Joel Pablo Salud | Special to the BusinessMirror
No ode to a successful man will ever be complete without paying tribute to the woman behind his great accomplishments. This is no truer in breath and scope than in the life of Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua, chairman emeritus of the ALC Group of Companies. His mother, Dominga Lim Chua, had occupied a special spot in all that the ambassador had achieved, with nary a thing left to claim for and by himself. It is, therefore, no surprise that this beloved matriarch had left her imprint in all that the ambassador learned and achieved in the last 81 years.
The story to end all stories of his success started years before the Second World War. Tomas Chua, a middle-class businessman, met the young and beautiful Dominga Lim before the war. In the ensuing love affair came their only child, Antonio, who was born out of wedlock in 1934 at the Philippine General Hospital. Antonio was named after Saint Anthony de Padua, his mother’s patron saint.
Their life as a family stood relatively peaceful and comfortable, until the day Tomas Chua was reassigned to Apalit, Pampanga, to manage a lumber business. Even in his absence, the family hardly lacked for daily necessities. Tomas sent mother and son adequate amounts of money and rice that Dominga spared what was more than necessary for neighbors in need. The supplies were such that even when war broke out with the Japanese, a time when life was fraught with hardship for most Filipinos, the family had more than sufficient food and resources. Thanks to the young boy’s enterprising mother, they hardly lacked for anything.
But as soon as the war knocked on their very door, their enjoyment of relative comfort drastically changed. The father had disappeared and the resources and supplies dried up. Rumor had it that Tomas Chua had been seized by Japanese officers, and killed for supporting the guerrilla resistance.
To quote the ambassador’s biographers, Jose “Pete” Lacaba and Eric S. Caruncho in the book Antonio L. Cabangon Chua: The Continuing Saga of Success: “Alarming rumors began to reach Dominga that her husband had been arrested by the Japanese on suspicion of being a guerrilla. Later, she
received the news that he had been executed, though this could not be confirmed, nor was his body ever recovered.”
As mother and child coped with thinning resources and the father’s absence, the world around them began to tighten. Soon after, the Japanese military campaign reached Malate in Manila. To avoid risking capture or abuse, both mother and child fled to Barrio Vergara near the Pasig River, leaving the life they once knew.
Life had been one difficult spree to the next. While the arrival of the Americans promised liberation for most Filipinos, all that Dominga and the young Antonio experienced was toil after toil. Both mother and child’s travails were nothing short of the agonies of Calvary, as the ambassador would later describe it. Antonio was 10 years old in 1945, the year of liberation, and at that young age, circumstances forced him and Dominga to make both ends meet. Learning from the enterprising spirit of his mother, Antonio took on various menial jobs as shoeshine boy, wash boy for the GIs, vendor of dried fish and pan de sal, newsboy and janitor.
At the Namayan Primary School (now Isaac Lopez Elementary School), where he was enrolled for primary education, the boy would be seen walking to school barefoot. Their poverty had reached a point where even 30-centavo wooden sandals, which the young Antonio had begged his mother to buy, were too expensive to own. He bawled, wept and cried to get his mother to free him from the pain in his feet. But when Antonio saw his mother weep quietly for lack of resources, he immediately knew he needed to do something. It was one of several low points in their life together, but nothing that the two cannot manage to somehow turn around.
Early on, Antonio learned the rudiments of survival, even raising the money to pay for rent when her mother lay confined in a hospital. He learned to catch fish from the Pasig River by digging out worms for bait from empty lots somewhere in Santa Ana. Dominga, who hardly cooked a meal in her young life, took on the task of whipping up sugared coconut patties (bukayo) to sell. After fleeing to an area the Americans had occupied—the barefoot Antonio walking for miles—both mother and child worked as clothes washers for the GIs. Antonio had asked an old man to craft a shoeshine box for him so he can add to his daily keep by shining the shoes of American soldiers.
National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin, as quoted by Lacaba, said: “In Joaquin’s biography, Tony sounds like a Filipino Huck Finn, describing how he would dig in the mud for little worms, with which to bait his fishhooks, and how he immediately gutted the catch and flayed the fish for drying. He also raised chickens in his backyard, ironed clothes at night, sold ice drops—whatever it took to pay the rent and survive, he would do.”
