BY ADRIAN P. NEMES III
“We lost an extraordinary man,” Bacolod Mayor Evelio “Bing” Leonardia said yesterday on the passing of businessmen Simplicio Palanca.
Leonardia said Palanca was “one of a kind”, adding that he was a man with a vision that nobody else had.
“As early as the 1960s, when our city was relatively laid-back and we were just content with what we had, Atty. Palanca had envisioned the reclamation area. Maybe many did not comprehend what he was dreaming of and how the reclamation would impact us as a city,” he said.
Leonardia said Palanca changed the landscape of Bacolod literally and figuratively, and it is now hard to imagine Bacolod without the reclamation area.
He said that the reclamation project has helped catapult Bacolod to where it is today and if there is any single person who made a colossal impact on our progress and development, without fear of contradiction, we must give the credit to him.
The mayor said, “We now enjoy the ‘tomorrow’ that Uncle Sam envisioned many decades ago. Without him, Bacolod will not be what it is today.”
Palanca, 98, died of a lingering illness in a hospital in Bacolod on Saturday.*
