"If my research is right, the VICTORIANO LAZO clan will be celebrating its centennial (100 years) sometime in December 1998. Your project will be a worthy one indeed as it records a family's 100 years! And its impact on the later generations including Victor and Chriselle, will no doubt be a great one. I hope it will move them to aspire to achieve in the tradition of excellence that the family has always valued..."

It was a challenge that I could not resist. I came up with a beautiful picture of a blooming family tree. Ben (DR. Benjamin S. Lazo, MD.) Suzette's other half had long started a graphic drawing and diagrams of the family tree. At that time, I contributed next to nothing. Writing a book was farthest from my mind.

I hope my Memoirs will give his graphics more life and do justice to the Family Tree. In 1998 the tree should have grown bigger and bigger. How many Victoriano Lazos? Wel Vic (Victoriano M. Lazo III or IV) and Yolly could begin adding and counting again, IV, V, VI, VL...

What a celebration it will be!!! But whatever or wherever, it should be a celebration of joy and gratitude. The seeds given by God to the loving couple [to Victoriano S. Lazo and Eriberta Florendo through the miracle of conception, birth, discipline, and loving care] have grown and multiplied beyond their most sanguine hopes. At their golden wedding anniversary, with all their children and grand children around them, they could not get over their good fortune, how blessed they were.

In my younger years (6th through 12th). Dad and Mom would drive our T Ford model to show me a small nipa hut in San Vicente, Ilocos Sur where I was born [May 17, 1924]

"Dont forget your roots, Son!...we were poor. You were born there." When I went back to San Vicente in 1989, I could not find the nipa hut. It was gone. The Lazo family, the Lazo clan have become rich. Not in dollars and cents but with the real and true values of life they have given us and bequeathed to us.