Laura’s Heritage Room opening: A Founders Day highlight
The Laura Hibbard Heritage Room had its soft opening on August 10, 2020 in celebration of the historic arrival of the Silliman University’s powerful founding parents, David and Laura Hibbard.
This museum project of the Silliman Alumni Association, Inc. Dumaguete Chapter, led by Prof. Gladys Rio Malayang and former chapter president Leo Dennis G. Mamicpic, was approved by University President Dr. Betty Cernol McCann, who had the brilliant idea of having this at Silliman Hall instead of being part of a Missionary Home restoration project as originally presented to the Board of Trustees.
After the Board’s approval, the Laura’s Ways and Means Committee headed by Congresswoman Jocelyn Sy-Limkaichong embarked on fundraising programs which ended with a home-to-home Christmas serenade by a daygon (carolling) group composed of alumni and friends last December. The campaigns were successful as it gathered enough funds to start the first room of the Heritage Museum.
Inspired by the 1908 wall furniture which was given as a wedding gift in 1957 to Jose and Pilar Flores-Patrimonio, parents of Lucy Jumawan-Sawyer (an Outstanding Sillimanian in the Performing Arts and founder of the Silliman Dance Troupe), the Dumaguete Sillimanians went on to search for more.
The first piece was originally owned by Laura and David Hibbard. This furniture called a “platero” was given to Lucy’s grandfather, Regino Flores, and received by his wife Teresita Infante, who was one of the carpenters who built Silliman Hall and was a regular maintenance person at the campus home of the Hibbards. The alumni research team had identified this wall furniture as a hutch, which is on loan to Silliman and is now a beautiful feature of the recreation of the living room of the original home of David and Laura.
The alumni went from building to building to find American period furniture and other historic items. The completed heritage room has three features of Laura’s collection: the home which included the bedroom, the living room, and the dining table; her office as Mission treasurer and director of evangelism and the very inspiring recreation of the pioneering classroom.
Interior designers of this project are Alumni Affairs director Ruben Bokingo, son of Professor Emeritus Evangeline Nobleza Bokingo who had the original vision of a Missionary Home exhibition realized as a centerpiece during the Silliman centennial celebration in 2001; Home Economics alumni president Luz Camacho Forbes; young legal minds Rica Ruperto and Pristine Martinez-Raymond; and Silliman culture advocate Moses Atega who was with the 2001 exhibition team.
Laura’s Room successfully paints a very fruitful classroom where the sons of Emilio Aguinaldo, the first Philippine president, had studied from 1911 to 1927. Other students of Laura were Carlos P. Garcia, the 1912 class president who became President of the Philippines and John Gokongwei of 1925, grandfather of Philippine Business leader Lance Gokongwei.
The Laura Hibbard Room will be followed by the recreations of the classroom and laboratory of Silliman’s Father of Environmental Research, Dr. James W. Chapman, and the workshop of the Silliman Builder and landscape architect, Charles A. Glunz.
(story by Moses Joshua B. Atega)