Food was nowhere scarcer than in their little rented home. Antonio would at times go for hours and days without a bite to eat, leaving him in an almost debilitating state of starvation. Tony later described himself as thin, of dark skin and a weak constitution. One afternoon, while shining the shoes of an American officer, the boy noticed the man munching on a pear. He had not taken a single bite for a whole day, thus his unwitting display of interest in the fruit. The officer noticed the boy’s stares and asked, rather crudely, if he had eaten anything.
Antonio said no. Without warning, the officer hurled the half-eaten pear to the ground, summoning Antonio to pick it up and eat it. Tony wanted it, but he held back his hands for reasons of dignity. He had learned from his mother not to belittle himself despite the pangs of hunger. The boy refused to budge. The officer kept on nudging him, until the GI kicked the boy in the face. All Antonio could do was run to a corner and weep.
The lessons learned by the young Antonio during the years of survival proved vital to his rise in the world, but such lessons did not come easy. Each lesson learned was hard fought. They were brutal trainings heaped by people who were, at best, hostile to him and his poverty.
At another time, the boy came home with nothing to eat the whole day. As Antonio searched the small rented hut for some food, he saw a milkfish stashed in the makeshift cupboards. The modest hut made of nipa, which mother and child shared with another couple, was empty at the time. The boy took the milkfish and ate it, thinking it was reserved for him by his mother. Only later did he find out that the milkfish belonged to the other couple.
Antonio’s mother flew in a rage. He would, decades later, describe the incident as one of the most unforgettable in terms of what he had learned from it. He saw his mother, Dominga, suffer that day from a mixture of wounded pride and shame, anger and self-pity. The mother, for the first time, scolded and beat the young Antonio for taking someone else’s food. It was on that very hour when the boy promised himself to do everything necessary for his mother never to suffer humiliation again.
All this time, Dominga never gave up on Antonio’s education. From the Namayan Primary School, the young Antonio later jumped to other schools with the assistance of some members of the larger family. He was an avid student, working alongside his mother while studying. By the end of the 1940s, he finished primary school at the Santa Ana Elementary. Too, Dominga had raised enough savings to return to Mandaluyong and there put up a sari-sari store.
While their life together had yet to turn for the better, things were already moving in their favor. This was up until the store started experiencing its attendant problems. Many neighbors bought supplies on credit, which made earning on time difficult for Dominga. One particular man bullied the mother to supply him with drink—a bottle of gin—sans any plan of paying up. When Antonio heard about it, he immediately grabbed his balisong, a local butterfly knife, and challenged the man to leave. Their situation was no less precarious than the days of the Japanese Occupation, but Antonio had also grown up, this time with a courage to contend with anyone’s show of force.
By the early 1950s, Antonio had enrolled in high school at the Cosmopolitan College in Santa Ana. Then he thought of taking the entrance exam in La Salle College. He passed the exam, but since he lacked units in other subjects, he chose to enroll at the Philippine College of Commerce and Administration (currently the University of the East). He graduated high school at UE, completing the four-year stint in three years’ time.
At 19, Antonio entered college through a commerce course at UE. At the same time, he cross-enrolled at the Feati University for a preparatory engineering course. Still working alongside his mother, Antonio eventually dropped out of Feati due to the heavy academic load. He shifted to vocational courses, like automotive and diesel mechanic, at the Guzman Institute of Technology. It was during this time when he also enrolled in Bohol Colleges to take up steno and typing. In 1956 the young man graduated from UE with a Commerce degree, major in Accounting.
Tony, as he was now fondly called, took the first big step to his rise to success: his knowledge of automobiles led him to purchase a passenger jeep that plied the Santa Ana, Paco and Pandacan routes. In conjunction with his work as a jeepney driver, Tony also got a job at the J.S. Zulueta and Co., the only time he worked as an employee. In the middle of it all, Tony grabbed the first chance he got to take the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exams. He failed on his first try.
