The Indomitable Florence Finch

1915
Charles Ebersole Plantation
Santiago, Isabela Province, Philippines

She was born Loring May Ebersole. The name Florence came after the cataclysm.

Her earliest memories were stained with melancholy, loss, and pain. The roots of the tragedy were sown more than twenty years earlier, in 1899, when Charlie Ebersole arrived in the Philippines aboard the hospital ship USS Missouri. A young American medic, Charlie volunteered at seventeen in a spirit of high adventure, after reading the thrilling newspaper accounts of Teddy Roosevelt leading his Rough Riders to glory on their charge up San Juan Hill in the first year of the Spanish-American War. With his sensitive blue eyes, gentle smile, and blond hair, Charlie looked more virginal choir boy than Rough Rider.

The war began in Cuba in 1898, when its people revolted against their Spanish rulers with the United States backing them. The fighting then spread to the Philippines, a colony Spain had ruled for nearly four hundred years.

When Charlie's hospital ship arrived in Manila Bay a year later, it sailed past the wrecked warships of the Spanish fleet, which had been destroyed in the naval battle that finally ended Spanish control of the Philippines.

Emilio Aguinaldo, the Filipino leading the insurrection against the Spanish, initially welcomed the Americans as liberators. But when the United States decided to make the Philippines its own possession, Aguinaldo named himself president of the First Philippine Republic and declared war once again.

In the beginning, his ragtag soldiers suffered terrible losses in traditional battles against the US Army. Aguinaldo changed to guerrilla tactics, avoiding direct conflict and making night raids and ambushes on American outposts. The idea was not to defeat the Americans but to inflict constant losses that would make them quit.

General Elwell Otis, commander of the American troops, issued secret orders to execute all enemy soldiers captured in the fighting. Publicly, he claimed that the Filipino insurgents were guilty of atrocities and that captured Americans were being buried up to their necks in ant hills.

Aguinaldo asked the International Red Cross to determine the truth. Over General Otis's objections, their representatives reported seeing burned-out villages and "horribly mutilated Filipino bodies, with stomachs slit open and men decapitated."

Charlie's ship reached Manila just as the war reached the height of its savagery in November 1899. Before he was assigned to a hospital, he was given two days' leave to visit the city and its famous walled compound, called the Intramuros. Built by the Spanish in 1571, its Romanesque churches and narrow, cobbled streets were surrounded by twenty-five-foot-high stone walls. The natives of the city did not seem dangerous to him, nor did they appear to fear his presence. He also couldn't help but notice the beauty of some of the young Filipina women.

He could only wonder where the war was. Four days later, he found out.

The army hospital he was assigned to was overflowing with wounded American soldiers and many more were battling typhoid, dysentery, and malaria. Men were dying every day, sometimes a hundred or more each week. He quickly lost his boyhood illusions of glory and high adventure, and his noble goal of saving lives was put to a stern test.

The Philippine insurrection came to an end in 1902, after Aguinaldo was captured during an attack on his headquarters north of Manila. He reluctantly signed an oath of allegiance to the United States, and President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war over.

Charlie Ebersole's three-year enlistment ended a month later. By then, he had seen the brutality of the savage conflict firsthand. It was no newspaper article; no dime novel.

At twenty-one, he knew two things with certainty: he wasn't going to stay in the army, and he wasn't going back to the Buffalo, New York, winters. Despite the inhumanity he had witnessed, Charlie came to love the Philippines for its loveliness, the warmth and hospitality of its people, and the unhurried atmosphere that allowed a man to enjoy life's pleasures.

The US Congress authorized funds for the building of modern roads, schools, and hospitals in its new possession to improve the Filipinos' quality of life. Although Charlie had no contracting experience, his service record included commendations for competence, resourcefulness, and "very good character."

Hired by one of the contractors, he soon was supervising Filipino work crews as they hacked through jungles and across rivers to connect remote cities and towns. He was earning more money than he ever had in his life and was banking most of it.

In the spectacularly beautiful northern provinces, he came upon plantations growing tobacco, rice, pineapples, and other crops. He had never farmed, but the plantations offered a pastoral lifestyle he found attractive. He began looking for one that he could afford to buy.

