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The irreplaceable Sayang-tist

By Lourdes M. FernandezEditor in Chief, Business Mirror Published in BusinessMirrors Sunday edition, Nov. 21, 2010, page

A-2

LONG before he started schooling, Leonardo Co loved theoutdoors and would often come home dirty and with scratches,clutching treasures in his pants pocket----all sorts of stones andplants.

Ewan ko ba, pero maliit pa iyan, gustong gusto niyang maglibot at tumingin sa mga halaman. Napaka-curious niyang bata. Nung

lumaon, dahil palagi niyang sabing inaaral niya ang mga halamanat gagawa siya ng experiment dito, tinawag siya ng mga kaibiganat kaklase na sayang-tist [I dont know why, but even at a tender age he loved to check out plants everywhere he went. He was socurious. Soon, because he kept saying hell do experiments withthem his friends and classmates called him sayang-tist], said hismother, Emelina Co, referring to a play of words on the boy fromTagudin, Ilocos Sur, who would grow up to be a respected scientistwith admirers from around the world.

It was only during the wake for the botanist, slain in what themilitary called a crossfire in a forested hill in Leyte this week, thatEmelina said she and her husband, Lian Seng Co, realized how far this obsession with plants had taken their eldest, and only, son.

The afternoon that BusinessMirror paid its respects to the mandescribed widely as one of the Philippiness top botanists, his 85-year old father and two of five sisters were finalizing arrangementsfor the transfer of his remains from Funeraria Paz to the Universityof the Philippines for Saturdays necrological rites. Their plans had

been altered by information that an autopsy was to be conductedon Co, because of conflicting versions of what really happened, asprovided by the military and one of two companions of Co whosurvived the shooting.

The students, UP colleagues, as well as foreign scientists andconservationists at Cos wake on Friday were also torn with grief over the death of another admired botanist---his best friend Dan

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Lagunzad, who died of cancer just one day after bullets felled Co.

Not just Filipinos loss, but the worlds

AMONG those in the crowd who came to pay their respects was

New York University post-graduate research scientist JeanmaireMolina, a UP graduate who had served, for many years, as Cosresearch assistant in the special biodiversity project he helped setup and nurtured in Palanan, Isabela.

Molina, who like her classmate Sandra Yap credited Co withhelping get them started in obtaining post-grad studies abroad(both UP girls have PhDs) rushed home on news that their mentor, the man they considered their second father, had died anuntimely, tragic death in the forests he loved all his life.

Since 2001, Co and some of his students and research assistantshad cared for a precious plot in a site identified as one of the lastbiodiversity frontiers in the Philippines. The area has sincedoubled, and was at one time funded by a World Bank affiliate. It isone of a chain of biodiversity plots set up around the world byscientists and conservationists anxious about preserving what mayvery well hold the future of life on earth.

Dr. James V. LaFrankie, a colleague of Co who is based in La

Union, said Co was simply irreplaceable in terms of both hiscommitment and his store of skills and experience. He repeated aphrase often used to describe Co: a walking encyclopedia onPhilippine plants, and added that right after learning of thebotanists death in Leyte, he and colleagues from around the worldall reacted with panic, who we gonna call? next time they need toconsult on Philippine flora.

He knew about Philippine plants more than anyone we know.Consider there are 10,000 different kinds of flowering plants in the

Philippines. At age 56, you could fairly presume that someone likeLeonard had a body of knowledge that was simply irreplaceable.

A very honest man According to LaFrankie, who went to Cos wake on threesuccessive days, Co was respected by foreign scientists andinstitutions because he was a very honest man. He was alwaysvery careful, very precise in dishing out information, disdained

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fluff or borderline claims in reports, and would very frankly tell aninquiring party I dont know if he wasnt sure about something,though hed be considerate enough to say hell help the party lookinto it.

To illustrate the level of professional respect Co enjoyed,LaFrankie cited world-class institutions such as the Arnold

Arboretum at Harvard, the Kew Gardens in London and the Leidenin The Netherlands as among those that regularly consult the UPbotanist.

Many of the foreign botanists sought him out because, whenever they came to the country, they knew exactly where to go and didntlose precious time because Co would point them to the right place,depending on what they were interested to look at.

Though he had lots of friends in academe in Asean countries, Cohad really focused most of his time and effort on Philippine flora---which is rich and diverse enough, with 7,100 islands, to occupy alifetime, noted LaFrankie.

Other colleagues had earlier noted Co seemed always racingagainst time to identify and tag plants across the archipelago, as if he had been given that task to give all creation a name. In Cosview, creation is for everyone, and it was his lifelong passion to

help other scientists find ways to use plants to heal and nourishpeople. Some of his young followers, who had been returning totheir Palanan, Isabela nursery each summer break from post-gradwork abroad, tapping modest grants to help sustain it, had onceconfessed a dream they shared with the idealistic teacher: find aplant-based vaccine for dengue that can be available to millions of people around the world.

Y akking on Globe unli for 2 hours Its a measure of how much Co loved the Palanan plot that he had

earlier told loved ones to spread some of his ashes over it if hedies---a wish he will soon get. In October, just before supertyphoonJuan struck, Co reportedly gave friends a scare because hestayed on the mountain even though meteorologists had forecast adirect hit on Isabela province. One Facebook posting after hisdeath showed a smiling professor tending to his babies, theplants in the nursery, on the eve of the typhoon, preparing tobatten down the place.

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As LaFrankie recalled it, Co had apparently been staying at themountaintop---accessible only by chopper or the flying coffin thatresearch associates called their Cessnadays before the typhoonstruck, and was updating his inventory and data files. He was so

excited about some of his new finds; it seems he had a new cellphone, and was eager to use his Globe unli so he called me andstarted yakking about his plants for, I think, two hours.

After the supertyphoon, when friends started to inquire about howhe survived the storm, the story just went around that Co tiedhimself to a tree. Whatever happened, no one was surprised hecould survive that, because the forest was his life. Being withplants gave him the greatest joy. It is thus so shocking for them toaccept that he would be felled by bullets just for being with what he

loved best.

H onor him with the truth If the story of Leonard atop his beloved Palanan mountain during asupertyphoon amused his adoring friends and relatives, the still-unknown truth about what really happened to him in that heavilyforested area in Leyte, on that fateful Monday, is something thathaunts them.

S ana sabihin lang nila ang totoo. Huwag na silang

magsinungaling. At huwag silang magbintang. Kung may nagkamali, aminin na lang . [I wish theyd just tell the truth, and notlie or blame the innocent. If someone erred, they must own up totheir mistake], said his father Lian Seng Co, 85, alluding to reportsthat there was really no crossfire because there was no encounter;and soldiers simply mistook Cos team for rebels. The old man hadsobbed after kissing Leonards image on the editorial cartoon inthe BusinessMirror, and whispered quietly, dapat sana ako naunakay Boy [I should have gone ahead of my son Boy].

The plea for the truth brings to mind a line in the DenzelWashington-Meg Ryan starrer Courage under fire, where Denzel,after finally putting together the authentic account of what wentdown in a forbidding desert in Iraq where a courageous US pilothad apparently been killed by friendly fire, said of the report, If wewish to honor her courage, we can only honor her with the truth.

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No one can bring back what was lost with the death of thecountrys preeminent botanist. But if he lived all his 56 yearsteaching us eternal truths about life, creation and stewardship, theleast he deserves is the truth about what happened on Monday.Only the truth can teach us to avoid having the same tragedy befall

the precious few young scientists who have followed in hisfootsteps.