Coming home.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Manuel L. Quezon III

WHEN I was around 11 years old, my father took me to visit the Maine Memorial in Washington's Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington is the American version of our Libingan ng mga Bayani, built on the confiscated estate of Gen. Robert E. Lee's family. Two presidents are buried there, William Howard Taft (of Taft Avenue fame) and John F. Kennedy. The Americans' Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which started a fashion copied by all countries thereafter, is located in this cemetery as well.

We were touring the cemetery on a tourist bus, which allows you to get off whenever you want and climb on board the next bus when you feel like it; and so at a certain point my father insisted we get off and take a little walk.

We trudged along a path for a while, climbing the gentle incline of a little hill. On top of the hill was a stark, rather odd-looking structure that resembled a brownish-gray drum with a telephone pole stuck into it.

"This," my father said, pointing to the strange-looking building, "is the Maine Memorial."

Upon closer inspection, the Maine Memorial is, indeed, a hollow drum of sandstone pierced with tiny windows and decorated with carved wreaths and similar symbols. It has two bronze doors decorated with friezes; and the thing that looks like a telephone pole is actually the mast of a ship-the USS Maine, a battleship that blew up in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, killing 260 of her crew. The sinking of the Maine led to widespread anger at Spain (which was viewed to have been somehow responsible for the destruction of the ship), sympathy for the Cuban Revolution, and eventually the Spanish-American War: "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" became the battle cry that led to Teddy Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill (with Leonard Wood-who is, incidentally, buried at Arlington-and other Rough Riders). And which also led to another accomplishment, the sending of Commodore Dewey to Manila Bay and the conquest of the "Philippine Islands."