This NPA is a Library

By Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net
Posted date: August 07, 2007

SEATTLE - To Filipinos in the Philippines, the initials NPA refer to the rebel New People’s Army. To the more than 600,000 Filipino “overstaying tourists” in the US, NPA describes their nomadic status – No Permanent Address. But to Filipino Americans, these initials belong to the National Pinoy Archives of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS).

I visited the FANHS national office in Seattle and chatted with the NPA's founding archivist, Fred Cordova. Now 76, Fred established the National Pinoy Archives in 1987 to create a repository of “textual, graphic and electronic historical records” to document the Filipino American experience.

“I was a pack rat back then,” Fred said. “I would regularly clip out news articles about various Filipinos and put them in boxes all over the place,” a practice he said, that dated back to his years as a newspaperman with the Seattle Post Intelligencer, as Director of Public Information at Seattle University (SU) and as Manager of the University of Washington News Services.

“So about 20 years ago, I decided to be more organized about this process and to set up files about the individuals and organizations that I had news clippings on,” he said.

What few files he set up in 1987 has now mushroomed to 17,000 separate file folders on Filipino individuals and 3,000 files on Filipino community organizations in the US. It is by far the largest, most comprehensive archive of Filipino individuals, groups, organizations, institutions and facilities in the US.

The NPA is a priority project of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) founded on November 26, 1982 and now has 27 active chapters throughout the US. Fred and his wife and life partner, Dorothy, founded FANHS and Fred served as its first national president while Dorothy serves as its Executive Director.

On any given day, Fred and some FANHS members can be seen scouring through newspapers and magazines from all over the US, snipping out articles by and about Filipinos in the US and placing them in folders found in dozens of file cabinets in one room and in the “catacombs” section of the basement.

When I last visited Seattle a year ago, I spent a morning at the NPA doing research on the life of Larry Itliong, the Filipino American labor organizer who initiated the Delano Strike of 1965 and who, together with Cesar Chavez, founded the United Farm Workers Union. I found primary source information in the archives that I could not find anywhere else. It was the source of my articles about Itliong which appeared in community newspapers.

When I visited Fred then, the friend who dropped me off at the NPA inquired if there was a file on him. Fred checked for “Rick Q. Beltran” and found a 3-inch thick file which contained an original copy of the souvenir program of the Council of Filipino-American Organizations of the Pacific Northwest (CFAOPN) when Rick was inducted as its president many years ago. The news articles in his file brought back a flood of memories for Rick, who never had a clue that there was a file on him that would live on long after he has passed away.

Fred was born in the little town of Selma, in Fresno County, California in 1931, the offspring of itinerant farmworkers. His father, Geraldo Umali, came to the US in 1919 from Batangas while his mother, Margarita Pilar, immigrated to Hawaii from the Ilocos region in 1912 as one of the first women sacadas.
After he was born, Fred was adopted by another Filipino farm worker couple, Leoncio and Lucia Cordova.

Fred studied in more schools than he can remember as his parents followed the crops and lived in work camps while enrolling him in the local schools where they worked the fields. After graduating from a high school in Stockton, California in 1948, Fred moved up to Seattle to study at Seattle University
(SU). To pay for his college education, Fred he worked as an “Alaskero” in the fish canneries of Alaska along with thousands of other Filipinos.

While at SU in 1948, Fred met Dorothy Laigo and, five years later, they married and engaged in a life-long partnership that has produced eight children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Dorothy was born in 1932 in Seattle, the daughter of Valeriano Laigo, who came to the US in 1919 as an 18-year old traveler - his mission was to “find work and send money back home”-and Bibiana Montante, who came in 1928 to go to school. In 1929 Dorothy’s parents met, got married, and gave Dorothy eight brothers and sisters.

And in 1957, Fred and Dorothy established the Filipino Youth Activities (FYA), a social service agency catering to the needs of Filipino American youth of Seattle. Two years later, Fred founded the FYA Khordobah, a drill team which has performed in half-time shows at NFL games in Seattle and in parades all over the United States for nearly 50 years.

In 1983, Fred wrote Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, a collection of photographs and essays about the Filipino experience in North America, which
Dorothy edited. It is the foremost resource book about Filipinos in America, the one most often used in Filipino American Studies courses throughout the US.

As though Fred’s plate weren’t full enough, he was ordained a Deacon (“by the grace of God”) in 2003;, he regularly gives the homilies at Catholic churches in the Seattle area and officiates at baptisms, confirmations, marriages and funerals. In these Filipino gatherings, the question most asked of him is: “How can you be a Filipino and not speak the language?” Fred would patiently explain that he was born in the US in 1931 and wasn’t taught Tagalog by his Visayan parents. He speaks a little self-taught Tagalog now, though.

Fred’s passion and enduring legacy may very well be the NPA but he worries that this valuable community resource may not survive him. “Who will take over after I’m gone?” he asks. That is the challenge for FANHS and the Filipino American community.

If you want the National Pinoy Archives to continue, expand and grow, please send your tax-deductible donation made out to “FANHS” and send it to the Filipino American National Historical Society at 810 18th Avenue, Room 100, Seattle, Washington 98122, or call (206) 322-0203. If you would like the NPA to open a file on you (or on someone you hold in high regard) and would like the world to remember you, him or her, please send the information (news clippings, souvenir programs, obituary notices) to the NPA at the address above.

I would especially like to request Filipino community newspapers and magazines throughout the US to send complimentary subscriptions to the NPA so that FANHS volunteers can cut out news clippings from your publications and open new files.

This is a special anniversary year for Fred and Dorothy – the 50th anniversary of FYA, the 25th anniversary of FANHS and the 20th anniversary of the NPA.

Happy Anniversaries! Mabuhay Fred and Dorothy!

Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com