedictorian of the graduating class. He was musically talented and could play several instruments, including guitar, piano, and steel guitar. He was listed as performing a guitar duet with Jesus F. Perez.

His life after eighth grade graduation leading up to World War II is not clearly documented, but I believe he was an educator in the Guam public school system. His future wife and my mother was one of his students during those years. There is not much information about his activities during the Japanese occupation, but I suppose he did whatever the Japanese told them do and managed to survive those years without getting seriously injured. He did tell me that he was shot in the leg during a strafing run by a U.S. plane during the Marine invasion of Guam in 1944. He was hiding behind a coconut tree, but in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Almost immediately after the war, he married my mother, Emilia Laguana Perez, and started a family. I was born on December 23, 1945, the eldest of what eventually turned out to be 6 children. My mother was taught to speak Japanese and was pressed into service as in interpreter during the Japanese occupation. She later pursued an Associate's degree at the Territorial College of Guam. I remember her taking me to the College library where I discovered books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read everything the library had to offer on Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Carson of Venus and Pellucidar. She was an elementary school teacher for most of her adult life and understood the value of education as a means of getting ahead in life.

The records show that my father worked briefly for the Navy Public Works after the war, then for the Department of Welfare and Education, Military Government of Guam till the end of December 1947. He must have taught school at the time. He began his career with the U.S. Postal Service on January 2, 1948 and remained in that service till his retirement as Assistant Postmaster on June 23, 1972.

My father served in the Guam Militia after the war, and possibly during the latter stages of the war after the U.S. recaptured the island. If I recall correctly, he held the rank of Major in my early years. I remember him wearing his uniform with his assigned weapon (a .45 caliber pistol) in a holster at his side. They must have had drills and meetings during that time. At home, he hid the handgun from us, but my brother John and I were able to find the hiding place and look at and handle the weapon occasionally. We were respectful of the gun and had enough sense to always put it back after handling it. We had BB guns at the time, so we knew enough to be careful with the gun on those rare occasions.

After the war, we lived in an old house in East Agana located behind the old Town House and adjacent to the intersection of what was a dead end road (now Chalan Santo Papa) and Route 8. The Perez clan owned the properties at that location. Our house had indoor plumbing, but no indoor toilet. We had to use an outhouse located 50 feet away. In 1952, our parents contracted with Perez Brothers Construction to build a new 2-bedroom house adjacent to the existing old house but on a piece of property given to my mother. This house had an indoor toilet and a cesspool, but we didn't move into the house until 1957. Our parents rented the house to servicemen and their families until that time. They must have saved the proceeds from the rent to use for our future education. Back in those days, we used a real icebox for refrigeration. The blocks of ice would come from Pedro's Ice Plant in Anigua.

My father began his career at the post office in 1948 and eventually worked his way up to Foreman of Mails, then Superintendent of Mails. His older sister, Eugenia, was Assistant Postmaster for many years, so he couldn't progress into that position until she retired. I remember my father telling me that he never considered applying for the Postmaster position because he would have been a political appointee and subject to the whims of whatever political party was in office at the time. He did rise to the highest ranks of the U.S. Postal Service short of the Postmaster position.

As time went on, my family grew as my siblings were born. My brother John was born in July of 1947, brother Joseph in1954, sister Cecilia in 1961, brother Paul in 1962 and Lourdes in 1969. There were significant gaps from the first to the last with the last sibling young enough to be my daughter. My parents believed in the value of a good education and saved whatever they could so that we could attend college. I shall always be grateful to them for that and will do what I can for my children as well. They gave us the tools necessary for us to be self-sustaining and that is all I can ask from them.

Our daily life in the 1950's and early 1960's was marked by a division of labor. My father did the washing and took Wednesdays off to wash clothes. We had a washer with a wringer for removing excess water from the clothes. That same washer would be used to rinse the clothes, which went into a washboard (bateha) for bluing and starch (for those that needed to be ironed). I remember some of the pants coming out of that washboard becoming stiff as boards as they dried on the line. We had to dampen and iron those clothes as part of our chores. No such thing as fabric softener spray back then. Wash day was long and everyone except my mother pitched in to help.

