I first met Juan Ponce Enrile in 1989, back when I joined the Ponce Enrile Cayetano Reyes & Manalastas Law Offices. He looked at me and, without missing a beat, asked how I was related to his Grade 2 teacher, a Ms. Barba. He even mentioned her first name — lost to me now — but the memory apparently was not lost to him. 

I told him I didn’t know the woman, though she might well be kin. What I didn’t tell him was what went on silently in my head. I thought, “How does a 61-year-old man remember his teacher from Grade 2 when I couldn’t, at that age, remember mine?” That was the first time I noticed how this man was cerebral, maybe even gifted with a camera where memory ought to be.

At the JAKA Group, I truly saw the workings of the man. He spoke about his life as though reading from a perfectly kept ledger — every teacher, every date, every childhood chapter intact. 

He could talk for hours without pause. As part of the legal department, those sessions with him often felt like Senate hearings — questions flying like bullets. 

He loved debate, but you had to defend your point. Once, when I disagreed with him, he demanded the supporting document on the spot. Good thing I had it. He often reminded us that he had never lost a case. Yet after every dressing down, he would soften and say, “kain tayo.”

In one instance, before a meeting, we suggested an alternative strategy. He dismissed it outright: “Stupid.” End of discussion. The other party arrived, and in the most poetic twist imaginable, he proposed the very suggestion we made earlier. My colleague and I exchanged glances and smiled, learning another lesson about power. And that is that sometimes power doesn’t disagree with you. It just wants the last word.

The moment I saw real fury in him was when I relayed a report from outside counsel that a certain government agency was waiting for “something from the boys” to complete a transaction. He slammed the table and ordered me to report it to the Secretary and set up an entrapment. Thankfully, the transaction proceeded cleanly. Later, the Secretary told me the culprit had been terminated. Justice, in its small way, had been done.

The last time I saw him two years ago, his mind was still sharp, but his body needed an aide for support. Katrina told me I had to shout when speaking. And I remember thinking, this must be the cruelty of age, to be a man who once commanded armies of lawyers and legions of politicians, now held up by another man’s arm. I will never forget his words before I left: “Enjoy life while you are still young. Mahirap tumanda.”

My experiences with him showed that beyond the political figure and formidable legal mind was a human being shaped by struggle, intellect, ambition, and an extraordinary will to survive. He was the boy from Cagayan who rose from modest beginnings, the scholar who used discipline as his pathway out of poverty, the father and husband who valued family, and the man who, despite controversies, remained deeply reflective about his place in history. And this, above all, is how he will be remembered.