Whenever I was told “Your lolo Maning is a great man”, I thought I had understood what they had meant. At the age of seven, and lacking a tad of abstraction in my thinking, I had naively equated greatness with physical strength or prowess. Having always recalled the day in the beach when my lolo carried four of my cousins and I from sea water to shore, (since every one of us clung to him for fear of being stung by a solitary floating jellyfish), I then surmised, “yeah, my lolo is great”

It was when I was growing older and the world was, expectedly and congruently, growing “harsher” that I began to fathom the shape in which his greatness took form, and the circumstances which defined his actions as exemplary and truly extraordinary. I realized that my grandfather was not born a great man. He did not consciously choose to be, nor intend to be remembered in such a way. He simply lived his life honestly and with a purpose; a purpose that was not self-serving, self-indulgent, nor self-limiting. As tough and cruel as the times were, he dared to not merely dream, but to dream big; and, to dream big not merely for himself, but for others. Whatever life threw at him, he was steadfast in his vision of how he would author his own fate, unwavering to the pressures put forth by an evolving cynical-materialistic society.

And, that is why Manuel Cases was, is and will forever be “great”.

***
Your spirit will live in us, ceaselessly and without fade.