DOES the name Enrique “Rex” Viejon Jr. ring a bell? It sure does to his friends, townmates and playmates of long ago.
The last time I met Rex for lunch at Hotel del Rio was the first time in an interval of 39 long years, counting from the year 1980. What transformation and changes has he accomplished in all those years?
Changed he seems to have not in his physical appearance. For when we asked the waiter for our bill, it came back with a discount for only one senior citizen. Rex had to show him his senior citizen’s ID to prove he had turned 61.
It was his youthful look, though, that mirrored his transformation from a poor houseboy in Santa Barbara, Iloilo to a jet-setter – literally because of his frequent plane flights around the world.
I first met Rex in Manila in the summer of 1980. I had asked him and my cousin Ramon to join me for lunch in a hotel. They were classmates taking up Mass Communications at St. Paul University in Iloilo City.
I knew Rex was bent on becoming a journalist because he was a full scholar, being editor of the university paper, The Paulinian. He had with him an article he was submitting for publication in Charm, the defunct monthly magazine I was publishing and editing.
I sent him a copy of that magazine with his article, expecting him to write again. I knew it would boost his confidence. Up to that point, he had yet to rise above adversity.
One of eight children born to a minimum-wage employee of the defunct Panay Railways and a housewife in Santa Barbara, he had found his way through high school with the help of the Sirilan family who had employed him as stay-in houseboy.
As I said earlier, it had taken 39 years before we met again on Aug. 22, 2019. So it came naturally that I asked where Lady Luck had taken him in all those years.
After finishing Mass-Com at Saint Paul’s-Iloilo, he went to Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City for his M.A. in Public Administration.
Among a series of jobs, true to his journalistic pursuit, he made it as information officer for the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Cagayan de Oro.
There was also a time when he taught Hotel and Restaurant Management at the Polytechnic School of Iloilo (now St. Ann College).
The big fluke of fate for Rex presented itself when he qualified for a training for flight stewards in Manila. Thereafter in 1995, United Airlines, Inc. (UAI) sent him to Chicago, Illinois to work as flight attendant and later as flight attendants’ supervisor. The job took him to all of UAI’s destination cities around the world. His boyhood fancy of flying around the world had become real.
He retired in 2008 to embark to participate in US marathons and photography competitions. He won medals, trophies and cash in some of them.
He also finished a six-month certificate program in Human Resources Development at Northern Illinois University.
Family life he would rather not talk about except to say that his wife had given him two girls who have stayed behind in Illinois: Cheska, a nurse straight out of college; and Isabella, a junior-high school student.
Rex Viejon, who looks and moves like 20 years younger, is back in his Santa Barbara, Iloilo hometown, still seeking and hoping for further professional fulfillment.
Well, why not? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
