Very rarely one celebrates hundred fruitful years on earth still doing what one loves most, such as writing and continuous acquisition of knowledge. Pura Santillan Castrence is already a well-known personality, not only because of her being a prolific writer, but because of her involvement in the Filipino community in Australia and her unquestionable concern over what is going on in the Philippines, which she fondly called—“the old country.” To her admirers, friends and readers of her popular column in the Bayanihan News, she is the well-loved and respected Nanay Pura.
The late historian Carlos Quirino simply summed up her career as a “foreign service officer and writer.” But Castrence, who was born on March 24, 1905, is more than just a “foreign service officer and writer.” In fact, one biographer once described her as a “mother, a university professor, an essayist, a columnist, a critic, a linguist, a journalist and a diplomat.”
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