United Church of Christ
Spotlight
Tom & Nora Flores
Mountain Exile, To University,
To Valley of the Flowers
War II, when Japanese armed forces invaded the Philippines. Much of the population literally headed for the hills. Nora was at home in Cagayan de Oro on Mindanao 500 miles south of Manila. “First we evacuated to our farm eight or nine miles south, then into the mountains. When we returned in 1945 Cagayan de Oro was destroyed from the American bombing.”
Tom Flores was on Panay in the center of the island archipelago. With his sister and her two children he fled to live among the primitive hill people. “We just ran. We had no money, no clothes. When our shoes wore out we went barefoot. My feet became so tough I could walk on rocks. The Japanese soldiers were roaming around so we couldn’t plant crops. There were days when we had nothing to eat, but there are certain plants called apat-apat like four-leaf clovers which you can eat that you wouldn’t eat during peacetime. And I learned to climb a coconut tree." Tom Flores laughs.
“I grew up during those years. I made friends with the mountaineers. I think this is when I learned to respect people who were considered less than me. They wore only a loincloth but they were more Christian than Christians in the lowlands. We always look down on primitive people but they went out of their way to help us.”
After the war Tom worked his way through the University of the Philippines and ranked at the head of his class. Nora graduated at the same time from Silliman University, the oldest American-founded college in Asia. Though 98% of Filipinos are Catholic, both Nora and Tom came from Protestant families so after the war they married in Nora’s home church of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). Then Tom began teaching agronomy (field crops) at his alma mater near Manila. They stayed for 34 years apart from short stints at Cornell, at the University of Wisconsin and in Indonesia.
The Church Among the Palms UCCP actually began under the palms. After the destruction of the war there was no roof. “We had lost our bell,” Tom remembers. “We had only four pews. We had no funds. We had no pastor. Different professors would speak on Sunday. We had no piano.” But they had Nora. She was the soloist, “featured soloist” Tom asserts. She later soloed at UCC churches in Madison, Wisconsin and Ithaca, New York. Church Among the Palms distinguished itself for being among the first churches in the Philippines to host Japanese students. In the mid-1950’s when anti-Japanese bitterness was still toxic the UCCP invited international work crews to help on construction and to plant seeds of reconciliation.
The Flores raised three children: Patrice, Philip and Amy. Patrice eventually became children’s librarian at the Lompoc Public Library. Tom retired in 1988 and eight years later the couple moved to Lompoc. Soon they visited Valley of the Flowers. “We wanted a church with international people,” Nora smiles her spotlight smile. “We wanted different kinds of people. We felt right at home right away.”
Look at Nora Flores’ laughing smile and her husband Tom’s jokester demeanor and you could readily believe they served for three decades as leaders of the Church Among the Palms in the Philippine Islands. But you might never guess they spent years surviving a nomadic mountain existence avoiding the authorities. That came earlier, during World
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Bill and Teruyo Mullins
Bill is a Trustee, and host of the Public Service Video Series, and the Co-op Advisory Group.
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Pastor: Chuck Arnold
Organist: Ruth Lee
Adult Classes: 8:45 am
Sunday Service: 10:00 am
Modern Gospel Music Rally
First Saturdays: 7:00 pm
LMA 2011-2012 Season
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