Remembering Wykes

The epitome of an officer and a gentleman. The quintessential cool. That is how I remember Reynaldo Wycoco, having had the privilege of working with him up close and personal for a few but fruitful years.
I first met him at the coffeeshop of the Mandarin Hotel in Makati sometime in September 1992 in a meeting with then Interior and Local Government Secretary Raffy Alunan. I presented before the chief information officers of the DILG-attached agencies a working paper on the need for a public affairs council to coordinate and integrate their information plans and programs for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Colonel Wykes was then chief of the PNP police community relations.
Being the most senior officer, he was offered by the Secretary to chair the proposed council. He politely declined. And to my great surprise, he recommended that I headed the council, being the principal proponent. I was serving as special assistant to the DILG Secretary that time. Thence, I practically had daily talks – in meetings or through the phone – with Wykes and then PNP PIO Supt. Cris Maralit on the ever-burning police issues.
The police then – as now – was raked in coals, its image seared and sooted. But no matter what, Wykes was the Iceman personified. Even when the Secretary blew his top. And yeah, not once did I hear him raise his voice. Even to errant cops or his erring staff.
The late Louis Beltran was a thorn on the Secretary’s side. A number of well-meaning friends of Tiyo Paeng – as we fondly called the Secretary then – tried to “soften” the hard-hitting journalist, but all failed. Wykes took me one morning to dzRH where Louis was having his broadcast. At the sight of Wykes, Louis told us to “tell Raffy to sleep well na.”
It was in the islands of Tawi-Tawi however that I got to know how cool Wykes really was. This was on a mission to reach out to “lost command” separatists in 1994. Governor Gerry Matba, an MNLF original commander, put on rickety boat a handful of his full-armed men along with us – Wykes, myself and Abet Bernardo, head of the National Reconciliation and Development Program – and spec to a remote island municipality where the lost command were holed up.
As we arrived long after dark, it was decided that we met the next morning. After a hearty dinner of grilled tuna and assorted fish and seaweed, we retired to our room in the mayor’s house.
Shortly before dawn, I was roused by Abet holding his Glock semi-automatic pistol.
“Gisingin mo si Wykes. Na set-up tayo,” he whispered.
Wykes – in pyjamas -- was his usual cool when I woke him up.
“Wala na si governor pati mga bata niya,” Abet apprised us of the situation, parting the curtain at our room to show a vacant sala where Matba and his security slept.
Wykes asked me to crawl and peek into the room where the mayor’s family slept. I saw the whole family there.
“Relax, wala silang balak sa atin. Hindi nila iiwan ang pamilya kung yayariin tayo. They can serve as our hostages,” Wykes assured us, and just to show everything was alright, he went out of the house – without a gun – where he found the governor cooking our breakfast.
At the negotiations with the lost command group, Wykes was all tact and patience in face of the near impossible demands. In the end though, more than fifty hardened fighters gave up an assortment of high-powered weapons, including AK-47s and RPGs and returned to the fold of the law.
It was this episode that Wykes had always in mind from then on whenever he introduced me to his friends and subordinates, saying: “Masikip ang pinagdaanan namin ni Bong.”
I joined Wykes in some other “missions of peace” in Sulu and Lanao and in the Cordilleras.
The first time we met after his assignment to the NBI, I asked him for his business card. He wrote at the back “Dear Bong, To an old friend and fellow crusader for peace, my best regards.”
To my gentle friend: Rest well in the bosom of our Father.
(COMMENTARY, Sun-Star Pampanga, Dec. 23, 2005)



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