My mother cooked for the family and was the disciplinarian. She assigned our chores, which were to clean the house daily and help with whatever needed doing during the day. I had the kitchen and one bedroom to clean. My brother John had the living room and the second bedroom. My mother was also the enforcer and spanked us when the chores weren't done to her standards. She had a pleated cowhide strap, which raised welts and sometimes blood from our thighs. We hid the strap once, but gave it back when she cut a whippy tangantangan stick to use on us. That hurt worse.

My parents were well-organized and budgeted for everything, including bill payments and savings for our education. They insisted that we do our best in school, and nothing short of an A in each class was acceptable. I don't recall us lacking for anything back in those days, but luxuries were rare and we had to earn whatever extra funds we needed to buy something we wanted. I remember my brother John and I planting hundreds of banana trees at 25 cents per tree to earn enough money to buy a Crosman .22 caliber pellet gun.

My father was passionate about music and had a good singing voice. I remember him leading the church choirs in Agana and Mongmong. Both my parents were devout Catholics and attended mass whenever they could. I believe my father attended mass daily before going to work. He was an active member of the Knights of Columbus and rose high in the ranks of that organization. I remember going to the Benediction at 5:00 PM every Sunday, which was a ritual that our family adhered to for many years until I left for college in the mainland in 1963. I assume they continued to attend that service after my departure. First Friday and Sunday masses were a given in our family.

I remember my father as a naturally smart man. My mother was also intelligent, but she worked and studied hard while going to school. She had to work hard to succeed. I remember once having trouble visualizing a solid geometry problem involving forces acting on a sphere in motion. I asked my father to help me and to my amazement he was able to sketch out the problem and solve it. Needless to say, my respect for him grew immensely after that. Here was a man decades out of school still able to solve a relatively difficult mathematical problem.

Our family was not free from strife as we were growing up. My father smoked heavily and became addicted to alcohol when I was young. This was a point of contention with my mother. He drank heavily and eventually was hospitalized. He began drinking again after his release, but was again hospitalized for a second time. He never touched alcohol again after that, but did not quit smoking. My siblings and I do not smoke and use alcohol in moderation. Maybe it's a reaction to what we saw and experienced growing up. My brother John and I were exposed to all this, the others not at all.

I left for the University of Dayton in 1963 and majored in Civil Engineering. I did not return to Guam permanently until 1973. I graduated in 1967 and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant out of the ROTC program at the University. I stopped by Guam on my way to Vietnam in 1969 and was on-island during the birth of my youngest sister, Lourdes. I left active duty in early 1970 and was working as a civil engineer in San Francisco when my mother was hospitalized and diagnosed with inoperable brain tumors. She passed away in December 1970.

My father was promoted from Superintendent of Mails to Assistant Postmaster in May of 1972, then retired from the U.S. Postal Service the following month. I assume that promotion was to maximize his retirement benefits. Sometime in the early 1970's before I returned to the island, he had a serious car accident that landed him in the hospital with a broken hip. It took him several months to recover and really was never the same after that. That accident may have hastened his retirement from the Postal Service.

He passed away on March 24, 1984 at the age of 72 from an abdominal aneurysm discovered the year before. He was sickly the last few years of his life and was bedridden before the end. The doctors had decided not to operate on the aneurysm because the quality of his life would not have been improved and the operation had the potential to kill him. The autopsy showed that he had had several minor strokes near the end, which probably contributed to his impaired health.

My father's legacy includes 6 children and numerous grandchildren who are all doing well as a result of the sacrifices that he and my mother made for us. He was well-loved and respected throughout his life. He set a great example by providing for his family, becoming actively involved in the community, and by helping others. I wish I could have had a closer relationship with my father, but back then that was not the norm. It does motivate me to be involved in the lives of my children and to help them out whenever I can. After all, it is our family, friends and relationships that are the most valuable in our lives. Everything else gets left behind when we move on past this life.