Father Duenas alumni share their experience at the annual alumni basketball tournament. Jojo Santo Tomas/PDN


As a proud Father Duenas alumnus, I feel compelled to respond to Robert Underwood’s recent op-ed. FD grads are not a bunch of elitists. There is a “mystique attached to being a Duenas man,” but it isn’t “snobbery, connections or . . . old-fashioned networking” that make us stand out. It is good old-fashioned hard work, team spirit and academic excellence.

I see a common thread in the UOG president’s musings about the name-change at his high school (he prefers “Tumon High,” because it’s a unique local name), the educational pedigrees of former Guam governors (or lack thereof) and my alma mater’s name, Father Duenas Memorial School, which he likes because it commemorates a great “Chamorro historical figure.”

I respect Underwood’s opinions, but since he’s attacked my brethren I’ll just come out and say this: his local views seems a bit too petty, insular, parochial, provincial and shallow-minded for a university president.

I sent both of my boys to FD precisely so they could grow up, rise above and see beyond such small-town thinking. Nothing wrong with Guam’s public schools. But let’s be honest: Students enrolled in academically superior college preparatory schools like FD are challenged every single day, both intellectually and spiritually, to reach for the stars. Their greatest inspiration comes not from enlightened faculty but hard-working classmates also struggling to achieve a level of excellence sufficient to matriculate into a top U.S. university.

And behind these students are hard-working parents, and grandparents, many of whom themselves have achieved distinguished careers in science, medicine, law, education, military, business or the arts. Yes, the elites!

Underwood correctly observes that only one of Guam’s governors graduated from FD. What he fails to appreciate is that most FD students do not regard the pseudo-occupation of politician as a particularly promising or meaningful career. Students enrolled at elitist college-prep schools want to be the microbiologist who develops a vaccine for AIDS. They aspire to be the geneticist who finds a cure for pancreatic cancer. They dream of being the astronaut at NASA sent on a deep space mission; a renowned heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai; a talented software engineer at Apple; a great novelist at Oxford or an English professor at Stanford University; the next CEO or CFO of General Electric, Boeing or Bank of America; a three-star admiral in the Navy; the first Guamanian appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In the days and years ahead, our island and our nation will be facing many extremely serious challenges. Some of them, like China’s military expansion, North Korea’s nuclear threats and climate change will be external in nature. Other complex challenges will arise internally from an unresolved political status, uncontrolled in-migration, an extremely high poverty rate and GovGuam’s near-certain insolvency.

Overcoming these challenges will require the brightest of minds and purest of hearts in both public and private sectors, and I have no doubt a significant number of these future leaders will be FD grads. Fortes in Fide (Strong in Faith).

Oliver Bordallo is a resident of Tamuning.


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