Remembering Cesar C. Climaco

"RESERBA uno de ese para comigo (Reserve one of these for me)," he jokingly said upon seeing the coffins in a funeral home after inspecting a fire incident just across the street. For his constituents who always knew him to crack jokes, play pranks and guffaw like a clown even in the face of adversities, there was nothing unusual with his demeanor on that fateful morning.

At 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 14, 1984, however, that lasting cruel joke, as the song goes, was on him. Moments after leaving the funeral home, he boarded his Honda blue motorcycle and slowly waded through the traffic. Unknowingly, lurking behind him was a man in denim pants and blue checked shirt, tasked to cruelly fire at him at close range. The lone gunman fled almost leisurely among the milling crowd, leaving the 68-year-old without a hint of life.