Lolo Tony

Lolo Tony asked for no program. He got one anyway, written by nine grandchildren on the back of a calendar page, and he pretended to be annoyed about it for exactly four minutes.

The house

He laid the first blocks in 1979 with money from three years abroad. Every child, grandchild and great-grandchild present that day had slept under that roof at least once.

The ones who could not come

Two of his children work overseas. A laptop on a monobloc chair at the head table carried them through the whole afternoon — including, at one point, a duet across nine time zones that nobody in the yard was ready for.

Four generations

The photo everyone wanted took eleven minutes to arrange: Lolo Tony seated, his four children standing, eleven grandchildren kneeling, and three great-grandchildren refusing, on principle, to face the camera.

What the guests said

• “He sang first. He always sings first. That is the whole point of him.” — Tita Belen
• “My father taught me to drive in this yard. I hit that post.” — Tito Danny
• “Eighty and he still carried the ice himself.” — Kuya Jun, neighbour
• “I watched from Dubai and cried into my keyboard.” — Ate Mimi, second daughter

The last song

Half past nine, most of the plastic chairs stacked, and the man himself doing an unhurried Matud Nila to a yard of people who had all heard him sing it before and wanted to hear it again.