AQUINO KIN WANTS TO REPRESENT R-P IN WORLD SKATING TILTS

When Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III is sworn in as the 15th President of the Republic at the end of the month, many of his relatives won’t be at the grandstand and instead will be following the proceedings from their homes in Virginia and Maryland.

“Our whole family was dedicated to helping Ninoy become president,” Katrina Aquino-Brickman admitted over a delicious filet mignon dinner she and husband David hosted for longtime college chum and our cousin, Marian Catedral-King last night.



“Ninoy” is of course the new president’s martyred father, shot as he was returning from the United States in August 1983.

Katrina was a cousin of Ninoy – her mother, early matinee star Lydia Montanez, married Medardo Aquino, who was a brother of Ninoy’s mother, Dona Aurora. Thus, the new president is her nephew.

Katrina and Marian (visiting from California to attend a relative’s wedding in Manassas, Virginia) were leaders of the Justice for Aquino, Justice for All movement at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City.


“When he was killed, we were all lost. We didn’t know what to do,” Katrina recounted. They vented their anguish in protests, reportedly mounting the first-ever campus demonstration over Ninoy’s assassination.

But her parents became so worried they “exiled” her to the US in 1984.

She later met and married businessman David Brickman, and they have two daughters – Ashley, 16, and Jordan, 12.

Ashley, is an aspiring figure skater. At 13, she represented the US at a youth competition in Morges, Switzerland. She is trying to work her way up to a slot in the US Winter Olympic team.

“We tried to put her in a swimming program, but she wanted skating,” Katrina explained, adding that Ashley was 4 years old at the time. And it appears, she’s never let her eyes off figure skating ever since.





With her green eyes, Katrina and Marian pursue a good-natured debate whether Ashley “looked Filipino enough”.

That’s because Ashley, at her mother’s suggestions, now wants to represent the Philippines in international figure skating competitions. She, they believed, would do proud to her family, the Philippines and perhaps because of the current circumstances, the Aquino name.

“You look Filipino,” Marian’s husband, Tony, assures the girl but only when Katrina is within ear-shot.

Katrina herself has some Russian blood – her grandmother was one a handful of “White Russians” who managed to escape the Bolshevik Revolution and settled in the Philippines.

Finally, after about two decades, Katrina is thinking about visiting the land of her birth again. She’s been out too long to have any intimate knowledge of Philippine politics today, but with another Aquino at the nation’s helm, her curiosity might be getting the best of her.

She has a sister and a brother in Virginia, and a cousin, also an Aquino, in Maryland.

Her dream for Ashley carrying the Philippine colors, we suspect, may be just a subconscious expression of her own yearning to reconnect with her estranged homeland.