Speech - Inauguration of the Edgardo J. Angara Wing and Jose B.L. Reyes Hall
June 19, 2007

Brief Remarks
National President Jose Vicente B. Salazar
Inauguration of the Edgardo J. Angara Wing and J.B.L. Reyes Hall
June 19, 2007
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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

To all of you present here this afternoon, I say thank you on behalf of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

Thank you for joining us and taking part in this task.

In this task, You might ask: what is the task?

Is it to honor the two gentlemen whose personal and professional achievements have had their tremendous downstream effects on the country’s legal community. I think not. The Honorable Senator Edgardo J. Angara and Justice J.B.L. Reyes have received more honor than their store rooms of plaques and trophies could contain.

Is the task to praise their achievements and landmark accomplishments. I think not. No matter the amount or quality of words that are uttered today, nothing could add more luster to the illustrious careers both have carved for themselves. Any attempt at praise would merely be a redundancy, a statement of what is already obvious to history and to this generation.

What then is the task for which you have generously lent your presence?

The task is to dedicate. To dedicate a wing and a hall.

We dedicate these physical monuments without the arrogant thought that we are honoring Senator Angara and Justice J.B.L. Reyes in the process. As we have said, there is nothing more that we can add to the luster of their names as inscribed in the annals of the Nation they have selflessly served.

Rather, our dedication is in the form of a commitment. Our individual and shared commitment. Our commitment to the monument that Senator Angara and Justice J.B.L. Reyes have erected.

Lest we begin to entertain the thought that this building, the hall upstairs and this wing are the monuments I am referring to, let me correct the notion right away.

I subscribe to view of the 19th Century American scholar and historian John L. Motley who wrote, and I quote:

“Deeds, not stones, are the true monument of the great!”

Enumerations of the deeds that have made them outstanding Filipinos have been done many times for both the revered statesman-senator and the late Justice. I shall not succumb to the temptation to be redundant by repeating them in this occasion.

Suffice it to say that both were, perhaps, the men whom the English writer Alexander Pope sought to describe with these words:

“And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.”

Speaking before the House of Commons in 1774, the noted English Statesman Edmund Burke said: “Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state”.

And to that apt description of Senator Angara and Justice J.B.L. Reyes, the playwright Maxwell Anderson, referring to George Washington wrote: “There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, till all men walk on higher ground in that lifetime.”

To Senator Angara and Justice J.B.L. Reyes, the IBP, therefore expresses its gratitude, not just for the physical monuments but for the deeds that have made their names synonymous with what is excellent in the Filipino.

Thank you for serving as the guideposts and landmarks of our generation.

Thank you for your deeds that have today caused the legal profession to walk on higher ground.