Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

Contact:

• Hector Santos (213-413-4642)
• Victor Nebrida (818)369-7159
• Alfonso Quilala, Jr. (818)570-8083

In the latter part of 1994, Victor Nebrida and I were chatting at the Filipino Library in Los Angeles where we work as volunteers. Since we happened to be board members of the umbrella organization (Pamana) that ran the library, we were thinking of things that we could do to make the library a more effective means in the dissemination of information about the Philippines to the local community.

After much thought, we decided that we would start a Philippine history discussion group. We figured that even if nobody showed up, the two of us could continue our regular discussions of Philippine history, anyway. We had nothing to lose. We put out a notice and called on people to let them know about our plans. We were mildly surprised that about a dozen people showed up on February 11, 1995 when we held our organizational meeting.

One of the things we decided at the first meeting was that we were not going to cover Filipino American history. There was another group, the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), that was already active in that field. Since they did not seem to be interested in Philippine history, there would be no overlap and we would not be competing with another group as most Filipino organizations are wont to.

Thus, the Philippine History Group of Los Angeles (PHGLA) was born.

The idea behind the group was simple. At each meeting, a member will make a presentation and lead a discussion on a topic previously assigned to him. A moderator will keep everybody in line and focused on the subject. The moderator also will see to it that all business matters are taken up and that everything on the agenda is on schedule.

We decided to hold our meetings every second Saturday of the month at nine o’clock in the morning in the library. That gave us a chance to have coffee and rolls while we had our discussion meeting. It was too early for some people but they agreed it was not too bad since it was only once a month and that they still had the rest of the day to do their usual weekend chores.