A beleaguered man toward the end of his lifetime, Rene Knecht was one gentleman from whom his friends and enemies learned a lot about human existence, its ups and downs as he lived and enjoyed them, and made the most of what his reduced circumstances allowed him.

Several times, I had a chance to visit him in his Antipolo lair where he lived with a family who took care of him. While he may have been their patron, his affectionate relationship with them was palpable in the way he and the little girl of the family were attached to each other, and in the informal yet polite way he conversed with her parents.

What was evident in my visits was his constancy in being a gracious host which, I am told, he always was in his 1960s and 1970s heyday, and whose adherence to table manners and high style of dining never faltered.  His stories moved from one subject to another, and from one era to another, not excluding the romantic obsession one presidential sister felt for him, this one straight from a comedy of manners and unrequited love.

Yes, Rene could be outrageously funny. To quote the incomparable editor and writer, Jose Mari Ugarte, who heard and heard of him:
"… dishing out sleazy historical gossip from pre-war Manila about old sex-crazed Spanish families and referring to certain women of influence as 'that china chongga de kubeta' (and of his theory that "all families in the Philippines with names that began with 'De la' came from priests who fornicated (he is a Dela Riva)…"

It was not only for his highflying days as a bon vivant, host in the family mansion in Pasay, disco entrepreneur, traveler and simply gentleman of class and breeding that we should remember him, but for his plight too as a man humbled by the harsh treatment of a segment of this world that was cruel to him. One should remember too the fearless outrage that he heaped on the powers that be when his family's fabled compound was expropriated to give way to an extension of EDSA while allowing the motel row to survive and flourish.

A constant virtue was his privilege and joy as a bosom friend to the likes of Minnie Osmena and his sister Georgia, and to the late Josine Elizalde and Mary Prieto. Undoubtedly, he was an ideal, sincere and beloved friend whose company they enjoyed, and whose reversal in fortune did not diminish their love for him.

Spending time in the prison (for drug possession charges, if I remember right) Rene showed himself a man of sturdy stuff especially in spirit, for a lesser victim of fate and circumstances would have been destroyed.

In the end, what he stood for was faithfulness in loyal friendship, noblesse oblige and fascination for the past, the last not occasionally bordering on the irreverent.

If Rene went on to live today and had had to deal with arrivistes, he would have smiled just the same and welcomed them into his circle of friends for he was never a snob.

He could not be any less, for even in the worst times, he was way above the common and the mundane. To put it simply, his was a class act through and through.