“Wonder Woman,” AKA Beng Dalisay, AKA June Potocar

By: Bob Boyer

 

I confess that I have not yet seen the movie, “Wonder Woman,” but I plan to do so, maybe even before it comes out on the Netflix dvds. Wonder Woman comic books fascinated me, along with the other hero comics when I was growing up in the 1940s. I watched the original TV series in the 1950s. Women heroes have always fascinated me, as any of you who have read my columns about “Strong Filipino Women” will recognize. Imagine my delight, then, when I came across a picture on Facebook recently (June 27) that showed my friend Beng Dalisay holding an article from the June 26 “Philippine Star” with the headline, “Wonder Woman in the House.”

This Wonder Woman in the house is Beng Dalisay. The article is by Beng’s husband Butch Dalisay. Butch is something of a wonder himself, simultaneously wearing hats as journalist (“Philippine Star”), UP English Professor and Creative Writer, and UP System Vice President for Public Affairs. So Wonder Man is writing about his Wonder Woman, and I second the judgement that he came to many years ago.

Butch opens his article with the observation that “over most of the 43 years that we’ve been married” Beng has resigned herself to being known as “the wife of Butch Dalisay.” Butch notes, however, with a clever symmetry, that that was not the case when he first met Beng, nor is it the case so much any longer. Butch first met Beng, or rather saw her from a distance, when he was covering a meeting of the UP University Student Council. She was “center stage” as a star on the Council; he was “a scrawny freshman pecking away at a noisy manifesto in a corner.”

I recall hearing that account from Butch just about 20 years ago when he was my UP counterpart when teachers from Northeastern Wisconsin visited the Philippines on something of a cultural exchange. Butch had by then emerged as a member of the English and Comparative Literature faculty and the University’s Creative Writing Center. I had even read one or two of his books and used one in a class at St. Norbert. Beng was busy I remember designing book and magazine covers (for money) and doing lovely water colors (for herself and for persistent people like me to whom she gifted one). She was also managing a household, which naturally in the Philippines included multiple degrees of relationship. Then as later she also supported students, not necessarily related, through high school. Beng also, to my unending good fortune, came along with Butch, as he introduced me to Philippine literature, culture, history and cuisine. I recall Beng subtly moving to the fore when we visited the Church of San Agustin to enlighten me about the artworks adorning the walls and that she was already preparing to restore.

Butch came to St. Norbert College about a dozen years ago for a semester as Visiting Professor of English, and “Butch’s wife” came along. I had just retired from full-time teaching and had written a memoir about my times in the Philippines. Beng read it and agreed, I believe happily, to illustrate it with 37 sketches. She later took me in hand, with a photographer, and created the cover for “Sundays in Manila (2010).” Whatever I paid her it was too little. Much of the books’s success is due to “Butch’s wife,” although her name appears differently on the title page: “Sketches by June Potocar Dalisay.”

I have continued to follow Beng’s career, mainly as the lead person of the art restoration team, but also curator of exhibits promoting the work of other artists, something she has always done to some extent. In fact I have four paintings and two sculptures by Filipinas, in addition to the three of Beng’s that I have wrestled away from her.

As Butch approaches the end of his Wonder Woman article, he completes the symmetry of his fond portrait. He marvels at the number and importance of the restorations Beng has done with her team. Even I recognize the names like Juan Luna, Amorsolo and Ocampo and, to quote Butch, “even a Miro print.” Most recently Butch attended his wife’s lecture-demo on art restoration. “That’s the woman I saw transforming a roomful of young Ilongo artists—almost all of whom had never met or even heard of her before—from curious and polite listeners to an animated gaggle eager to practice on their own artworks. I sat like a mouse in a corner of the room . . . .” Ms. June Potocar, center stage.

Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or www.anamericaninmanila. com.