"On Ship to Philippines, Food for Hungry Minds"

by Dennis Hevesi

Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 1, 1994

Week after week, on a freighter out of San Francisco bound for the Philippines, four brown-paper packages bearing six books apiece can be found, tucked among the heavy-equipment crates, on a journey that began in a Brooklyn, New York basement.

Those books, collected from friends and neighbors, are Dr. Jorge Suarez's way of giving something back to his native land, in particular to the town of Janiuay on Panay Island, 200 miles and a 24-hour ferry ride south of Manila.
It was there, as a small boy, that he learned to read from the newspapers and magazines his mother used to wrap the fruits and vegetables she sold at her grocery store.
Now, on the floor above that store stands the Suarez Memorial Library, dedicated to Dr. Suarez's father, Feliciano, who died a decade ago.
It is the only library in town. And its benefactors are several dozen people from Brooklyn -- brought together by Dr. Suarez and his wife, Nina -- who find satisfaction in knowing that their old books have new life, imprinting on minds in a faraway place.

So far, Patricia Piazza, who worked with Dr. Suarez at the Brooklyn Hospital Center until his recent retirement, has donated about 100 books, she said, "from Stephen King to Camus -- they're both existentialists, right?"
It's great that somebody else can benefit from these books," Mrs. Piazza said.
Standing with Mrs. Suarez among the books and packages awaiting postage in their basement, Dr. Suarez, 65, recalled how, in the 1930's, his mother "would buy bales of newspapers" to use as wrapping paper. "So when it arrived and we opened this bale, I picked out the magazines: Life, Look, Collier's."
There were nine brothers and three sisters in the Suarez family. They and their friends from the rutted streets would pore over those newspapers and magazines. "It was reading material for kids in the neighborhood," Dr. Suarez said. "That was our outlet on life outside the town."
There were virtually no books available in Janiuay, with its barrios and surrounding fields of sugar cane, corn and bananas. "The schools had a certain number of books, but you couldn't take them home," Dr. Suarez said.
Somehow, out of that spare environment, Jorge Suarez managed to earn his medical degree at Santo Tomas University in Manila in 1955, before coming to America as a surgery resident at the Prospect Heights Hospital, now closed, in downtown Brooklyn. There he met and married a nurse, Nina Gennaro, eventually moving into her childhood home in Brooklyn.

In 1978, Dr. Suarez, with his wife, returned to Janiuay for the first time and found, to his surprise, that "there still was no library in the town." There were also no phone lines and electricity only in the evening.
"Some acquaintances did not have anything to read, nothing," Dr. Suarez said. "One cousin carried an old Reader's Digest with the binding already torn."

So was born the Suarez Libary, 3,000 volumes worth, shipped package by package over the last 15 years. The Suarezes pay the postage themselves, about $25 each week, sending the packages by freighter because that is the cheapest rate. Dr. Suarez's sister, Imelda, doubles as an unsalaried librarian while operating the grocery downstairs.
"It really started just as a family project," Nina Suarez said. "With four children, we had lots of books. And they are all now recycles." There were Sunday trips to a Barnes & Noble annex, where bags were filled with used and bruised books from the $1 bin. "Then it started to grow," Mrs. Suarez said.
Eight years ago, the librarian at Coney Island Hospital got wind of the project. "The patients no longer wanted hardcover books, too heavy to hold," Dr. Suarez said, "and they changed to just paperbacks." More than 500 books were piled into the family station wagon. "It took about a year to send all that over," Dr. Suarez said.
Neighbors and friends began pitching in, leaving boxes of books on the porch. "It depends when people clean out their basements, their children's rooms," Mrs. Suarez said.

Among the regulars are Jim Miller, 14, and his sister Eleanor, 10, who live down the block and have donated about 100 books they have outgrown. "I read other books now," Jim said. "A couple of Churchill's books, 'The History of England', and also some Dickens, 'Mr. Pickwick'. These kids live in a country that isn't doing as well, so their parents probably can't afford the books."
Eleanor said she like "the feeling of sending books out to kids there," although sometimes it was hard to part with a favorite. "There's one that I really liked, about animals and their friends," she said. "It was hard to let it go, but I did after a while."

The sacrifice is appreciated. "We're gratified to hear of Dr. and Mrs. Suarez's efforts," the Philippine Ambassador to the United States, Raul Rabe, said. Pointing out that there are similar programs, like Books for the Barrios, based in Walnut Creek, Calif., which has shipped more than 600 tons of textbooks to remote areas of the Philippines, Ambassador Rabe said, "We are considered the world's fourth-largest English-speaking country, and these programs provide an important link between our two peoples."
Dr. Suarez said teachers on his island "use it like a reference library".

"I remember when I was growing up, how starved we were for reading material," he said. "Now these things are available, and free. You never know what might inspire some of these kids there."

Send E-mail here.