It was a crucial time for Tony to prove himself to his mother, that he can do what he had promised himself to do: Save his mother from a lifetime of misery. The failure to pass the CPA exam on his first try was a foolish one in Tony’s estimation. The heavy workload, coupled with some boyish infatuation, brought him face to face with his first failure, one he miserably regretted. Thus, the determination to go at it once more. This time, he made himself a CPA.
Alongside the prudence Tony had cultivated after years of living just to survive, his tenacity intensified. Tony scarcely knew how to surrender, to hang up the gloves. As life began to slowly turn to his favor, the young man began thinking of making it big in the world. Even as a student, Tony would recount decades later, he was already being eyed as a leader. His motley gang of friends felt in him a natural drive to lead, to take responsibility for his decisions and actions, to never surrender in the face of tremendous odds. And even as the odds were stacked against him, Tony soldiered on, mindless of consequences, using common sense and a pragmatic way of looking at a situation as his weapon. All this he had seen and learned from his beloved mother.
Before reaching 25, in 1959, Tony—the shoeshine boy, wash boy, jeepney mechanic, fish and bread vendor, janitor and certified Jack-of-all-trades—opened his first legitimate business venture with the help of friends: the Filipinas Pawnshop at the corner of 1135 Herran (currently Pedro Gil Street) and General Luna in Paco, Manila.
By the end of the year, Tony wedded Benny Angeles, who hailed from a Protestant family. They were married at the Central Church. After a year, Tony stood as a member of the Pawnbrokers Association of the Philippines. On October 11, 1960, their first son, Willie, was born.
The world of profit and business was nothing new to Tony, but the world of profit through sheer greed was. In his search for more lucrative business ventures, he chanced upon an idea that seemed viable at first. Only later did he realize that such a venture can turn against him at any moment.
In the early 1960s, years after he put up his pawnshop business, Tony leaped into the nightclub scene. His first venture was the Golden Key, an exclusive men’s club. The business did not turn out as expected. But before that, his mother Dominga, beloved of his life, succumbed to cancer on December 4, 1962. She was buried in a small public cemetery in Mandaluyong. Soon after, Tony received his first commission as member of the Philippine Constabulary.
Shortly after the Golden Key, he opened a movie-productions company called Perlas Productions with friend Frenie Amoranto. Tony had been an avid fan of the movies during his young life. On rare occasions when mother and son had some spare time, they would see a movie together at Mandaluyong’s old Riverside Theater, which Tony later bought to jump-start his own string of movie houses.
Golden Key, however, ran into trouble and finally closed. But three other nightclubs opened: Red Carpet, Red Key and The Sinner. Each one eventually closed shop.
The 1960s and 1970s saw Tony’s leap from one business venture to another. These were the years when his “Midas Touch” ran full throttle. From the Hillcrest Hotel in 1964, Tony expanded by buying other hotels and motels. As expected, he ran into some difficulties along the way. His motel business almost did not see the light of day when fringe groups opposed it on “moral” grounds. He had sought the help of friends, who directed him to certain media personalities who may be able to lend a hand.
Truth to tell, he had meant his first motel business to cater to foreign patrons, particularly the Japanese bigwigs working on a project for the Pasig River. He explained his side to then columnist Amado Hernandez, who later would become National Artist for Literature. Tony said that whatever “immoral” acts are done in motels were also being done in big hotels, and the place itself can never be “immoral.” Hernandez wrote a column on the matter, taking Tony’s side in the argument. His friendship with Hernandez opened to Tony the door of the media industry.
His motel-hotel business flourished. This led him to look into other ventures that included mining, commercial fishing, communications, lumber and oil exploration.
Tony would later build the Eternal Gardens Memorial Park Project. Within five years, the project became the fastest-selling memorial park in the country. By 1980, Eternal Gardens was making an average of P3 million in monthly sales. By 1984, it sold P10 million worth of memorial lots in just one place: Biñan, Laguna.
Shortly after this momentous achievement, Tony formed the Health Maintenance Inc. (HMI), which led to the creation of the Fortune Care business. He bought Fortune Insurance, thereby organizing Fortune Life and Fortune Care, including the auto dealership General Cars (Gencars). He now had the means to purchase the majority shares of Supercars (franchised dealer of General Motors). By the end of 1984, Fortune Life and General Insurance Co. became the first holder of a composite license in the country.
His work to propagate the canonization of Blessed Lorenzo Ruiz opened the way for him to pay Pope John Paul II a visit in Rome. On June 12, 1985, he presented the pope a replica of the Brown Madonna.
Based on the biographies written by Nick Joaquin, Pete Lacaba and Eric Caruncho, Tony had a secret dream—to be an artist. His penchant for the arts proved it—that in many ways he also wanted to be an artist—a writer, sculptor, painter. In the midst of running his businesses, he would spare some hours with writers and journalists, and employ the works of numerous artists for his businesses. In his youth, he wrote poems in Filipino, a sort of tribute to a bloodline that included a great-grand uncle who stood as a popular poet in his day. This secret dream led him to put up a media conglomerate that was to rival the biggest in the country.
The early 1990s saw him putting up the Philippines Graphic and Mirror magazines, Headline tabloid and his most ambitious project: the BusinessMirror newspaper. Amid all this, he also published View, Pilipino Mirror and operated under the Aliw Broadcasting Corp.’s DWIZ882 and a number of other radio stations years later. CNN Philippines came under his wing in 2015.
For such dreams to find completion, Tony also embarked on the need to recognize the people behind the effort. The Philippines Graphic each year awards exemplary literary works and their authors through the prestigious Nick Joaquin Literary Awards. It is now on its 26th year. The Catholic Mass Media Awards also came under Tony’s wing, which bestows recognition to outstanding personalities in the field of print and broadcast media. Fortune Life created the Gintong Parangal (The Gold Prize), an award-giving body out to reward the contribution of Filipino teachers to national development.
In 2003 Tony did not escape the watchful eye of the government. For his exemplary contributions to national development, he was assigned by the Philippine government as ambassador to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or Laos. His appointment was confirmed in July of the same year. He was conferred the Gawad Lakan Tagkan Award from the city of Makati also in 2003.
Years later in 2006, he was named one of 60 Most Outstanding Alumni of the University of the East during the university’s 60th Foundation Anniversary. A year later, Tony launched a scholarship for Laotian students enrolled in Philippine universities. This was also the year he began developing the Batulao Monte Grande Resort. In 2007 the city of Mandaluyong conferred on him the Order of Tatlong Bayani: a Laoreano Gonzales Award in the Field of Business and Media.
One is always hard put to write a panegyric for a man whose life had been, at the very least, complex. In order for the piece to be perfect, one must see the subject in his imperfection as a man, and there erect the skyscraper, which was his life.
Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua was many things to many different people, but in all his efforts, he was never anything but the dutiful son to his mother, Dominga. His last wish marked him as a man with deep-seated passion, when he chose to be buried beside his mother in a public cemetery fronting the San Felipe Neri Parish in Mandaluyong.
While Dominga Lim Chua never saw her son rise to prominence in the field of business and media, the ambassador showed his gratitude to his mother by helping thousands of people in need. The untold wealth he shared was never anything but an expression of gratitude for all he had learned through his mother. Tony was, till the end, the son of Dominga, the beautiful and courageous woman who saw his son through war and peace, hunger and thirst, pride and prejudice.
Tony’s Midas Touch, a clear reflection of his mother’s courage in the face of overwhelming odds, had turned their misery around to form his golden rule: “Sipag at tiyaga.”
- Joel Pablo Salud is currently the editor in chief of the Philippines Graphic.
ALC timeline
Early Life and Employment
- 1910: May 12—the day Tony’s mother, Dominga Lim Chua, was born.
- 1934: Tony was born, out of wedlock, to Tomas Chua and Dominga Lim at the Philippine General Hospital.
- 1945: Age 10, enrolled in Namayan Primary School (now Isaac Lopez Elementary School). The succeeding years saw the child Tony working as shoeshine boy, wash boy for GIs, seller of dried fish and pan de sal, newsboy, janitor, mechanic and jeepney driver, among others.
- 1947: Left Namayan Primary and worked at China Dragon Curio Store, Plaza Goiti, Santa Cruz. Enrolled at Anglo-Chinese School in Quiapo for one year through the help of the bother of his father.
- 1948-1949: Left Anglo-Chinese School in Quiapo to enroll for 5th and 6th grade at Santa Ana Elementary School. Returned to Mandaluyong and started a sari-sari store business on Luis, Segura Street, Barangay Namayan.
- 1950: Studying in high school at the Cosmopolitan College in Santa Ana.
- 1952-1953: Took exams at La Salle College and passed. But since he lacked credits for other subjects, he enrolled at the Philippine College of Commerce and Administration (currently the University of the East). Eventually graduated high school with a UE diploma, completing high school in three years.
- 1953: At 19, he entered college through a commerce course in UE. Also enrolled in Feati University for a preparatory engineering course (eventually dropped out of Feati due to the heavy academic load).
- 1953-1954: Shifted to vocational courses, i.e., automotive and diesel mechanic at Guzman Institute of Technology. This, in turn, led Tony to purchase a jeep that plied the Santa Ana, Paco and Pandacan routes. It was during this time when he also enrolled in Bohol Colleges, where he took up steno and typing.
- 1956: Tony graduated from UE with a Commerce course, major in Accounting.
- 1956-1957: Got a job at J.S. Zulueta and Co., the only time he worked as an employee. He was also in the middle of taking his CPA exam, where he failed in his first try.
- 1957: Got his first commission as member of the Philippine Constabulary (he eventually reached the rank of full colonel in the late-1970s).
- 1958: Reviewing for his second CPA exams. But before taking it, he already went into his first business venture—a pawnshop.
Early Business Ventures
- n 1958-1959: Tony put up office at the Manila Stock Exchange, where he worked to get mining companies listed in MSE.
- n 1959: Opened his first business—Filipinas Pawnshop—1135 along Herran (currently Pedro Gil Street) and General Luna in Paco, Manila.
- n 1959: December 24 was the day Tony married Benny Angeles, who hailed from a Protestant family. They were married at the Central Church.
- n 1960: At 25, Tony became a member of the Pawnbrokers Association. It was also during this time that he passed his second CPA exam. October of the same year, on the 11th, the couple’s first child, Willie, was born at De Ocampo Hospital.
- n 1961: Started his nightclub businesses at 26 going on 27.
- n 1962: December 4, near noon, Dominga Lim Chua passed away from cancer. The wake was at the Namayan Barrio Chapel. She was buried at the Mandaluyong Catholic Cemetery.
- n 1960-1963: Opening of the Golden Key Exclusive Night Club; he also opened during this time a movie-productions company called Perlas Productions with Frenie Amoranto. When Golden Key ran into trouble and eventually closed, three other night clubs opened: Red Carpet, Red Key and The Sinner. Each one eventually closed shop.
New Business Ventures
- 1964: He set up the Hillcrest Hotel Inc.
- 1965: The start of the Bermuda Motel business along the corner of Highway 54 (now Edsa) and Shaw Boulevard.
- 1966-1968: Tony took up courses at Creative Learning Institute.
- 1965-1969: Tony joined the mining business under Rizal Mining and ran the company for seven years.
- 1971: Tony bought the majority shares (50 percent) of Piltel.
- 1971-1972: Began operating Aquarius Casino for a year. Martial law was declared in September 1972. By the time Tony has already ventured into logging in Palawan (Roxas town and El Nido) under The Palawan Wood Enterprises (he managed it as treasurer).
- 1972: The month of October. Tony presented himself for six months of active duty in the military when he returned from Palawan to Manila.
- 1973-1974: Built Orchids Fishing Industries Inc. on June 13 (big-time fishing).
- 1974: On October 28, two months after his 40th birthday, Tony set up his flagship company: the ALC Commercial and Industrial Corp.
- 1974: Transferred residence to Wack-Wack.
- 1976: Kicked off the Eternal Gardens Memorial Park Project. Within the next five years, Eternal Gardens became the fastest-selling memorial park in the country.
