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Former Speaker of the House
Our wife Gina and we have been spending most of our time in our Dagupan City home by the Lingayen Gulf and the South China Sea since the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic in February last year.
Before the global plague, we would fly to various countries in Asia and around the world, delivering speeches, presiding at meetings, and conferring with world leaders in our capacity as founding chairman of the Asia-wide International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) and co-chairman of the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace (IAPP), among other organizations.
We take pride and joy in our work,
Former Speaker of the House
We are delighted that our son, Congressman Christopher de Venecia, spearheaded the restoration of the home economics building of our old school, the Dagupan Elementary School, now West Central Elementary School, which served as the brief headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur in Dagupan in January, 1945.
The newly restored building, now called “Bahay ni MacArthur” has also been declared a cultural heritage site.
It is still an enigma where the great World War II general actually landed in the Lingayen Gulf area but we are certain he stormed ashore our hometown Dagupan as confirmed by the fact that he set up a command post in our elementary school near the church, and as a nine-year-old we actually saw him with his sunglasses.