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Chapter 1 of the story of Robert Ramos, Life and Death of a Journalist...continued.

(part 7)

© 2005, Mark Murphy
Not to be reproduced or resold without the express written permission of New England Press.
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His life was now more mysterious than ever. He had become a journalist. Ironic, because it is also something my wife became in first grade. Only...in those days, you didn't go out and write invetigative pieces, or articles that exposed graft and corruption. My brother in law had turned into something we none of us expected. A respected journalist who had touched more than a few lives with his articles...who then drew a huge crowd for his funeral.

His training had been in electrical engineering...not writing. In fact, his writing was so bad, that my wife used to write the love letters he gave to his girlfriends(!!). How now, could this young man have turned around and developed his writing skill to the point where people would want him dead for what he was writing? We though back to a time when Robby had disappeared from his home for 6 months, without a word from him that entire time. One day, with his family; the next, off to places unknown, without anyone having a trace of him. The official story is that he had gone out to discover gold, with a few other people. Back home in the U.S., we had heard about the hoard of gold, supposedly buried somewhere in the jungles of the Philippines...just waiting for the one person who could find it, in all the thick undergrowth. Perhaps he had gone out to search for it? Or perhaps this was the impetus that got him started in journalism? We don't know...yet.

It was about 6 months ago my wife found out he was a journalist; before we both realized the gravity and seriousness of what being a Filipino journalist was. Before we came to realize that my brother in law's death would bring the number of journalist killed in the Philippines to close to 70, since 1986. He had the means to become a journalist, and the connection to make it happen. It was the Katpat's owner who would take a chance upon him, because he worked hard at the profession, staying long after his colleagues had gone home for the night, writing and polishing what he had written. He would give him a job as a journalist...

From what I heard, Archie didn't want Robby to hit quite so hard at the people he was taking aim at. Had I only known...

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