- 1977: Gave up Rizal Mining to join a new mining company: Montana Mineral Resources. This led Tony into oil exploration in the Bondoc Peninsula.
- 1979: Met novelist and journalist Celso Carunugan, who later introduced Tony to Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin during a breakfast meeting at Villa San Miguel on Shaw Boulevard. It was also at this time when he embraced the image of the Transfiguration of Christ as a symbol of Eternal Gardens, whose sculptor was National Artist Napoleon “Billy” Abueva.
- 1980: Tony bought a 1-hectare lot on Pasong Tamo, built a building there and named it Dominga III. His first was located on Shaw Boulevard, Pasig City, and the second along Makati’s Legaspi Village. Also bought the Winston Motel and the Daisy.
- 1980: Eternal Gardens was averaging P3 million in monthly sales. By 1984, it sold P10 million worth of memorial lots in just one place: Biñan, Laguna.
- 1981: Tony became active in propagating the canonization of the recently beatified Filipino Christian martyr Lorenzo Ruiz. In September of the same year, the image of the Beato Lorenzo, a statue commissioned by Tony for artist Boy Caedo to sculpt, was inaugurated.
- 1984: Tony was named Insurance Man of the Year by the Second Annual Consumers Awards. He also unveiled in November this year the monumental image of the Transfiguration of Christ at the Eternal Gardens in Dagupan City.
- 1980-1985: Built the Health Maintenance Inc. (HMI), which led to the creation of the Fortune Care business. At this time, he also bought Fortune Insurance, thereby organizing Fortune Life and Fortune Care, including the dealership Gencars. Also bought the majority shares of Supercars (franchised dealer of General Motors). By the end of 1984, Fortune Life and General Insurance Co. became the first holder of a composite license in the country.
- 1985: On June 12 Tony traveled to Rome to present to Pope John Paul II a replica of the image of the Brown Madonna.
Media Business and Recognitions
- 1986: A month before the People Power I revolution, on January 31 Tony’s Brown Madonna Press Inc. (BMPI) was registered at the Securities and Exchange Commission. By August 31, 1993, BMPI’s authorized capital rose from P2 million to P50 million.
- 1986: Earlier this year Tony launched his Headline tabloid, which he ran only for three years; after which he published Oh magazine, patterned after the US publication W. It ran for two years.
- 1986: Chosen as Outstanding Citizen of Mandaluyong in the Field of Business.
- 1989: The month of July saw the birth of the newsweekly publication the Philippines Graphic magazine with its first editor in chief National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin. In premartial-law days, the title Weekly Graphic was an institution in English publications in the country, together with the Free Press. Tony later on launched the Mirror
- 1990: Tony started the Bulacan operations, the year when Benjamin Ramos also came in as his administrator. In October of the same year, Tony acquired the 7-hectare property at Meycauayan wet market.
- 1997: Started construction and development of the Citystate Center in Pasig City, a joint venture between the ALC Group of Companies and Leow Siak Fah, a Singaporean investor. In the succeeding years, he was able to convince the investor to invest in the acquisition of the Cherry Blossoms Hotel and the Tower Hotel in Ermita, Manila.
- 1999: Adamson University conferred on Tony the Degree of Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa, on December 16.
- 2002: Outstanding Manilan Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership, June 24.
- 2003: Tony was assigned by the Philippine government as ambassador to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or Laos. His appointment was confirmed in July of the same year.
- 2003: Conferred the Gawad Lakan Tagkan Award from the city of Makati.
- 2005: Tony launched his most ambitious media project: The BusinessMirror, a daily business newspaper. Later on, View magazine was also launched.
- 2006: Named as one of 60 Most Outstanding Alumni of the University of the East during its 60th Foundation Anniversary.
- 2007: Started a scholarship for Laotian students enrolled in Philippine universities. This is also the year they began developing the Batulao Monte Grande Resort.\
- 2007: Conferred the Order of Tatlong Bayani: Laoreano Gonzales Award in the Field of Business and Media by the city of Mandaluyong.