Maximo Villaflor Soliven was a Filipino journalist and newspaper publisher.
59 Facts About Max Soliven
2.
Max Soliven spent his undergraduate years at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he received the OZANAM award for writing.
3.
Max Soliven received a Master of Arts from Fordham University and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced and International Studies.
4.
Max Soliven was proficient in Spanish, as it was one of the languages used by his Ilocano grandparents.
5.
Max Soliven's youngest sister, Ethel Soliven Timbol, is a journalist.
6.
Max Soliven was a writer and Lifestyle Editor of the Manila Bulletin from 1964, retiring in 2007.
7.
At the age of seven, Max Soliven was reciting poems and delivering speeches as he imitated his father.
8.
Max Soliven wrote poetry at the age of thirteen and continued until he was twenty-one.
9.
When his father died at the age of 44, Max Soliven helped his mother, who was 30 years old at the time, support the family.
10.
At the age of 12, Max Soliven served as the role model and assumed the role of father figure to his younger siblings.
11.
Max Soliven worked for the Jesuits as a messenger and errand boy using a second-hand bicycle he had saved up for.
12.
Max Soliven sold cigarettes and shined shoes in helping his mother support his nine siblings.
13.
One week before the wedding, the woman asked Max Soliven to consider her wish to live in the US.
14.
When he was 28, Max Soliven married Preciosa Silverio, who he had met when she was 16 years old.
15.
Max Soliven spoke English as a first language, like most children of the pre-war Filipino middle class.
16.
Max Soliven received all his schooling, from elementary to college, in the Ateneo.
17.
Max Soliven went on to receive a master's degree from Fordham, a Jesuit school in New York City.
18.
Max Soliven was accepted in third year and became part of Ateneo's Guild 47 or High School Class 1947.
19.
Max Soliven's classmates included Cesar Concio, Ramon Pedrosa, Luis Lorenzo, Jose Tuazon, Jesus Ayala, Onofre Pagsanhan, Johnny Araneta, Ramon Hontiveros, Florentino Gonzales, Hector Quesada, and Ricardo Lopa.
20.
About half the class, including Max Soliven, stayed in Ateneo for college and would belong to the Class of 1951.
21.
Max Soliven took some pre-law courses as his initial career preference was law, but he stuck to writing, obeying his father's deathbed wishes.
22.
Whilst in college, Max Soliven joined The GUIDON, the school's official student publication, and served as its managing editor.
23.
Max Soliven was an active member of the Ateneo's Chesterton Evidence Guild as a champion debator and orator.
24.
Max Soliven did this while he made inquiries about scholarship grants to the United States.
25.
Max Soliven eventually received two scholarships: the Fulbright for travel expenses and the Smith-Mundt covering tuition, board and lodging, and some pocket money.
26.
Whilst in Fordham, Max Soliven developed a predilection for smoking pipes, accumulating over 300 pipes of different sizes, materials, and origins.
27.
Max Soliven became a stamp and toy soldier collector, and accumulated a collection of books by the mid-Nineties.
28.
When Max finished his Master's in journalism in 1954, he moved to Washington, DC for a one-year Master's program in international affairs in the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Johns Hopkins University.
29.
Max Soliven was accepted along with around 100 other students, drawn from a pool of foreign affairs and think-tank experts and scholars.
30.
Max Soliven began his career at 20 as associate editor of the Catholic newspaper The Sentinel, as police and political reporter for the Manila Chronicle at 25.
31.
Max Soliven demanded for a "flex time" arrangement, which his boss accepted.
32.
Max Soliven would start earlier in the day and work late at night if needed, as he kept his afternoons free to teach in the Ateneo.
33.
Max Soliven claimed this opportunity back in 1954 when he bumped into one of his high school colleagues in Ateneo de Manila University, Oscar Lopez.
34.
Max Soliven was chosen to be one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1960 for journalism.
35.
Max Soliven then moved to the Manila Times, the nation's dominant paper, and made his claim as one of the best and brightest of the post-war generation in the 1960s to 1970s.
36.
Max Soliven began there with a daily column entitled "A Word Edgewise" which the editors of the paper did not touch as per the deal requested by Max Soliven upon accepting his job there.
37.
Max Soliven again asserted himself demanding absolute editorial control with no interference from Stonehill, which was again accepted.
38.
Max Soliven was only 32, and thus was called "the boy publisher" by Manila Daily Bulletin publisher Hans Menzi who was 51 at the time.
39.
Max Soliven would produce an 11-part series from September 16 to 27,1961 entitled "The Truth About Cuba", detailing the planning by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Eisenhower administration and execution of the Bay of Pigs by the Kennedy administration less than three month after assuming office.
40.
In 1962, Max Soliven left the Evening News after he found he had lost the full editorial policy he had asked for.
41.
Max Soliven would spend the entirety of 1963 returning to Philippine developments before rejoining the Times the following year.
42.
Max Soliven would become a columnist-on-air with the popular local radio station, DZFM alongside Melchie Aquino, who later be Philippine ambassador to West Germany.
43.
Max Soliven used the money he earned from this to help fund his youngest sister, Ethel, as she would be leaving for New York of studies.
44.
Max Soliven traveled to many of the notable global hotspots during the 1960s, such as the Vietnam War and the 1968 Tet Offensive therein; and the Gestapu Coup in Indonesia in 1965, in which half a million people were massacred.
45.
Max Soliven earned an exclusive when he watched the detonation of the first atomic bomb in the People's Republic of China, where he interviewed Premier Zhou Enlai on the matter.
46.
In Max Soliven's television show entitled Impact, he guested one of the greatest enemy of the Marcos regime, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino.
47.
Aquino wants to show this in Max Soliven's show because it would deliberately expose of Marcos filth.
48.
Max Soliven was 43 at the time, and at the peak of his career.
49.
Max Soliven will be with this magazine company for five years until he is ready to write for politics against the regime of Marcos.
50.
Max Soliven had a monthly column in Manila Magazine entitled "In This Corner", where he would write his tempered opinions on Marcos.
51.
Max Soliven was able to travel out of the country for the first time after this, going to Singapore to cover the inauguration of the new Changi Airport.
52.
Shortly after the assumption into office of Corazon Aquino, Max Soliven left the Inquirer to co-found the Philippine Star, where he remained until his death.
53.
Max Soliven suffered a fatal acute and pulmonary cardiac arrest at the Narita airport.
54.
Max Soliven was pronounced dead at 11:26AM 24 November 2006, at the Narita Red Cross Hospital.
55.
Max Soliven died doing what he loved: being a journalist.
56.
Max Soliven wrote his last article hours before his death regarding the rise of a more-assertive prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
57.
Max Soliven was buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani on January 10,2007.
58.
Max Soliven was posthumously awarded the Order of Lakandula by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
59.
Max Soliven hailed Max Soliven as an "icon of freedom" saying that free press wouldn't have been the way it was without him.