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Poignant memoir on love lost
Allen Gaborro, Feb 09, 2005
Author: Ray L. Burdeos
Publisher: LegaspiBurdeos Publisher (hardcover edition), AuthorHouse (paperback edition)
Year: 1999 (hardcover), 2005 (paperback)
184 pages (hardcover), 244 pages (paperback)

BORN IN Butuan, Philippines, Ray L. Burdeos is a retired member of the United States Coast Guard.

After watching Frank Sinatra’s performance in the movie “Anchors Aweigh,”

Burdeos was inspired to join the Coast Guard in 1955 at the tender age of 18.

He served in the Guard for 23 years until 1978. The proud recipient of several citations and a medal of achievement, Burdeos now lives in Galveston, Texas. He composed his memoirs there in 1999. In them, Burdeos fondly reminisces about the past, in all of its exhilarating blissfulness and unbearable sorrow.

In 1963, Burdeos was assigned as a steward to Capt. Ross P. Bullard, the commander of a Coast Guard vessel based in New York. It was during that stint that he met Kim Bullard, the captivatingly attractive daughter of Capt. Bullard. Burdeos would never be the same after meeting Kim: he fell in love instantly, thereby sparking a passionate, but socially-controversial romance between the hardworking, well-intentioned Filipino serviceman and the chaste American maiden.

Nowadays, interracial couples have become a fairly commonplace and accepted sight for many Americans, although there continue to be enduring islands of intolerance scattered about the U.S. Indeed, what Burdeos had with Kim would have barely caused a ripple in today’s generally more permissive mesh of mores and perspectives. In 1963 though, such a combination was deemed to be undesirable by wide swaths of society, if not entirely condemned.

This was no less the case with the American military, an institution hardly known in the past for its liberal views on interracial romances.

Burdeos’ memoir – “The Steward and the Captain’s Daughter” – is a poignant and frankhearted account of his relationship with Kim Bullard, an unlikely pairing that pointed to the intransigent attitude of the U.S. military, as well as to the queasy impressions that people in 1963 had, toward affairs of the heart involving individuals of different races.

The author is representative of other Filipinos who, in the post-World War II period, aspired to emigrate to the U.S. To get to the promised utopia, Burdeos would have to travel “across an endless ocean of dreams and perceptions” in order to arrive “amid the cherry red Mustangs, movie debuts, and white picket fences of America.” Joining the U.S. Coast Guard would be his ticket to the land of the people he admired so much. But once Kim Bullard came into his life, Burdeos would get more than he bargained for in America.

In getting to know Kim, Burdeos discovered what his book’s prologue referred to as her “three remarkable qualities”: “the charm and grace of royalty; a genuine, universal curiosity un-stifled by custom, common perception nor tradition; and her natural looks, which only served to enhance her gracious manner. The latter hooked Ray. The former allowed him to go willingly.”

It was easy to see why Burdeos fell head over heels for Kim.

Herself a captive of the stirrings of her own heart, Kim felt just as irresistibly drawn to Burdeos. T

heir affair was certainly deep, symbiotic, and pure. Yet, the two lovers were forced to see each other as discreetly as possible due to the disapprobation exacted on them by the society at large.

Trapped in the maelstrom of rigid social proprieties and racial misconceptions, Burdeos was all-too aware of the potential for creating personal mortification for Kim as the result of their relationship. It was only because of his undeniable love for her that he tempted Providence in continuing their romance, despite the risk and complications it entailed.

As fate would have it though, there would be no way for Ray and Kim to suppress the truth for long from her parents. Burdeos was painfully resigned to the inevitability of Kim’s father and mother finding out about what was going on between them. He writes that this would probably bring about “the Waterloo of my desired career and Kim’s alienation from her parents.” Being that he was Kim’s father, wishful thinking dictated that there would be the slightest inkling of a chance that Capt. Bullard would yield to her wishes.

As Burdeos’ commanding officer however, it was a forgone conclusion as to how the captain would respond to a Filipino, let alone an enlisted man, intimately dating his daughter.

Consequently, Burdeos received transfer orders from Captain Bullard, a move that would take him to New Orleans and tear the steward asunder from his beloved Kim in New York. Perhaps with a twinge of bitterness in his words, Burdeos believed that the captain moved him for “personal reasons, not for the ‘need of service,’ which is contrary to Coast Guard policy.”

He is right of course, but that did not change the fact that his fairy tale love affair with the Captain’s daughter was, for all intents and purposes, finished. At least Burdeos was able to save his career in the Coast Guard and avoid deportation back to the Philippines by reluctantly accepting the transfer.

But giving up an eternity with Kim was the stiff price he had to pay for salvaging his future in America.

Fortunately, Burdeos’ story would have a positive ending. As the passage of time healed his heartache, Burdeos went on to enjoy a fruitful career with the Coast Guard and then as a hospital outpatient clinic manager in Galveston.

He eventually married a Filipino woman and became a grandfather.
“The Steward and the Captain’s Daughter” is a fast and easy read. While the book effectively builds up the reader’s tension over what will happen to Ray and Kim in the end, it never goes very far into the main characters’ inner lives, the private sanctum in which their psychological meditations, maneuverings, and conflicts are concealed.

Instead of probing into the characters’ interiority, Burdeos gives us the highest hopes and the strongest emotions of two people brought together by destiny at the right place but at the wrong time. It is the stuff that great, but ill-fated romances are made of.
Gregory Bambo Jr.
Mar 26, 2005 17:17:12

Although a few years earlier for me, this story brings back memories. In 1955, as a steward, I had an affair with a senior officers daughter and was shipped off to another assignment. The results were a blessing in disguise as the Navy's Electronic School provided a technical education which qualified me as a candidate for Naval flight training and an officer's commission. I later had the distinction of being the America's first Filipino/American Naval Aviator in addition to becoming the youngest to attain the rank of Commander and position of Squadron Commander of an Attack Squadron in the Navy at the time. I retired with the rank of Captain in 1975. My bio is posted on Google under: Gregory Bambo Jr.

* This was initially received by email from "Philippine News" production@philippinenews.com