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| Punong Barangay Patrimonio |
The newly elected Punong Barangay of Bajumpandan, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, once had a death wish.
After losing his arms and four toes in a construction accident, Crispin Patrimonio, then 26-years-old, asked that he be allowed to die and that any assistance be given to support his young family.
Crispin barely finished his Industrial Arts degree from the Central Visayas Polytechnic College when he married his high school classmate, Celestina, in 1990. They were both 20.
But instead of pursuing a white-collar job, Crispin started to enjoy making money as a casual employee in a soft drink company. Six years later, Crispin left the soft drink job to learn welding as an apprentice in his cousin’s shop.
Then the accident happened.
“The steel bar I was holding was sucked by a transmission wire and I got electrocuted,” Crispin said.
“I was burned all over. When I came to, I realized that the doctors cut both my arms and four of my toes,” he added.
But his family refused to grant him his death wish.
Celestina and their two sons, Alvin Chris and Lauren Dale, nursed him back to health and helped him adjust to his new normal. Then their daughter, Natalie, was born a year later.
After six years of unemployment and self-pity, Crispin started to recover.
“If others are able to accept me for who I am, who am I not to accept my condition?” he said.
Crispin pursued his dream of having a home and applied for one at Habitat for Humanity.
Since Habitat required sweat, or labor, equity from beneficiaries, Crispin proved that having no arms was no hindrance to shoveling sand into sacks and performing other manual tasks.
Once he left his Tabuctubig neighborhood to live in a new home at the Habitat 3 Village in Bajumpandan, Crispin started selling banana cue around the village.
“The banana cue, which my wife cooked, would be dangling from my right limb while my earnings would be hanging in a bag on my other limb,” he said.
His perseverance and industriousness got him noticed in the village to the point that he was invited to run for village councilor to fill the last vacant slot in a slate. He came out No. 2 out of seven councilors.
From that point on, Crispin was unstoppable and was in the forefront of every village event.
“Whenever someone from my village is hospitalized, I facilitate the payment of hospital bills,” he said.
“When someone dies, I help process the death certificate and make the funeral arrangements,” he added.
That probably explains why in the next two village elections, Crispin held on to the top spot.
With his legislative career at the end of the three-term limit, Crispin ran and won as village captain of Bajumpandan. (Philippine Daily Inquirer)
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