Elpidio

     Elpidio Rivera Quirino (1890-1956), the sixth President of the Philippines, was an authentic product of the American era's meritocratic potential, raising up from modest beginnings in Vigan, Ilocos Sur. Quirino was the son of a poor family, and his childhood was filled with hard work and perseverance. He was going to law school. Later, he got a job as a court clerk, which he used to pay for his education. Eventually, he graduated with a law degree from the University of the Philippines in 1915 and also passed the bar exam that same year. His legal skills and sharp mind quickly allowed him to enter politics, and thus he began a long period of devotion to a nation that was becoming independent.

Quirino's political career began in earnest in 1919 when he became a Representative for Ilocos Sur and shortly thereafter in 1925 he was elected to the Senate for a long term stint. He became a confidant and a protégé of Senate President Manuel L. Quezon, and while he was working as Quezon's personal secretary, he also gained prominence as being one of the main players in the independence struggle. He was the first to speak of the Philippines in the United States up to 1934 when he was a member of the Independence Mission, which together with him helped the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act that granted the Philippines self-government and eventual full independence. He became Secretary of Finance and Secretary of the Interior in the Commonwealth period. However, this brilliant rise was sadly cut short by World War II when he came to be in the resistance movement. The war took a terrible toll on him personally: he lost his wife and three children during the slaughter in Manila in 1945. This family calamity highlighted the gigantic job of rebuilding that he was about to inherit. 

After the war, Quirino was appointed the first Vice President and Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the new Republic under President.