Elpidio Quirino
Elpidio Quirino’s story begins in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, where he was born on November 16, 1890, to a modest family that prized education as a path out of hardship. He worked his way through school, eventually earning a law degree from the University of the Philippines. That climb shaped his empathy for ordinary Filipinos and his belief that nation-building starts with opportunity education, dignity of work, and a government that remembers the poor and provincial as part of its core. His career traced the nation’s own trajectory from colony to republic. As a lawyer, assemblyman, and senator, Quirino learned the machinery of governance and the delicate art of compromise. He served in the postwar cabinet Finance and Foreign Affairs before becoming Vice President under Manuel Roxas. When Roxas died in 1948, Quirino stepped into the presidency, carrying the weight of rebuilding a country scarred by war and personal grief he had lost close family during World War II, a private tragedy tha...