MANILA, Philippines – The highly spirited and environmental activist town of Calbiga in Samar has spheres of distinction that are the envy of other municipalities of its size anywhere in the Philippines.

First, it has carved a niche in the history books of the Church as the cradle of high religious personages in Eastern Visayas as early as the 1900s.

Msgr. Pablo Singzon, a native of Calbiga, was the first Samareño to wear the ecclesiastical hat and the first bishop of the Diocese of Calbayog, then the only territorial jurisdiction in the island-province, in 1910. Succeeding him in 1923 was Msgr. Sofronio Hacbang, also a Calbiganon.

Second, it has an enviable international award of achievement given by the government of Netherlands in October, 2003, as a leading advocate in the management of environmental resources in its domain – the Award for Liveable Communities (of) Nations in Bloom.

But there is another shining eminence about Calbiga that is not widely known in the region, much less throughout the country.

This old “pueblo” originally settled by Spanish friars in the mid-1700s is the hometown of bar topnotchers, judicial luminaries and astute legal practitioners.

Specifically, what makes that refinement more dramatic and awesome is that those legal nabobs of Calbiga are dominated by the family of Singzons.

From the 1920s to the present, there have been 11 Singzon lawyers coming from a town of barely 20,000 inhabitants!

One for the books? Maybe even a "Guinness"!

Take note, if the family name is familiar to you now, dear readers, it is because the 2011 No. 1 bar topnotcher – Cesareo “Ari” Antonio S. Singzon Jr., boyish at 27 – is a Calbiganon.

Before him, some 77 years earlier, his great granduncle – Judge Lope C. Quimbo – was the first Samareño to top the bar, in 1933. Quimbo was the first cousin of Judge Cesareo C. Singzon (1890-1971), Ari’s great grandfather.

Lawyer Cesareo (“Ces”) Ulfrido Singzon Sr., father of the 2011 bar topnotcher, told this columnist, “I feel ‘vindicated’!”

A working student on a scholarship at the Ateneo Law School, Ces “only” placed No. 16 in the bar exams of 1981. He said he waited for 29 years to improve his non-inclusion in the revered Top Ten bar placers, uttered in an obviously jesting declaration, by having his second son do it!

Ces said Ari is the fourth generation lawyer in the family. His direct forebears: Great grandfather (first cousin of the 1933 bar topnotcher Lope C. Quimbo), Judge Cesareo C. Singzon (1890-1971) who was known to ride in his balloon tire bicycle to and from the courthouse where he was a municipal judge, his grandfather Judge Pablo S. Singzon (1924-1991), and, of course, Ari’s father, Attorney Ces.

And a phenomenal interest about Calbiga – Ari is the town’s 11th Singzon lawyer. The other members of the bar: The late Senator Esteban Singzon, Serafin Singzon, Judge Vicente Singzon, Filemon Singzon, Judge Cesareo C. Singzon, Judge Pablo Singzon, Egberto Singzon, Pedro Singzon, Attorney Ces, and Loralaine Singzon-Manuel.

Ces recalled Ari showed early manifestations of going into the legal profession. While a fourth-grader at the Ateneo, he prepared a research paper for his father on the ill effects of cement dust, in an injunction case the older Singzon was preparing for.

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U.S.T. QUADRICENTENNIAL AWARD TO UNESCO DIRECTOR BOKOVA. The University of Santo Tomas, on the occasion of its 400th foundation year, will bestow the Quadricentennial Golden Cross Award on UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova in a convocation on Friday at 9 a.m., at the UST Medicine Auditorium.

The honor is the highest award granted by Asia’s oldest Catholic university to “persons who excel in the promotion of the arts, humanities, and the sciences, or who have distinguished themselves by their total service commitment to mankind.”