By Emil Guillermo
The Record - June 15, 2003

Dillon Delvo remembers the day his father, Cipriano, explained their relationship.

“He said, ‘I am old, I might die, and when I die, you are the man of the house,’ “Delvo said.

Heavy words from his father, then 68. Delvo was just five.

For many Filipino Americans in Stockton, Father’s Day is less about being on the receiving end of bad neckties and more about getting caught in some bad history.

TRYING TO EXPLAIN: Dillon Delvo, 30, of Stockton looks through a photo album of his father’s. Delvo used to be ashamed of his elderly father, but through time began to look at those of his father’s generation as heroes.

In the 1920s and ’30s, thousands of Filipino immigrants — 90 percent of them men — came into the San Joaquin Valley to live and work. But in the Depression era, they encountered signs throughout Stockton that said “No Filipinos Allowed,” and laws that prevented marriage to whites.

Because of the negative social currents and outright racism against them, starting a family in America for many of them was next to impossible. But Filipino Americans eventually broke out of bachelorhood and had families — no matter how long it took.

For some, it took decades. But the wait created a different kind of nuclear family, with fathers often two or three generations older than their offspring. For those children, it was a near guarantee of fatherless Father’s Days. And a lifetime trying to understand their lives through a neglected part of American history.

Before Delvo learned about that history, any appearance in public with his father seemed like some cosmic joke.

“How do you explain as a first-grader that the old man waiting for you is your father and not your grandfather?” asked Delvo, 30, a south Stockton native who earned a master’s degree in Asian American Studies from San Francisco State University two weeks ago. “What do you say? ‘That’s one dirty old man!’”

But it’s no joke, and attempts at humor don’t begin to mask the shame, confusion and anger often caused by the extreme generation gap that exists in many south Stockton Filipino-American families.

Delvo thought it was his dad’s fault, a failing, though he admitted they never really talked about it much. “It was a taboo subject,” he said.

But when he glanced at the neighborhood, he saw he wasn’t alone.

When Sarah May Olarte, 20, was in first grade, her late immigrant father, Tony Olarte, was 82 — 76 years older than her.

For her brother Andrew, 15, first grade meant Tony Olarte was older yet — 87, more than three generations older. When Andrew was in fifth grade at age 10, Tony died at age 91.

Their stories make Debbie Reyes feel even luckier. While others can only clutch sepia-toned photographs, Reyes can actually hug her father Philip, who turns 96 on Father’s Day.

He’s one of the few pioneering immigrants from the Philippines in the ’20s and ’30s who is still alive, a group often referred to as the “Manong Generation.”

Manong means “older brother” in the Ilocano dialect of the Philippines. The manongs that remain are the last links to the past that help explain a lot about the largest Asian group in San Joaquin County.

Living history

In a home just off Eighth Street, Philip Reyes had the look of a half-filled balloon until his daughter Debbie came to sit with him in his small living room. Then he came to life.

The father of Debbie, 24, and Delailah, 27, a Record news librarian, Reyes is a proud dad.

“Of course,” he said in clear but accented English. “I’m happy now.”

“He was always telling me to finish school,” said Debbie, who graduated last year from University of Pacific.

As for most Filipinos, education lured them to America. In 1929, it was the goal of Reyes, then 22, who crossed the Pacific with other young Filipinos in steerage, the underbelly of the President Jefferson, a big ocean voyager.

“I liked to come to America because it is such a rich country,” Reyes said. “I wanted to come here to study. In the Philippines, it was hard to study.”

A classic sepia photograph from the era shows him as a man with big dreams — Reyes resplendent in a double-breasted suit, with broad lapels and pleated pants, standing tall in a confident cock-of-the-walk pose.

But his ambition was tempered by the reality of the fields. He picked asparagus all over the Valley.

“We worked for 10 cents an hour, for 10 hours,” he said. “That’s a hard life.”

But the workers put on their suits at night and hit the town on El Dorado Street, looking for fun.

Many would go to the so-called taxi dances, where girls would dance with them for money. But not Reyes.

“Ten cents a minute? I didn’t want to spend my money dancing!” he said. Then he revealed something even his daughter didn’t know. The anti-miscegenation laws didn’t deter Reyes.

“I had a girlfriend,” he said. “An American one from Oregon. But I didn’t marry her. I had another girlfriend in the Philippines.”

Reyes said he returned to marry her, but couldn’t find her. He was lucky to get back. As wards of the United States, Filipinos were free to immigrate. But when Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934, Filipino immigration was drastically limited to 50 people a year.

Reyes returned to Stockton without a bride and lived a bachelor’s life for decades.

Loneliness often led to despair, alcoholism and gambling. There was also illegitimacy, but many were still hopeful to start a Filipino family in America.

When immigration laws were eased after World War II, some found brides. But older Filipino men often found they had better luck returning to the Philippines.

In 1974, Reyes married Debbie’s mother Adelaida. She was 28. He was 63.

Nine years later, at age 72, Debbie Reyes was born.

“I was Daddy’s little girl,” said Reyes, who never thought it was that bad having an older dad. “I never questioned it. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

But Adelaida did. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 1996, Reyes went back to the Philippines, where he found he still had appeal, though mostly because he was a U.S. citizen.

He met his second wife, Ellen. She was 45, he was 89.

Ellen this week stood across from Reyes, translating questions in a Philippine dialect, that Reyes would answer to a reporter in English.

Reyes would only say that he is happy, and that he and Ellen still live together after 7 years.

But was she in it just for a green card or citizenship?

“The question did come to mind,” Debbie Reyes admitted. “But when I see what she does for him, I think they love each other. It’s not just a marriage of convenience. She cares for him.”

Shame turns to pride

Unlike Debbie Reyes’ undying love for her father, Dillon Delvo first had to deal with the shame he had for his father. He lost it when a college history project in 1992 revealed the racism experienced by his father’s generation of Filipinos in Stockton.

He found a banner headline in the Jan. 29, 1930, Evening Record: “Filipino Club Bombed.” No one was hurt, but the Filipino Federation building near McKinley Park was destroyed. It was indicative of the anti-Filipino violence, perpetuated by nativists and those opposed to Filipino immigration, that spread throughout California from Watsonville to the Central Valley.

Delvo started talking to his dad and learned even more. “My dad would tell me stories of his friends being beaten and killed, just for being Filipino in Stockton,” Delvo said.

When he realized what they had to overcome, Delvo started to see those in his father’s generation as heroes. His relationship to his father warmed, and when he died six years ago, at age 87, he was no less a father, and a true source of inspiration.

“I see the manongs as a foundation for being Filipino American,” Delvo said. “Their dreams are deferred through us.”

Now Delvo spends his life making sure their history is not forgotten. He volunteers as a youth minster, helping young boys like Andrew Olarte, the fatherless teenager. He keeps tabs on the health of the manongs, who are dying quickly. One, Phil Rilcopiro, 88, was buried last week.

“He was the Bob Hope of the manongs,” said Philly Rilcopiro, 22, his daughter, recalling her father’s collection of one-liners and jokes he told at Filipino gatherings.

Delvo sang at the family service. And he’s making a film so that Filipino-

American families can understand the undeniable urge and longing of the manongs.

“That was their real dream and validation — to have an American family,” Delvo said. “I am proud to be a son of a manong.”