RICKY  REYES:  'MOTHER'  INSTINCTS

MANILA, June 14,  2004  (STAR) By TANYA LARA Photography by Menchit Ongpin and Bern Mejias (for People Asia Magazine 06/01/2004 )  When we say everyone calls Ricky Reyes "Mother," we do mean everyone - his employees, his friends, people who don't know him, the media, and the country's past and present leaders including former President Fidel Ramos and former First Lady Ming Ramos, President Gloria Arroyo and First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. When he met the Queen of the Netherlands or the Prince of Belgium or then US First Lady Hillary Clinton, we wonder if Ricky was introduced as "Mother" to them as well.

The irony of it cannot possibly be missed by anyone. First of all, he's a man, a gay man, but he hardly ever dresses in drag. So why couldn't they have called him "Father" instead? Well, perhaps it wouldn't have really described him. "Father Ricky Reyes" sounds like a priest. Fathers are quiet and serious. Besides, his own relationship with his father was a difficult one at best - this was a man who rejected Ricky from the very beginning, when he refused to put down his name on his son's birth certificate and instead put his brother's name as the father. On the other hand, mothers like to dispense advice, they like to hold hands, they solve problems and keep the house clean. There's even a superhero ring to it- the Avengers ran to Mother for direction; Father was the evil manipulator.

And so "Mother Ricky" it was to everybody.

"I feel flattered that people call me `Mother,"' Ricky says with laughter. "I think it's a sign of respect for the things I do with my life. My employees feel that I'm a mother to them, especially since they ask my advice on everything."

In his neo-classical house that's unapologetically

flamboyant, there's a portrait of Ricky Reyes dressed as a woman. Right in the foyer where you can't miss it - the Queen of the House with a tiara on her head. This house and his other houses in Tagaytay, Greenhiils and Batangas are perhaps the only things that Ricky spends as much time and money on as he does on his chain of salons and charity work.

By now, everybody knows the story of his life. And you can split it right down the middle - before 1980, when he was struggling with his career as a hairdresser and after 1980 when his universe expanded.

Ricky never tires of telling the hard battles he won. He talks about them when he delivers speeches to the graduating students of his school, the Ricky Reyes Institute, or at Rotary Club meetings where he's often invited. How Ricky saw his mother Amada being abused physically and emotionally by his father. How he began his career sweeping floors at a beauty parlor. How he, his mother and six siblings were ejected from their apartment every two months because they couldn't make the rent. How at 16 he became the breadwinner. How he eventually had his own beauty parlor in 1970 - a corner space with a mirror, a chair and a water basin in a dry cleaning shop - up to his first branch in San Juan and at an SM Mall when Henry Sy was just starting to build his empire.

"I have been poor myself and I know how it is to want, to not be able to eat until somebody comes to me for a haircut. I know there are a lot of people out there who are experiencing the same things that I did. God has been so nice to me. He's given me so much that it's only right to give back."

In 1980, he opened a branch of Ricky Reyes on Aurora Boulevard and became known for his work with TV host Chiqui Hollman, Sharon Cuneta and Pops Fernandez. As most of the '80s were, hair was big back then - bangs were piled high like a stack of pancakes, women wore their hair permed to a crisp or teased to death, or they wore them in zigzag cut. Chiqui Hollman's style practically sparked a craze - short, wavy and with the bangs colored in green or blue or blonde. For most of the decade, Ricky did the hair and makeup of so many young stars like Sharon Cuneta and Pops Fernandez. Money was pouring in and for the first time, he was able to afford things he had never been able to, like his own house.

"Every responsible Filipino businessman should learn how to give back. I believe in the superstition that if you keep all your money, magiging sakit lang yan kagaya ng cancer."

At the start of his community work, Ricky saw things through the compassionate but narrow scope of a beautician. In 1984, he began the program "Isang Gunting, Isang Suklay," which would give free haircuts to poor people. Ricky and his hairdressers were brought to Dasmarinas, Cavite, where "people ate only once a day." He was standing in the middle of a barangay looking at their dirty faces and realized: These people didn't need a haircut, they needed to learn how to cut hair.

Thus began the livelihood training that would later be duplicated around the country. To Ricky, it was the perfect micro-enterprise: One, because it didn't need a lot of capital, just a pair of scissors and a comb to start; two, because the market was open. "Everybody grows their hair. We teach them to cut hair and their market is the whole barangay"

This small gesture began to snowball. Pretty soon, local government officials were calling up Ricky to hold his training in their poor communities. When Ricky talks about the many successful stories of the "graduates" from "Isang Gunting, Isang Suklay," his eyes well up. Some of these out-ofschool youth and unemployed women have opened their own parlors and now earn modestly, while others have gone abroad for even greater income. Of course, in the beginning people suspected that he was doing it for his own means - a way to get elected, why else was he doing all that traveling to godforsaken communities? - but as Ricky points out, the programs he started are politically blind. They have outlasted the presidencies of Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada and are sure to outlast the present one. And he's had to politely turn down invitations from politicians to run for office.

His friendship with then First Lady Ming Ramos helped him transform his community work to an even bigger stage. They set up Helping Foundation, which builds and runs livelihood centers nationwide, offering vocational courses such as sewing, hotel and restaurant services, food technology, electronics, automotive repair and micro-enterprise development.

