LIKE many who watched the coronation of King Charles 3rd and Queen Camilla on TV, I was immediately drawn to the Filipino woman wearing an ash blue-colored terno. She had front-row seats along the nave where the cameras easily caught her stiff butterfly sleeves. Chat groups online quickly went abuzz with, "Who is she?" And then minutes later, another woman in a barong terno becomes visible to the camera just behind the lady in gray. Those butterfly sleeves were undeniably Filipino.
Hours after the coronation, I did some online sleuthing and found their identities. The two Filipino women who got the very rare invitation to Westminster Abbey are Charito Leonardo Romano and Xyza Macutay-Malloch. Both are health care workers in the UK. Charito is a nurse and Xyza, or Sam as she is known, is a manager of a home for the elderly. Both women received the British Empire Medal (BEM) in 2021.
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