By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

LIKE all the rest of his friends and associates (and maybe even the fleetingest of acquaintances), I have nothing but good memories of Jolly Resuello, the executive, tough guy and ready friend. He might have struck fear and awe in the hearts of those who needed some disciplining for progress but that’s par for the course, I believe. In a city where the going can get really tough, only the tough get going, so to speak.

And so, Jolly must have known the risks, the challenges that were sure to come his way when he decided to embark on what to many laid-back people in his city were risky, even foolhardy, propositions just to change the total outlook of San Carlos City – and its residents as well. But if he didn’t take it, so he must have reasoned to himself, no one ever will. And where would his city be but in the doldrums forever

The rest, as they say, is history. Soon after he assumed the top executive position in the city, there was no stopping his vision for a surging, soaring San Carlos. And people from far and near were soon sitting up and taking notice of the “miracles” being wrought in San Carlos by a man who started out in his public service career as “a mere barangay captain too ambitious for his own good,” as one citymate (who has since become his admirer), described him once years back.

* * *
You have to see and talk to Jolly up close to know what he is as a man of his house and as a father of his city. To those he finds — in his uncanny sense of sizing up strangers — to be close-minded about his abilities, he’d give them a report on his accomplishments and leave it at that; he’d prefer not to elaborate, wearing this rather thin smile on his lips all the time. Quite a natural human defense mechanism, if you ask me.

But to those who have an open ear for him, he’d spend time detailing his plans, sounding almost boyish and childlike about it, lavish with hjs smile and laughter and won’t hear of an early by-you-leave-sir from that friend and visitor until he has at least broken bread with him, sipped a cup of coffee or two before seeing him to the door with a firm shoulder pat or brotherly hug.

Jolly likes to sell his ideas.

* * * *
I remember one of my last meetings with him while I was coordinating a presidential visit to San Carlos City along with the Presidential Management Staff and other Malacanang functionaries. An overzealous police officer in the meeting had almost whisperingly “tipped” him off about the presence of a mediaman (me) in the room. When Jolly, eyebrow knitted, asked who he was referring to and the officer pointed to my direction, Jolly let out a short laugh and told the cop who I was loudly and that his “pare Behn” had his “clearance” all the time.
Any occasion where we bump into each other, Jolly never fails to greet me first. I don’t know how he does it (he must really be extra wary and alert anywhere he goes) but he seems to see and pat me me first before I ever see him.
The crowd at the San Carlos city plaza that fateful Saturday night really must have so overwhelmed him he dropped his usual defenses – and did not see the Hand Of Evil approach.
Rest well now, my friend!