A DAY after she was cremated, the ashes of veteran journalist and VERA Files trustee Chit Estella were brought to the College of Mass Communication in UP Diliman, where she served as a full-time professor since 2005.
Her family members, colleagues and students shared their experiences with Chit. For many, the memorial in her second home was not a day of mourning, but a day of celebrating Chit’s well-lived life.
Held on May 18 at the UP MassComm auditorium, VERA Files interns Marc Cayabyab and Gian Geronimo documented what the UP community had to say about Estella.
What will you remember most about Chit Estella?
Journalism professor Rachel Khan recounts her first meeting with Chit when they were both covering the Malacañang beat, saying that she learned from Chit “the diligence and perseverance needed in getting the story.” Chit probably is laughing at the rest of the journalism faculty, Khan says, adding that Chit probably is thinking: “Sorry, nag-e-enjoy na ako ngayon. Wala na akong stress.”
“She never closed the door on me,” says the Department of Journalism chair Marichu Lambino of the late Chit Estella, whom she calls her guidance counselor, psychoanalyst and therapist. Lambino says Chit always takes the time to listen to her “petty travails” and “litany of woes.”
Franz Dela Fuente, a recent Journalism graduate, says he was grateful for getting Chit as adviser of his thesis. Fuente with his partner Jacques Jimeno remembers Chit’s handwritten smile after every revision of their draft. “With a knack for bringing out the best in people, Ma’am Simbulan has inspired us to be the best journalists we can be,” Fuente says.
Eunille Santos, a member of the UP Journalism Club (JC), remembers that one day when he and the rest of the JC members were screaming while crowded in front of a laptop busy playing a game. The late professor apparently went to them curious of the commotion. “(But) she (just) looked at the screen and said laughingly, ‘What are you doing? Naglalaro lang pala kayo.’ She did not mind our loudness. She did not mind our blocking of the hallway. She laughed, smiled and walked away,” Santos recounts.
CMC administrative officer Gina Villegas speaks on behalf of the college’s staff employees and shares how they were all shocked upon hearing the news of Chit’s death. They will always remember Chit as one who was always happy and who always wore a smile when they saw her in the college. “(The staff) will all miss Chit in this college, and the times we saw her smiling,” says Villegas.
Journalism professor Danilo Arao reads the statement of UP Diliman President Alfredo Pascual for the occasion. Pascual shares his condolences for the death of Chit, but emphasizes as well the lack of road safety measures along Commonwealth and other roads despite conducted studies on driver behavior. He urges people to be advocates of road safety. “The death of Professor Estella-Simbulan is a tragic reminder of that which should spur us all into action,” says Pascual.
College of Mass Communication Dean Roland Tolentino says Chit is the embodiment of UP then and now. “May paninindigan, nakikilahok, may pakialam, nakikialam,” he says. Chit had shared different experiences with different people, adds Tolentino. “But she was a friend and confidant to all,” he says in Filipino. He echoes the words of Chit’s husband Roland Simbulan said during the last night of Chit’s wake: “How can you not love a woman like her?”
