Salvador Laurel

His grandfather, Sotero Remoquillo Laurel, was both a delegate to the Malolos Congress in 1899 and secretary of the interior in the first Philippine revolutionary government under President Emilio Aguinaldo.

Salvador Roman Hidalgo Laurel (, November 18, 1928 – January 27, 2004), also known as Doy Laurel, was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the Vice President of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992 under President Corazon Aquino and briefly served as the last Prime Minister from February 25 to March 25, 1986, when the position was abolished.

Laurel first enrolled at Centro Escolar de Señoritas, where he studied from 1933 to 1935.

Laurel's father wanted Laurel to experience a public school education and so enrolled him first in the Paco Elementary School (1935–36) and then the Justo Lukban Elementary School (1936–37).

He finished elementary schooling at Ateneo de Manila Grade School in 1941.

In his first year of high school, Laurel received second honors, with a general average of 93.4.

Barely three months later, his studies came to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the war in the Pacific Theater on December 8, 1941.

On March 22, 1945, the group evacuated from Baguio and began a long and perilous overland journey to Tuguegarao, where a Japanese navy plane would fly the group to Japan via Formosa (now Taiwan) and Shanghai, China.

The odyssey ended in Nara, where they were confined until November 10, 1945.

The long confinement gave the romantic and impressionable 15-year-old Salvador the luxury of time to write poetry and prose and satisfy his insatiable thirst for books.

Whenever he was lucky to find an English book, he would read it voraciously and discuss it with his mentor, Camilo Osias.

However, his most treasured moments in Nara were those spent with his father, enjoying their daily morning walks in the park when José would discuss his views on life.

On September 15, 1945, his father Jose P. Laurel, his older brother Jose Laurel III, and Benigno Aquino Sr. were arrested by a group of Americans headed by a Colonel Turner and were taken to Yokohama prison.

The Laurel family, except for the former president and Jose III, was flown to Manila two months later on November 2, 1945.

Christmas 1945 was the bleakest one for the Laurel family; their Peñafrancia home was looted and emptied of its furniture, while the former president was placed in solitary confinement in Sugamo Prison in Japan.

Salvador gifted his father a book entitled The World in 2030 A.D. by the Earl of Birkenhead.

Lacked in writing instruments, he used that book to write his Memoirs.

He also wrote the poem To My Beloved Father to lift up his father's spirits and sent it to him as a Christmas present.

The school was temporarily closed by the Japanese government as run by American Jesuits, which prompted Laurel to enroll at De La Salle College High School, where he graduated in 1946.

Laurel was a member of Upsilon Sigma Phi during his university studies.

Towards the end of the war, the Japanese Supreme War Council issued an order to have officials of the Philippine government flown to Japan.

President Laurel volunteered to go alone to spare his Cabinet members the ordeal of being separated from their families.

His wife, Paciencia, and seven of his children went with him.

Among the officials who accompanied him were former Speaker of the National Assembly Benigno Aquino Sr., former Minister of Education Camilo Osias and his wife, and General Mateo Capinpin.

He completed his secondary education at La Salle in March 1946.

His father Jose P. Laurel and brother Jose III would finally return to the Philippines on July 23, 1946.

Although all his older brothers were lawyers, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines as a premedicine student, where he obtained his AA (pre-medicine) and was admitted to medicine proper, shifting to law two years later.

He was admitted to the law school while working to complete his (AA Pre-Law).

At La Salle, he joined a group of young men who planned to go by sea to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia since 1949) and join Sukarno in the struggle for independence from the Dutch Empire, but local authorities stopped them at the pier.

He was acclaimed the University Champion Orator after he won the first prize in three consecutive inter-university oratorical contests: the 1949 Inter-University Oratorical contest sponsored by the Civil Liberties Union; the Student Councils Association of the Philippines, and the Inter-University Symposium on the Japanese Peace Treaty in 1951.

He received his LLB (Bachelor of Laws) degree in UP in March 1952.

He was a member of the Student Editorial Board of the Philippine Law Journal.

Without waiting for the results of the bar examination, he left for Connecticut to study at Yale University, his father's alma mater where he earned his Master of Laws degree in 1952.

He earned the title Doctor of Juridical Science at Yale University in 1960.

Of his studies and scholastic endeavors at Yale University, Myres S. McDougal, a Sterling Professor of Law, Emeritus of the Yale Law School, wrote:

"Salvador H. Laurel was a superb scholar at Yale. Like his father in an earlier day, he came to us in the vital formative years of his intellectual development, and remained to earn his master of laws degree (LLM) and doctorate in juridical science (J.S.D.) with highest standing.

I have taught so many brilliant students from other countries at Yale Law School.

He was a major leader of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO), the political party that helped topple the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos with the 1986 People Power Revolution.

Salvador Laurel was the fifth son and eighth child of José P. Laurel, who served as president during the Second Philippine Republic.

Salvador was born to a family whose lineage spans generations of public servants.