In Memoriam

By JUAN L. MERCADO
January 6, 2013

(Thousands turned out Saturday, at the Jesuit cemetery in Novaliches, for the burial of Fr. James Reuter: teacher, counselor, communicator, Filipino – and priest. More could not make it. He was 96. Allow us to pay tribute to this friend. Start with the reaction of our daughter Maria Lourdes who was a grade school student when martial law was declared...)

"Fr. Reuter waited for me until our St Paul third grade class was dismissed," Malou recalls. There were 22 of us journalists detained under the first wave of martial law arrests. “Not everyone in prison is bad,” he gently said. “Your father and other newsmen are not criminals. They were doing their jobs.” That was four decades back. Malou is a lawyer, who lives in California with her physician husband and two kids. On hearing of Fr. Jim’s passing, she emailed. “He touched many lives, including mine.”

Jim Reuter joined the Jesuits, as a 22-year old novice, in Pennsylvania. In 1938, he arrived in the Philippines. He taught at Ateneo de Manila and Naga. When war broke out, the Japanese military jailed him with 2,154 other Americans, in Los Baños After ordination at Maryland in 1946, Fr. Reuter returned to the Philippines. He became, “a priest whose parish was stage, radio, printing press, shooting lot, dressing room, director’s booth, the theatre”.

He spent years as spokesman for the Catholic Bishops Conference. That work led to confrontation with the Marcos’ censors. Military Intelligence Security Group shut down “Signs of the Times”. Fr Reuter edited this newsletter for religious groups. “Death of a Cobbler” reported military torture of an ordinary citizen. Fr Reuter found himself under house arrest.

Fr. Jim downplayed his role in supporting People Power by getting the underground “Radyo Bandido” on the air. “That station came on the air after President Ferdinand Marcos’ men blew up Catholic station Radio Veritas. “Information is democracy’s oxygen”. He secured dzRJ transmitters and hitchhiked that on Veritas’ frequency of 840. Anchored by June Keithley, “Radyo Bandido” became nerve center for reports on the “Yellow Revolution.” Pope John Paul II cited him “for faithfully and courageously upholding truth, justice and integrity in Catholic Communications.

Thousands got a helping hand from Fr Jim. He weighed in for them in his column "At Three AM". But failing health led to his confinement at a hospital he helped to build: Our Lady of Peace in Parañaque.

On May 18, 2009, he wrote his last "At Three AM" column “I am ten days away from my 93rd birthday. God has been kinder to me than I deserve, giving me such a rich life, in such a beautiful country, among such gentle people. I have been thanked for giving my life to the Philippines.

Whenever we visited Manila, we’d drop by Our Lady of Peace Hospital and chat with Father Jim. The last visit was when he marked diamond anniversary of making his first vows in the Society of Jesus. “Bob Hope said 75 candles on his birthday cake made it look like Los Angeles airport runway,” I crack. Overhead, a jet makes it’s final landing approach for the Manila airport. It's whine drowns out our laughter.

We recalled years he spent in World War II concentration camp. Hard labor, short rations (two ounces of rice in the morning and two ounces at night) constant threats marked the next three years – until liberated. “That taught me three most important things in life,” he wrote. “Breakfast, dinner and supper.” Clothed in rags, the prisoners shuffled barefoot, vulnerable to hookworms and disease.

“Shanghai Lil had a checked career,” Fr. Jim recalls. In Barracks 20, detained Maryknoll sisters befriended her. Noticing a nun’s shoes falling apart, Shanghai Lil gave her red nightclub shoes. “You have no permission to refuse,” the nun’s superior said. Take the shoes.”

In February 1945, Filipino guerrillas assaulted Los Baños as US Eleventh Airborne paratroops dropped four hundred meters from the camp. All guards were killed in 11 minutes. Then, a tall black paratrooper stood in the door: “If you folks would get out into the road, we’re plannin’ to evacuate you all in a li’l while,” he drawled. The late Fr. Leo Cullum distributed remaining consecrated hosts as the chapel caught fire. The nuns ran past us to their Amtrak. So did Shanghai Lil and her friend, the Maryknoll sister, holding hands. “We could see the red shoes flying.”

Fr. Reuter employed his gifts as writer, theatrical director, and broadcaster, but most of all as teacher, the Magsaysay Award reads. “(He made) the performing arts and mass media a vital force for good in the Philippines.”