Smith: Philippine VIP ‘Sonny’ Osmena’s long-delayed return to Sonoma County

Lunching and catching up at the Graton Resort and Casino the other day was a nationally known mayor, former senator and member of the House of Representatives, and grandson of a late president.

John Henry “Sonny” Osmeña isn’t so well known in this country, except to Filipino-Americans. But, at 80, he remains a big name in the Philippines. His granddad, Sergio Osmeña, was the country’s fourth president and a contemporary of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

“I just needed a break,” John Osmeña said to explain why he’d come to California from the Cebu province city of Toledo, where he’s the mayor. He lunched with old friend Cora Powers of Santa Rosa. They reminisced about meeting in Sonoma County in 1972.

Osmeña walks with difficulty because his legs were damaged by the grenades tossed into a Liberal Party rally in Manila in 1971. He was a young Senator unfriendly to Ferdinand Marcos when the dictator declared martial law in ’72. Osmeña fled in exile to San Francisco.

“I needed a job,” he said. He found work in Healdsburg, helping Sonoma County People for Economic Opportunity, now Community Action Partnership, to improve the lives of farmworkers.

Powers, a Filipino-American who worked then for the Council on Aging, befriended him and helped him find a place to live. But the SCPEO program was eliminated a few months later and he returned to San Francisco.

Osmeña took a job with San Francisco Supervisor Ruth Ann Silver. He was at City Hall the day in 1978 that Dan White shot and killed Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

“I heard the shots,” Osmeña said. “I saw all the commotion.”

When Filipino Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was assassinated in ‘83, Osmeña was the first political exile to return home to fight the Marcos dictatorship.

He was re-elected to the Senate of the Philippines, then to the House. He retired but was bored so in 2013, at 78, he ran for mayor of Toledo.

Osmeña said it was good to see to his friend Cora again and also Sonoma County, though after more than 40 years he hardly recognized it.

“I already got a phone call to come home,” shared the mayor. He was needed in Toledo to sign payroll checks.

VIDEO ROLLED as NBC Bay Area meteorologist Christina Loren spoke alongside the Russian River. She wasn’t reporting, but taping her first sermon as part of her pursuit of a master’s degree in theology.

But she slipped into the water. Her grasp on a tree branch kept her from being entirely submerged, or washed downstream.

She just has to call the sermon “A Fall from Grace.”

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD