I FIRST heard the term alma mater from my parents with reference to their school, Holy Angel Academy.

Though as a little girl I didn?t know the meaning of those words, they somehow evoked a feeling of reverence and tenderness ? even beauty ? and no wonder! The mother or home of our soul cannot but be beautiful and beloved.

This I felt most wistfully as I eagerly turned every page of ?Destiny and Destination: The Extraordinary Story and History of Holy Angel University 1933-2008,? for Holy Angel became my high-school alma mater, too.

Excellently researched and written by Robert Tantingco, director of the Center for Kapampangan Studies of HAU, the book dramatically traces not just the growth of the school but of its hometown, now Angeles City.

Intertwined histories

This is the motif Tantingco weaves throughout the book: that the history of Holy Angel and the history of Angeles are intertwined. Angeles and Holy Angel gave life, and continue to give life, to each other. The vision and sacrifices of their founders and leaders created the community that sustains us to this day. One?s growth and progress, hurdles and challenges affect the other, so that we cannot imagine an Angeles without a Holy Angel, and vice versa.

Holy Angel Academy became a college in 1961 and Angeles became a city in 1964. Today, Holy Angel is probably the alma mater of every other Angeleño you may chance to meet.

As high-school freshmen in 1956, we had little sense of the school?s history aside from seeing its founder walking to and from church every day: Don Juan Nepomuceno, one of the town?s most-respected philanthropists.

Nor did we realize our teachers, whom we christened with naughty nicknames, were the band of pioneers who had heroically nurtured Holy Angel from its inspired but ragtag beginnings in the parish convent house.

The school was only 23 years old then, but already very much an institution in Angeles and beyond. Barely 10 years had passed since they resurrected the school from the ravages of the Japanese Occupation, Hukbalahap raids and widespread social upheaval.

As the book carries us through the decades toward the school?s destination as a university, each of its eight presidents is given his or her moment in time, a unique personality bringing the school toward its destiny.

Inevitable standout

The inevitable standout is Sister Josefina Nepomuceno, OSB, president from 1985 to 1995, who guided the school through a violent student boycott that almost closed it down (this was, after all, the alma mater of Nilo Tayag, Rodolfo Salas and Dante Buscayno), then led it to unprecedented heights in academic standards.

In recalling how Sr. Josefina quickly moved to normalize school operations after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, the book provides one of the most graphic accounts of the devastation, fear and panic that gripped the town as ashes, then stones, fell, followed by lahar that swelled the rivers and mowed down everything in its wake.

?We have to inspire the community to move forward,? Sr. Josefina is quoted as saying, as she rehabilitated the school, resumed its school?s expansion program and prepared it for peer accreditation.

In tandem with Angeles rapidly discarding its old image as a honky-tonk town dependent on an American air base for its economic sustenance, Holy Angel transformed itself into a modern university with impressive infrastructure and course offerings.

Today, it boasts of a beautiful theater, state-of-the-art library, and graduates all over the world who have distinguished themselves in such fields as business and accountancy, education, engineering.

Young boy?s wish

It is Tantingco?s scholarly thoroughness and sense of human drama that makes this book not only the factual history but also the engrossing story of Holy Angel.

A high point in this drama is how the school was born as a young boy?s wish. That boy was Javier J. Nepomuceno, later to become a Bataan volunteer and Death March survivor, a lawyer, an accounting professor at De La Salle University, a longtime member of the board of directors of Ayala Corp., and valued adviser of the Zobels and McMickings.

Among the book?s charming features are recollections of the school?s early days and the town?s prewar lifeways by Javier Nepomuceno himself, valedictorian of class 1936, now 89 years old, and a San Francisco resident for the past 40 years.

Nepomuceno was 14 years old when he convinced his father, Juan, to put up a Catholic school for boys and girls. His father?s wise indulgence had far-reaching consequences for the future.

HAA was the first Catholic school in the Philippines founded and managed by lay people. Unlike the ?exclusive schools? run by religious orders, it never took on an elitist character. Its innovative evening high-school classes, for those who had to help their parents earn a living during the day, made Catholic education accessible to students from all walks of life.

The author graduated valedictorian of HS class ?61. They will be the Golden Jubilarians in 2011.