Two people, one long habit of showing up
Neither of them would have called it humanitarian work. They would have called it being decent. But it added up — over forty years, across a barangay, a city, and more households than anyone kept count of.
Reynaldo “Enad” V. Gealon
Born 11 March 1953. Barangay captain, provider, mentor — and, to his children, the standard against which every other man was quietly measured.
- Born
- 11 March 1953
- Known as
- Papa Enad · Kapitan Enad
- Served as
- Barangay Captain, Cebu
- Married to
- Sylvia Malicay Gealon
The office was never the point
Being kapitan gave Reynaldo Gealon a desk and a title, but the work people remember happened around it — disputes talked down before they became cases, families walked through paperwork they could not read, school fees quietly covered.
He held the view that public office is a debt rather than a reward: that if the community had handed you its trust, the interest was payable daily, in small inconvenient acts.
An inheritance nobody can take from you
If there was one thing he pushed harder than anything else, it was education. He had seen what its absence cost people around him, and he treated a child's schooling as non-negotiable — his own children's first, and then, wherever he could reach, other people's. Tuition, fare money, a uniform, a word put in with someone who could help: these were the currencies he dealt in.
What his children single out, though, is something less material. He believed in them out loud, early, and without conditions — which is a rarer inheritance than money and, they would argue, the reason any of the rest of it happened.
Still here
Reynaldo Gealon is alive, and this site exists largely because of that. His family did not want to wait for a eulogy to say any of it. The tributes gathered here are meant to reach him while he can read them — which is, after all, the entire point.
Papa gave me the greatest gift when I was a child — he believed in me. So I carried on, hoping to be just half the man that he is.
— His son, Atty. Rey M. Gealon
Sylvia Malicay Gealon
6 December 1957 – 12 November 2020. Wife, mother, and the person a great many people in Cebu remember sitting beside them on the worst day of their lives.
- Born
- 6 December 1957
- Passed
- 12 November 2020, aged 62
- Known as
- Mama Akay
- Remembered for
- Love & mercy, grace & compassion
The one who stayed
There is a kind of service that never appears in any record, because it consists almost entirely of staying. Sylvia Gealon was very good at it. Those who knew her recall her presence at bedsides that were not her family's, and through the long, unglamorous middle of an illness — after the first wave of visitors has gone.
1989, Don Bosco Gymnasium
Her son tells one story more than any other. He was a grade-schooler entered in a speaking competition at the Don Bosco Gymnasium in Cebu City, and he lost badly — he describes his own performance as mumbling and stammering through it in front of everyone.
What he remembers is not the loss. It is that his mother met him afterward with no trace of disappointment, and told him she believed he would be a speaker. He went on to become a debater, an orator, and a lawyer. He has never claimed the credit for it.
You nurtured me to become who I am today — so full of love & mercy, grace & compassion.
— Her son, on her third anniversary
Milestones
A working outline of their life together. Dates and details are still being gathered from family and community — corrections and additions are welcome.
-
11 March 1953
Reynaldo V. Gealon is born
The boy who would become Kapitan Enad.
-
6 December 1957
Sylvia Malicay is born
Known for most of her life simply as Akay.
-
1989
An evening at Don Bosco Gymnasium
A lost speaking contest, and the encouragement that redirected a life. Their son dates his entire vocation to it.
-
Years of service
Reynaldo serves as Barangay Captain
Local governance treated as an extension of neighbourliness rather than a career.
-
12 November 2020
Sylvia passes
Aged 62. Remembered across the community for her mercy and her constancy.
-
Today
KASIKAS Humanitarian Corps
The work given a name, so that others can join it.
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New milestone
A note from the family
This site was begun by their son, Atty. Rey M. Gealon, who spent years writing about his parents in fragments — birthday posts, anniversary notes, things written at two in the morning. Gathering them in one place made an obvious thing plain: the record belonged to the community, not just to the family.
If you knew them, you know that neither of them would be comfortable with a page like this. That is precisely why their children built it.