Marie Rose Abad died in the Sept. 11 attack on the twin towers but her memory lives on a slum village in Tondo. After weeks and days of listening to coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy that shook the world like a tsunami, it is refreshing to come across a story that doesn’t necessarily dwell on the evil that the act was, but on the good that came out of it.
Like the thousands of families who lost relatives in the Twin Towers attack in New York, Rudy Abad also lost the love of his life – wife Marie Rose, on that fateful day ten years ago. The 49-year-old senior executive at the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods was working at the 89th-floor office of the twin tower when the second plane slammed below her office. She perished shortly after making her final call on her cell phone to Rudy. Ironically, Marie Rose survived the first terrorist attack on the towers with a bomb in 1993.
Rudy tells of being ‘lost’ after the tragedy and only after meeting friends involved with the charitable organization Gawad Kalinga, three years after, that he remembered his wife’s wish to help the poor in the Philippines. Gawad Kalinga which means ‘giving care’ builds homes for poor communities in the Philippines and other parts of the world.
That wish happened when the couple visited the Philippines in 1989, the first time back home for Rudy who left Manila in 1963 to study in the U. S. Rudy, who come from an affluent family, eventually became a U.S. citizen and married the New York- born Marie Rose, the daughter of Italian immigrants. Rudy recalled that during that visit, the couple was struck by the extreme poverty that confronted them. Marie Rose was deeply affected and promised to “someday” return and do more than just buy ‘lottery tickets’ from poor children peddling in the streets.
To honour her memory and fulfill her wish, Rudy decided to donate $60,000 to Gawad Kalinga to build 48 one-story homes for a village in the Tondo slums, one of the worst in the country. Today, a thriving community 
lives in the village named Marie Rose Abad and residents who never knew their benefactor consider it as a bright spot in an otherwise bleak event that happened thousands of miles away.
“It’s like a new life sprang from the death of Marie Rose and so many others,” resident Nancy Waminal, a 37-year-old mother of two told a reporter. “We now survive because of her.”
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