The Philippine Online Chronicles

National Artist for Literature and humorist Alejandro R. Roces passed away Monday morning at the Makati Medical Center said Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, his friend and collaborator, reports the Inquirer.

“He will be forever remembered as a cultural animateur who revived the unifying significance of the fiesta, an educational innovator, an advocate of bio-cultural diversity with 007 Bond-like skills in retrieving the stolen Rizal manuscripts, a seer who appropriately shifted (the celebration of) Independence day to June 12,” Guidote-Alvarez said.

Roces, considered to be the country’s best writer of comic short stories, would have celebrated his 87th birthday on July 13,

Awarded the National Artist for Literature award in 2003, Roces is a Filipino short story writer, essayist, dramatist.

He is also noted for pushing for the shift from English to Filipino in the country’s stamps, currency and passports during his stint as the Education Secretary of President Diosdado Macapagal. Other noted projects during the time were the recovery of Jose Rizal’s manuscripts that had been stolen from the National Archives and the leading the campaign to move the nation’s Independence day from July 4 to June 12.

The CCP will hold a necrological service on June 3, 9 am at the CCP Main Theater (Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo).