Learning to catch up with ‘Tita Eggie’ as she was shaping PH history

On Sept. 13, 2026, the country lost Eugenia “Eggie” D. Apostol, adjudged by TIME Magazine as a heroine of the Edsa People Power Revolution. She was the founder of Mr&Ms which led the “mosquito press” that helped topple the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, and the founder of Philippine Daily Inquirer, which became the number one broadsheet in the country. The author wrote this article in 2005, as part of the 80th birthday tribute to Ms. Apostol, and was read at the Inquirer party.

The author spent practically her entire career as the design/layout artist of Ms. Apostol, dating back to when this pioneering editor founded and ran the Woman’s Home Companion, the leading women’s magazine in the ’70s, and onwards to the Mr&Ms, and finally the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

We note an uncanny coincidence: Ms. Apostol died on the birthday of Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc (LJM), the former editor in chief of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the other heroine of the Edsa People Power Revolution cited by TIME magazine. LJM passed away in 2015. 

We are running this as tribute to the journalist who gave the Filipino a brave voice in the fight for constitutional democracy and freedom.

1985

Back in 1972, I was fresh out of fine arts school and still jobless when Martial Law turned my intended career path around and led me into the publications world of Eggie Apostol. The Manila Chronicle had just been closed down by the government, and my professor, Rod. Paras-Perez, tipped me off about an intrepid group of now ex-newspaper editors and managers putting up a “safe” woman’s magazine within the controlled press environment.

Entering a side door of the Chronicle building in Ortigas, Pasig, then winding through a labyrinth of corridors past armed soldiers guarding the premises, I knocked on a door looking for a Mr. Eddie Apostol. A spritely lady behind the big desk answered,  “Yes?” And I learned fast enough that the editor was a she. It was the first time I heard the fine lady whose name I now knew as Eggie. 

Ms. Eggie Apostol (it was the time of Gloria Steinem’s “Ms.”) asked me to do a mockup for a magazine,  and could I start right away?

Inexperienced as I was, she asked me to design—pronto—a logo for the Woman’s Home Companion (WHC) magazine,  with help from her art consultant, my old professor Rod. Paras-Perez. 

I got initiated into the guerrilla-type operation that I would henceforth come to know as vintage Eggie Apostol.

It was my first job, and I was starstruck encountering the personalities Ms. Apostol brought to our cramped editorial office in a building in Edsa. The energy was palpable. Her powerhouse friends turned columnists for the magazine—Gilda Cordero Fernando (GCF), Doreen Fernandez and Nestor Torre would light up their banter with high-faluting words so that I would have to rush to the dictionary after hearing them. And how would I forget the inimitable Onib Olmedo whom GCF brought in to do illustrations for the magazine stories in the Modigliani style he had honed, and which would become the signature style of his paintings. How I would get stressed because Onib, instead of working on his illustrations, would opt to play chess with his good friend, the magazine’s associate editor Vergel Santos, precariously close to deadline. And when he finally drew the illustrations swiftly, they would carry his irreverent humor and would be artworks in themselves.

I remember how for the WHC inaugural blessing, Ms. Apostol invited her artist-friends, who happened to be among the top artists in the country then, to do an interactive mural for the office. Even then, Ms. Apostol was on top of the interaction art trend in the country.

Lynett A.Villariba got initiated into the guerrilla-type operation that she would henceforth come to know as vintage Eggie Apostol: Woman’s Home Companion, November 1972. Mr.&Ms. magazine, January 1976. Mr.&Ms. Special Edition, September 1983. Philippine Inquirer weekly, February 1985. Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 1985. (Photo courtesy of the author— collage of clippings from private collectors and Inquirer archives)

When the successful but under-funded Woman’s Home Companion was taken over by the Roces/Davila-run Graphic Arts Services Inc., it became apparent that Ms. Apostol had to leave her baby in the care of more affluent parents—but  not her publishing dreams. 

Losing the Woman’s Home Companion she founded, she was vacationing in Florida when she hatched a plan to put up another magazine, this time a family type, unisex weekly to be called Mr. & Ms.

I had just given birth to my firstborn when Ms. Apostol—by then we, her staff, were endearingly calling her  “Tita Eggie” behind her back—came visiting to tell me to get back in shape as we were going to deliver another “baby” soon. Having helped give a visual identity to her new baby, which was as old as my son,   I have a personal attachment to Mr. & Ms. 

In 1985, when my phone rang and it was Tita Eggie on the other line, I knew instinctively that she was about to have another baby.

After the success of her Mr. & Ms. Special Edition, she was on a roll. She had good timing and a feel for what readers wanted. This time she was leading up to a tabloid newsweekly,  and could we do it fast?

Eggie Apostol was the ‘dancing queen’ who would dance after she accomplished anything: getting a scoop, meeting a deadline, surpassing circulation targets, or celebrating a birthday—whether on the floor of a cramped workplace or on a wine cellar floor. (Photo by Mandy Navasero)

I had learned to catch up with her timing, though quite grudgingly. Tita Eggie is like instant soup—she wants it served hot. 

When I got to her Dasmarinas Village “war room” (actually a garden), the publication staff had been firmed up— from the publisher to the art director to the editor in  chief, Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc. So let’s get started, Tita Eggie told me.

But wait, we didn’t have a name yet. No problem,  her zeal got the creative juices flowing. We were racking our brains for a name while rocking on a swing when LJM (Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc) came into the picture and blurted out, “Why not Philippine Inquirer, as in Philadelphia Inquirer?”

(After all, LJM had lived in the US city sometime in the past.) 

Someone retorted, “Doesn’t it sound synonymous with the scandal tabloid National Enquirer?” I remember Tita Eggie saying something like, anyway the purpose of the paper would be to expose the scandalous ways of the dictatorship. 

There were also book collaboration between publisher Eggie Apostol and her go-to artist-turned-book designer Lynett A. Villariba—’Duet for Edsa: Chronology of a Revolution 1 & 2′ launched in February 1996, 10 years after the Edsa People Power Revolution.

There was also the question of whether or not the newsboys would be able to pronounce the word “Inquirer.”

But Tita Eggie told me to go for the name and to design the masthead so we could test it. In 10 months, the weekly grew into a daily broadsheet to become the no. 1 newspaper in the country. The rest, as they say, is history.

In 1994, publisher Eggie Apostol wanted Lynett A. Villariba to return and ‘clean up the unmade bed,’ as the early Inquirer layout was described, for the morning-after phase of the People Power Revolution. Editor in chief Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc handed Villaiba, the new Inquirer art director, that mandate.

In 1994, after a nine-year leave and just as Tita Eggie was retiring, I came back to what had become the Philippine Daily Inquirer as art and design director so that I could pick up where we had left off in her garden swing.   

The last picture. Eggie Apostol blowing her cake at age 92, the Inquirer staff singing the Ninoy song ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’ to bring her back to that historic moment in 1986. (Photo by Mandy Navasero)

It’s been  54 years since I walked through that side door of the Chronicle building. I feel fortunate to have been around when Ms. Eugenia Duran Apostol was writing history.