Estrada, Ariston J. Sr.
HS 1926, ACS 1928, AA 31, BSC 1935
DECEASED
1961
DLSAA Distinguished Lasallian Awardee
When Brother Joseph, director of DLSC, offered a teaching job to ARISTON ESTRADA (valedictorian HS '26, AA '28 and BSC '35) the latter answered that he would think it over in a week's time. "You have 24 hours to make up your mind," said the former. Ariston talked it over with his parents and with his elder brother Tony (HS '25), who did not favor his leaving a good job with the Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada for a teaching position that did not offer much of a financial future. But he decided to join the commerce faculty, where Brother Anthony was having such a hard time handling the increasing number of commerce students. For the next 38 years, Ariston taught various classes in the college, such as logic, philosophy, theology and Spanish. "Teaching is my life," he told a reporter of Alumnews. "It is a great privilege to teach. What nobler task is there than to mold the youth and imbue them with the right values, to enlighten their minds and make them thirst for truth?" In recognition of his lifetime work as a teacher, his Alma Mater conferred on him a doctorate degree in literature, honoris causa , and made him Professor Emeritus of Philosophy upon his retirement. Because of his achievements as a Catholic lay leader, the Vatican made him a Papal Knight of St. Gregory the Great. In 1979 he was one of the few lay members of the Manila Synod. A humble person, Estrada shied away from the honors accorded him when the school established a professorial chair bearing his name, and named a seminar hall after him. "I would have preferred anonimity," he remarked. "Perhaps," writes the reporter, "more than his eloquence and erudition, more than his scholarship and dedication, it was his humility which has most deeply touched the lives of his students and has shown them what it was to be a teacher from whom the finest qualities of the true Christian humanist shine forth." (La Salle: 1911-1986 by Carlos Quirino)