Mang Iking

I am referring to Mr. Enrique B. Santos,  whom I, and other PR practitioners of my age, would   respectfully call Mang Iking. He is 80 years-old now, and  has been ailing for sometime. Mang Iking  was tops as a PR practitioner when he was active in the 1970s and 1980s. He was vice president for public relations of the Philippine Airlines for many years. Among his chores was conducting briefings for the media when some PAL aircraft was involved in  an accident. Owing to his experience in the airline industry, Mang Iking wrote no less than three books, between 1969 to 1981,  on the history and development of commercial aviation and the airline industry in the Philippines.

Mang Iking, who wore a crewcut,  was an affable man,  given to sharing wisdom with younger colleagues. O, this is the way it is, he would say, in his low authoritative voice. 

In 1972, his friend Manny D. Benipayo of MDB Publishing, published his book, PR: Living on Bull's-Eye" probably  the first PR book published in the country. The book is out of print now. 

In it, Mang Iking says: "Few managements realize that it is always what it does, never what it says about itself, that gives a corporation a good reputation."  

And also: "PR is not a loom on which cloth can be woven out of thin air. It is not a magic wand by which to coax public approbation out of a hat. It can work only with what is factual." 

Mang Iking had been a newsman before he turned to PR. He was  desk editor in the Manila Chronicle, where he worked twice, the first time in the 50s, and then briefly in the early 70s, after he left PAL.  In the Chronicle he  was recognized as  chief language and style technician, and the "drillmaster who taught several batches of young reporters how to write good copy." (Raul Rodrigo, The Power and the Glory, The Story of the Manila Chronicle, 1945-1998).

"He was an awfully hard worker, spent all his time at work, especially when he was a journalist,'' Marina,  his wife of 58 years, says. "Though he was a taskmaster, his reporters liked him, for he was always fair."  Mang Iking and Aling Marina are alone now, for all their surviving children are in the U.S. 

Mang Iking was like R.R. de la Cruz, Pete Teodoro and Joe Carpio.  All  older than we,  they generously and unhesitatingly shared what they knew of PR, which was a lot,  with us.