Town remembers old Gabaldon building
Editor's Note Below is an article posted in 2008 shortly after town and school officials agreed to pursue the restoration of the the Gabaldon. Amb. Arizala suggested it's worth reposting and we agree.
INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON
By Delfin Mallari Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: October 08, 2008
INFANTA, Quezon – Five steps of mossy concrete stairs and three pillars remain in front, surrounded by cracked, coarse walls and thin columns with surprisingly rust-free steel bars protruding from the top. Rows of concrete beams that once supported wooden floors lay a few feet above ground.
The nearly century-old Gabaldon-type school building has been reduced to its present state of deterioration in one corner of the compound of the Infanta Central Elementary School in Infanta town in northern Quezon. Iron sheets on its porch fence off students loitering on the grassy lot staked with banana plants.
“I have fond memories of the Gabaldon. It’s my only other connection to Infanta, other than the Church. And so it pains me to see it sitting the way it is right now,” said Mila Garcia Glodava, president of the US-based Metro Infanta Foundation (MIF). The nonprofit organization unites Filipino expatriates living abroad through an Internet website to initiate and fund worthy causes back home, especially in northern Quezon.