Bernal, Maestra Lolita

The school was always her field of action. Early in life, like the other young people of her generation, she began her work as a teacher in "The Heroic" Villa de Los Santos, when the decade of the 30s had yet to make its appearance and the Republic was still babbling its baby talk. Following the examples she received at home, both from her mother Doña Heliodora Moreno del Castillo de Villalaz as well as from her closest aunts Anita, Elida and Mercedes, and from her elder sisters Sara and Carmen, she always did well in the classroom and outside of it.

For her nephews, she was our Tía Lolita. For her students and those who first knew her as a teacher at the Escuela República de Honduras, and later at the Nicanor M. Villalaz school, where she went to be its principal, she was always Maestra Lolita.

Emita, Linda and Valeria could always put their faith in the kindness and she showed them, in offering the warmth of home and the education they deserved, but which, because of their Kuna origins, they could not obtain in those times.

She knew how to put into practice that which was so well summed up by Fernando Savater when he told us: "The act of teaching and of learning from our fellow human beings is more important for the establishment of our humanity than whatever concrete knowledge is thus perpetuated or transmitted."

Many are the memories of my Aunt Lolita that come to mind. They are mixed up --- clearly so --- with the family remembrances in which, with her sisters and brothers, she brought happiness and enjoyment to those times of much-anticipated dry season vacations at the ancestral home, with its breezes and heat, but also with its wee hours trips to Los Olivos with my Uncle Mingo, for the milking chores and later to enjoy watermelons on the river's bank.

There were the delicious jams and the mango, tomato and cashew candies that Tía Lolita made. And how could her Christmas presence, with the box of Danish cookies that we so came to expect in those childhood Decembers, ever be forgotten?

Her sisters and brothers, Ana, Rosita, Merce, Fanny, Nicanor, Juanelo, Juan Marcelino, Manuel Balbino, as well as Sara and Carmen, always found in her, as did all of her relatives throughout all her live, this kindness that radiated with her voice and gaze, and which she always knew to share with everybody.

Heliodora Villalaz Moreno --- Maestra Lolita --- was born on December 19, 1910 and left this world this past August 14, in the caring presence of her children René and Doris, with their respective spouses Elvira Elena and Yoyo, and beloved by her 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren who, just like us --- her nephews and other relatives --- today mourn her departure.

The widow of Don Domingo Villalaz Villalaz, who prededed her in death in 1978, Tía Lolita never stopped being a mother and teacher in all of her works and daily actions, which were never of interest to our modern communications media because for them it's not good business to publicize those who do good things.

Maestra Lolita has left, and where she went you will find many other teachers of her generation who preceded her in compliance with nature's law.

The teachers Judith Plicet, Clement Correa, Celia Moreno, and all those who, like Tía Lolita and her sister Carmen, carried in their hands and in their hearts "the living book of heaven, which leads to redemption." They knew how to make a reality of the sage teaching of Montaigne that "The child is not a bottle that must be filled, but a flame that must be lit."

We are told that in every memory there is a certain sadness, and this is so. But there is also joy at having been able to be close to such kind human beings as my Tía Lolita, Maestra Lolita.

*Glory be to the self-denied one who cares
With love for the Fatherland... To [her] health!
To [s]he who puts the light of life
Into the soul of the youth

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Maestra Lolita