A world away from Sydney’s middle-class northern suburbs is the town of Baguio, on the northern tip of the Philippines, where Teddy Chua Gonzales came into the world on 2 October 1954.
The residents of Baguio, in the Cordillera Mountains region, are blessed with spectacular tree-topped mountain scenery and soothing temperatures offered by the city’s position 1511 metres above sea level. For these reasons, their city is known as the summer holiday capital of the Philippines, and also as the City of Pines. When summer temperatures in the Philippines capital, Manila, soar, city-slickers embark on the seven-hour drive north along treacherous winding roads to Baguio to seek relief from the oppressive humidity.
When the United States began its almost 50-year occupation of the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century, the US military was quick to see the benefits of developing the lush Baguio area, and set up a base there. Now this military base has been converted into a golf course, where Filipino doctors, lawyers and other professionals spend their weekends perfecting their swings.
These people work hard for their successes. In the Philippines poverty still abounds; you can see it on Baguio’s outskirts, where squatters live in shanties perched precariously on hillsides surrounding the congested business district, and freshly washed laundry flutters from the balconies of cramped concrete apartment buildings.
Adding to the financial pressures for Filipinos is the fact that a lot of families have many mouths to feed. In this strongly Roman Catholic country, birth control is not freely exercised in many areas. Plus, family is central to Filipino culture. Without the love and respect of a close-knit family, you are very poor indeed.
TEDDY GONZALES WAS not born into the lap of luxury. A millionaire when he died, he clawed his way up the financial ladder during his 46 years, with a powerful work ethic fuelled by ambition. He was a self-made man.
Teddy was born into a typically large Filipino family. He was the youngest child of William and Belen Gonzales. From his parents he inherited some Filipino blood, but there was also a strong dash of Chinese, particularly on his father’s side. Belen bore William four children: Mercy, Freddie, Annie and then Teddy.
Teddy and his siblings grew up in a modest rented house in Baguio. They were a tight-knit bunch, the Gonzales clan, with William and Belen emphasising the value of family and striving hard for success. The children certainly went without the luxuries many Western children in the 21st century demand as their right. Nevertheless, Freddie would always remember it as a normal, happy childhood. Freddie and Teddy forged a bond, one in which Freddie was his little brother’s protector, confidant and, later, business partner.
Like most Filipino children raised in the 1950s, the Gonzales children were taught to respect and obey their parents. According to Freddie, the husband is the undisputed head of the Filipino family, and his wife is expected to defer to her husband’s wishes. The children look up to their parents. They do not question their parent’s decisions, unless they wish to feel the sharp sting of a parent’s hand. One of the commonly spoken Filipino languages, Tagalog, which the Gonzales family spoke, has a term, po. It indicates respect and is spoken at the end of a sentence. Filipino children use it all the time to address their parents, says Freddie.
‘Of course we’re all very family-orientated and since we were not born with a silver platter, it was also implanted in us to strive hard to be successful,’ says Freddie.
Teddy had this work ethic in spades. From an early age, his ambition became obvious. So did his organisational and planning skills.
‘He established goals and really tried to obtain his goals,’ says Freddie.
What the Gonzales children lacked in material possessions was more than made up for by formal education. Perhaps this was why they went on to become so successful in later life. Freddie qualified as an engineer and established his own hotel in Baguio, the Forest Inn. Annie Gonzales-Tesoro is a lawyer who rose to a senior management position within the Securities Exchange Commission’s office in Bagiuo. Mercy married and had children, becoming a housewife.
Teddy began his education at St Theresa’s College, a Baguio school run by Belgian nuns. He progressed through high school, performing well academically, then went on to study political science and economics at St Louis University in Baguio. Teddy graduated with outstanding grades in 1974.
Like his sister Annie Gonzales-Tesoro, Teddy decided to pursue law. It fitted in with his idealistic views and his sense of justice, says Freddie. In 1975 Teddy began the four-year law course in a class of about 35 students at Baguio Colleges Foundation. It quickly became apparent that he had a natural aptitude for law.
One of his fellow students, lawyer and federal agent Bensheen Apolinar, recalls Teddy as a ‘brilliant’ student and a ‘just’ and fair person.
‘He graduated magna cum laude, he was one of our top achievers,’ says Apolinar. ‘I think he placed thirteenth in the 1979 bar examination [for the whole of the Philippines].’
Teddy’s fellow students saw a different side of him from that seen by his family. To those close to Teddy, he could be light-hearted and hilarious, revelling in being the centre of attention, using his razor-sharp wit to crack jokes at family gatherings. His fellow students saw the flip side of his personality. The young man, dressed in a suit and tie, was intense, incredibly focused and mature for his age, with no time for the frivolous extracurricular activities of university life.
Apolinar remembers Teddy as a quiet man who did not drink, smoke or have any other apparent vice. He certainly didn’t go out drinking with the other students. Apolinar got the impression that Teddy was already wealthy and socialised with important people in the community. Though this could have easily have been interpreted as snobbishness, Apolinar remembers Teddy as being on friendly terms with the other students.
He recalls Teddy placing a ten-peso wager against him on a boxing match between Muhammad Ali, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest’, and Joe Frazier. It was not a large bet, but the reason why Teddy made it amused Apolinar. ‘I don’t like Muhammad Ali. He talks too much,’ Teddy said. Soon afterwards, Apolinar collected his ten pesos from Teddy, who was unperturbed. After all, he’d made the bet on principle. Apolinar thought this was just like Teddy — a quiet achiever who put little faith in flashy talk. It was dedication, hard slog and results that mattered to Teddy.
As well as studying law at night, he worked to support himself. By day he was selling real estate in the Baguio area. He was making a pretty good living out of it, enough to buy himself a battered brown four-door sedan to get around in. Later, while still studying, he and Freddie became partners in a taxi company. In addition, Teddy was involved in a business selling gas cylinders.
Teddy did not want to wait until graduation to have something to his name, something he could offer to the right woman, when she came along. So it was that two years into his law degree, in early 1977, he met the woman he would love and dote on for as long as they both would live. Her name was Mary Josephine Loiva Siochi Claridades. While Mary was her Christian name, to those close to her, she was Loiva (pronounced ‘Loy-va’).