Ana Maria Lammoglia was Bambi Harper

WE said goodbye to Bambi this week. She was a public figure who first came to notice as Maid of Cotton, a beauty title that led her to a brief and memorable run as a model. Eventually as a settled citizen, she was one of the founding members of the Heritage Conservation Society, one of the initiators of National Heritage Month, a newspaper columnist invested in Philippine history and traditions and many more efforts along this area. She had an extensive knowledge of Philippine antiques and traditional Filipino artisanship. She was appointed and served as the Intramuros Administrator for a number of years. She lived her life fruitfully and elegantly. And she served her country.

I knew her best from our Assumption college days. She was the tall and willowy beauty who had a deliberate slow walking pace. She was a presence on campus and had the brains to make life interesting for herself and others. A woman of strong opinions delivered in ironic terms sometimes, or cutting humor at other times, she and I joined the school paper. She wrote a lot of poetry in the beginning. She also wrote prose reviewing Dante or writing about her war memories though she was only two when she experienced World War 2. But she said she remembered more than the adults around her credited her for. In our essays in the school paper we expressed our attitudes towards life though we had hardly experienced that much of it to come to any conclusions. We were influenced by what we read. We planned the articles and plotted who to interview, usually daring to ask authority figures to answer our cringe-worthy questions (realized post facto).