The first one was set up in Smokey Mountain in 1994, then in Sapang Palay and Dasmarinas, and in seven other places around the country. What's remarkable about these is that they're institutionalized - Ricky makes sure they aren't used just for political propaganda and that their existence don't depend on who's sitting in government.

Columnist Beth Day Romulo said in the book Hair Majesty by Abe Florendo, "I admit that when I first heard of Ricky Reyes before I met him, I puzzled why Mrs. Amelita Ramos chose him to help her with her projects as First Lady. A hairdresser in Malacanang? But it became abundantly clear to me... Ricky is a very generous man - generous with his talents and with his time."

Ricky says, "When a politician is elected, he starts a livelihood program, then the money runs out, so they close it down, and then it opens again when there's an election. But poor people don't have the luxury of time, they need to earn right away or else they won't eat for the day. With Helping Foundation, at any given time, anywhere, they can go and acquire these skills."

Six years ago, Ricky started another program - this time for children. In 1998, he visited cancer patients at the Cancer Institute of the PGH, where he saw how the disease had not only weakened their bodies, but their young spirits as well. His first mission was to provide them a place where they could pass the time while waiting for their treatment. He was given a room in the hospital, which he equipped with an air conditioner, toys, books, games and a TV set. He called it "hunting Paraiso" or Small Paradise. Next, Ricky enlisted his friends to donate money to buy boxes of dextrose, anesthesia, food and medicines for the children. He also went to manufacturers directly so they could get medicines at cost.

The program demands continuous support and this is where Ricky is indefatigable. He recruits just about everybody to help. At the recent graduation rites at the Ricky Reyes Institute, which graduates about 500 students every quarter (the courses are broken down into modules - like hairdressing, makeup, facials - and last three months each), he asked the graduates for a birthday gift - to volunteer P50 each to help the cancer patients. "That P50 would prolong the life of a child for one week, because I can buy two dextrose bottles from the factory at only P25 each," he said. His 1,200 employees in his 44 beauty salons have also pitched in. They pledged P10 per payday to put into the foundation.

The money comes in trickles, but it comes steadily. More importantly, there's the "Mother Factor." Ricky can charm anyone into committing time and effort to his causes. His enthusiasm, like his laughter and zest for life, is contagious. "Ang sarap gumawa ng mabuti. It's not because it always comes back to you. I don't buy that. For me, it's the sense of happiness that I get from doing good. You have rich people who are very unhappy with their lives because they're empty. If only they knew what joy a simple deed can do."

On his last birthday, Ricky went to the PGH where 50 children with cancer greeted him by singing and each giving him a cupcake with a candle stuck in it. After the song, one of the children said they were "very happy for having graduated - not from school, but from cancer."

"I still cry over things like that, even after doing this for five years," Ricky says.

"When you're in this status already, money doesn't matter anymore. You're too jaded. You don't care for all the trimmings in life. It's the little things that become very important."

Last January, the foundation was able to put up the first temporary home for people with cancer. "We help around 400 to 500 children with cancer every year, but we still see thousands of people dying of cancer in the countryside. I think the reasons are that there are no specialists in the provinces and even when the patients come here to get their treatments for free, it's not really sustained because they don't have a place to stay in Manila. They sleep in parks, in jeepneys, in the corridors of hospitals. So we approached the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and they gave us the site at the back of their office and we built a 150-bed home for them."

Called the Child House, children can stay here for free for 60 days so they don't have to make the trip back and forth to their provinces.

Ricky Reyes still bears the scars from a difficult childhood and a broken home, but there's no more bitterness now. Though he had to pay off his father to the tune of millions to leave them alone (as telenovelas go, his father began to recognize him only after Ricky became rich) and though he didn't make peace with him until Ricardo Sr. was dead, Ricky looks back at his past with such gratefulness that you wonder whether "Mother" should instead be "Saint."

"If not for those cruel times, I probably won't be this compassionate towards other people. In the beginning, I hated my father so much but when I went to his grave, I said, 'Thank you. You made me tough.' I tell people that the world is full of hope. The one question they always ask me is,'Is it still possible for them to get out of poverty?' I say yes."

Through the years, Ricky has trained thousands of hairdressers and makeup artists, and many of them leave his company to put up their own. He looks at this philosophically and with a heart bent on mentoring. "When a baby eagle gets his wings, you have to let it fly. There will be other young people who will come to me to be trained."

Everybody who knows Ricky knows him as a great businessman but above all "pusong mamon" and truly a family man - or as he likes to put it, "Dalagang Pilipina." His partnership with Cris Aquino has lasted 28 years -longer than most marriages nowadays - and Ian, the son they adopted, is now 27 years old and living in the US with his wife.

He says with a laugh, "Women who come to my shop tell me, 'Ricky, make me beautiful, my husband is fooling around or my boyfriend has left me.' Ninety-nine percent of the women who come to my shop are depressed! I always tell them to make the marriage work for the sake of the children. That men will be men, they're philanderers by nature, they will always fool around. When a woman becomes liberated, that's the end of her marriage. A woman should always be submissive."

After picking ourselves up from the chair we fell off from, we ask Ricky why he has such conservative views on family.

"Maybe it's because I didn't have a complete family when I was growing up," he says seriously. Then, typically of Mother, he raises an eyebrow and shrieks, "Hoy, bading, bigyan nga ng kape ito para magising sa katotohanan!"