At the same time, another muse began whispering in his ear. Her birth name was Maria Hermoso, and Charlie met her in 1907 while overseeing a road-building project. Although he had gone out with many young Filipina women, the twenty-four-year-old Maria caught and held his attention. She was illiterate in English, but high-spirited and beautiful, and she could make him laugh. Over the years, Charlie had learned enough of the indigenous Tagalog language for the two of them to communicate.

There was only one complication: Maria was already married to a former Spanish soldier named Marcel Arzi, and together they already had a young daughter, Flaviana. The "very good character" citation recorded in Charlie's military service record didn't cover a situation like this, and the years of war and rough living had coarsened him.

With an almost reptilian cold-bloodedness, Charlie asked Maria to leave her husband and live with him as his common-law wife, assuring her they would raise Flaviana together. Swept off her feet by the handsome and successful young American, Maria agreed. Life was good for a young American with full pockets in the Philippines, who could live without fear of retribution from a cuckolded husband who fought on the losing side of the Spanish-American War.

With the money he saved, Charlie bought a plantation along the Calao River in Isabela Province, near the city of Santiago. Known as Pueblo de Carig in the Spanish days, Santiago was a gateway to the fertile plains of the Cagayan Valley.

There was a small house on the property and the plantation's acreage included fields, pastures, and pine forest running for almost half a mile along the river. To the kid from Buffalo, the groves of bananas, coconuts, grapefruit, lemons, limes, pineapples, and oranges were exotic and intoxicating, endowing the plantation with an almost Eden-like bounty—his own "Treasure Island," a favorite book from childhood.

Charlie was sure the soil would be perfect for cultivating tobacco as well. Instead of growing the harsh and bitter native blends, he ordered mild Virginia and burley seeds from suppliers in the United States, along with long-leaf plants of different blends to produce high-quality, hand-rolled cigars. In a few years he was exporting to the United States.

As the plantation prospered, he built a substantial house at the edge of the river. It followed a traditional American floor plan, with family living quarters on the first level and bedrooms on the second and third. His design included oversized screened windows in every room to allow constant airflow during the hot season. Wood stoves provided heat in the rainy and cool ones.

Charlie fell in love with the land, planting an expansive garden that included acacia trees, gardenias, white roses, golden shower trees, lei flowers, night-blooming jasmine, and mango trees. Through the open windows, the aromatic plantings filled the house with the fragrance of flowers and music of songbirds attracted by the garden.

His favorite room was the pine-paneled library, the shelves of which were soon filled with his growing collection of books. The library included favorite novels from his boyhood and contemporary works by Theodore Roosevelt and Arthur Conan Doyle. Reading became his preferred form of relaxation.

As his wealth grew, so did the four children he had with Maria, including Processo, born in 1908, followed by Edward in 1911, Norma in 1913, and Loring in 1915. The family gathered for prayers at six each evening, after which they ate together in the formal dining room.

Before bedtime, Processo and Edward spent at least an hour reading in the library with Flaviana, Maria's daughter from her first marriage. Charlie would read children's books aloud to Norma and Loring, stories that took Loring far away in her young imagination. But the good times were not to last.

Flaviana was a stunningly beautiful young woman. At age seventeen, she was a younger version of her mother, and far more sophisticated with her ability to read and write in English. She was impossible to ignore.

That year, a young man named Antonio Vasquez met Flaviana while she was visiting friends in Santiago. He asked if he could see her again and she agreed. During his chaperoned visits to the plantation, it was clear that Flaviana was taken with the handsome young man, and Maria strongly urged her to accept Antonio's marriage proposal.

Flush with success, Charlie wasn't used to having things taken from him—especially someone as enchanting as his Flaviana. After she and Antonio married and moved away, he began to harbor a smoldering anger that only grew with the passing days.

Two months after Flaviana's marriage, Charlie went to the village where they lived. Taking Flaviana aside, he boldly declared his love and asked her to return with him to live together as man and wife.

Perhaps Flaviana was in love with him all along. Maybe it was because she was so young and he was so powerful. Whatever her motivations, she agreed to go with him. Like Maria's husband Marcel Arzi, the young Antonio Vasquez felt powerless to challenge him.

When they arrived back at the plantation, Maria flew into a rage, accusing her daughter of seducing her husband. With the same cold-blooded attitude that had empowered him to steal Maria from her husband, Charlie gave her an ultimatum: accept his decision and stay with their children in the small house where they had first lived after he bought the plantation, or be cast out.

With no place else to go, Maria agreed.