One Hundred Years of Happiness

Nov. 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Awakened in the soft light of dawn with a bayonet at her throat, Maura was escorted from her home by Japanese soldiers, leaving behind four children under the age of 11. One child she carried, growing visibly inside her. Maura Gomez Mallari, then 29 years old during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WWII, trusted deeply in the Lord and remained serene, which saved her life.

Her equanimity, practical toil, clever creativity, sly sense of humor and tireless devotion to her loved ones and her Lord have sustained Maura, who celebrates her 100th birthday November 29, 2012.

Born in the Philippines, the only child of Monico Gomez and Victoria Ocampo, lovely Maura always adored dressing up and surrounding herself with beauty. In the fashion of her day, she got an education AND took up the housewife arts: cooking, sewing, cleaning, gardening. Expert in every endeavor, and ambitious in her quiet way, when Maura spotted dashing Eliseo V. Mallari, she tagged him as hers.

And so it was. Pretty and demure beside her husband’s handsome swagger, Maura would bear twelve children (lose two), survive the dangers and uncertainties of WWII on home soil as a “single” mother, not knowing if her mate, a guerrilla soldier fighting alongside the Americans, were dead or alive during long absences.

A witness to the Death March to Bataan, Maura stood for days with other women in long skirts, holding small food bundles, searching the passing faces for husbands, sons, brothers and fathers. Sometimes, men would roll out of the ranks and hide behind their skirts. At the end of each day, failing to see “their men”, the women tossed the carefully prepared food bundles to random prisoners.

The American victory brought Eliseo out of hiding and rewarded his service with the chance to live in America. Maura left family, friends and the land her parents left to her and moved with her nine children to Killeen, Texas where Eliseo was stationed at Ft. Hood. When Eliseo retired from the army, they moved to Austin, where their eldest children were attending the University of Texas.

Independent, self-reliant and a trusted anchor for those around her, Maura worked at a laundry press and in restaurant kitchens. To earn extra money, she baked and decorated cakes for weddings, catered private events, sewed and tailored clothes; she sold items which she crocheted and knitted.

A Seventh Day Adventist, Maura attended church service every Saturday and bible study Wednesday evenings. On-your-knees, palms-pressed-together family prayers occurred daily at sundown.

Eliseo once again moved the family, this time to California and nearer to more Filipinos. With the four youngest, they relocated to a modest neighborhood of stucco, ranch style homes in Buena Park. With a climate conducive to gardening, Maura planted flowers, fruit trees and a vegetable patch.  She resumed her industry, baking, sewing, knitting and working at Knott’s Berry Farm from 1962, until her first retirement at age 65. A year later she returned to work at Knott’s Berry Farm and worked another 10 years, retiring for good at age 75.

Retirement freed Maura to travel, grow and create even more. She went to Russia, Hawaii and Europe with friends; took ceramics and art classes; and continued to make and sell her creations.

Maura’s sewing room doubled as a second closet. An extensive wardrobe, arranged by color and occasion, with shoes and handbags to match (usually purchased on sale), were one extravagance (she took pride in being well-dressed); the other, her sporty bananasicle-colored Mustang with bucket seats.

While soap operas served as accompaniment when she sat to knit or crochet, visitors offered an occasion to open her kitchen and cook anything to please.

Generous, yet frugal, Maura saved the empty waxed bags inside cereal boxes, carefully opened the seams and flattened them, instead of buying waxed paper.

Stern with her children, yet indulgent with her 16 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, Maura parented in the style of her generation. Not one to sit still for a cuddle, she showed her love actively by doing, making, saving and being … for others. Call to wish her happy birthday and she would rush to hang up, in order to save her well-wisher the expense of a long distance call.

Ever devoted to her husband, who in 1963 left to live in the Philippines, Maura received him when he asked to return three decades later. With all the children grown and strewn from California and Colorado, to Texas and Georgia, they sold the house in Buena Park and returned to Austin, Texas (by way of Durango, Colorado). When Eliseo passed in 1996, Maura lived with her eldest son in Austin, and then moved to Durango in 2006, where she resides near her second oldest son.

Now 70 years old, the baby in Maura’s belly on the day she was interrogated by Japanese soldiers, lives in an Austin suburb.

Cards may be sent to: Maura Mallari, c/o Jerry Mallari, 1670 County Road 250, Durango, CO  81301