Jessie Subijano Cruz's Obituary
Obituary for Jessie S. Cruz
With incredible sorrow and a profound sense of loss, we announce the passing of Jessie S. Cruz. She passed away at home in Hayward, CA on Jan. 11, 2022. Her eldest daughter, Rowena, and Rowena’s partner, Kalpana, was by her side. Jessie was 78 years old.
She is predeceased by her husband, Rudolph, and their eldest son, Ronald. She is survived by their three remaining children: Jerome, Rowena, and Johanna.
Jessie was born on Oct. 6, 1943, in the small town of Luisiana, Laguna during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. She is the second of ten children of Antonino Subijano and Leonida Cillian.
At the age of 19, she graduated from college at the University of the East in Manila with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting. After a law was passed in June 1963 that created the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WAC) in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Jessie applied, topped the General Classification Test, and scored a 150 on the IQ test. She completed the WAC Officer Candidate training to become one of the first WACs in Philippines history, ranking eighth out of forty-nine.
She met her husband, Rudy Cruz, an Enlisted Man later commissioned as Ensign PN, in the Philippine Navy. They were married in April 1966 in a military wedding. After Jessie gave birth to their eldest son, Ronald, she studied on her own and successfully passed all parts of the CPA exams to become a Certified Public Accountant. She would do it again. After their second son, Jerome, was born, Jessie passed the bank exams administered by the Philippine National Bank, where she began her accounting career in Nov. 1967. Four years later, their eldest daughter, Rowena, was born in Aug. 1971, and the family moved to the former US Naval Base in Sangley Point, Cavite City after it was turned over to the Philippine Navy. Jessie worked at PNB for a total of nine years and two months until Jan. 1977.
The following month, Jessie arrived in the US as an immigrant in Feb. 1977 and settled in the San Francisco area. Her husband and three young children stayed behind in the Philippines and joined her two years later in the US. In April 1977, she got her start with Bechtel Corporation, an engineering company, and worked there for ten and a half years.
In Dec. 1981, their fourth child, Johanna, was born in the Bay Area, and was later diagnosed as autistic. While raising a young child with special needs, she again studied on her own and passed all parts of the CPA exams in California. At the age of ten, Johanna was approved by the Regional Center of the East Bay to live in a boarding care facility. Ronald enlisted with the US Navy, and later, Jerome followed suit. After brief stints with a non-profit agency and another engineering company, she began her career with the Santa Clara County Department of Revenue in Feb. 1992. There, she worked for twelve years and four months, and retired in June 2004.
In 1993, after Rowena graduated from UC Santa Cruz, Jessie and her husband began to travel the country and the world. She visited a total of 53 countries and 32 states from Alaska to Maine and Russia to Uruguay. Jessie would have loved to continue traveling, but she and her husband took their last trip together in Dec. 2008 at the conclusion of a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Rudy had suffered a heart attack, started dialysis treatments three days a week, and underwent a triple-heart bypass surgery. He passed away in Mar. 2018.
Even after a successful career as a CPA in the Philippines and in the US, Jessie pursued a new craft in her retirement years. In Jan. 2011, she enrolled in an Arts & Painting Class at the Hayward Senior Center and took up acrylic painting. She became a prolific artist, having completed over 150 paintings, mostly of different countries that she had visited and some she did not. A photo of an iconic landmark and a blank canvas allowed her to continue to travel the world in her heart and in her mind.
In her lifetime, Jessie not only served the breadwinner for her own family, but she also paved the way for other family members to come as immigrants and settle in this country. She helped siblings and their families, financed educations, and donated to numerous charities. When she was last hospitalized at Kaiser Fremont in Dec. 2021, the palliative care nurse spoke with her about receiving hospice care upon discharge. “Nanay,” she said, which means “Mother” in Tagalog. “Remember what you told me last month when you were in the hospital? You said, ‘I’ve done everything I wanted to do in my life.’” She spent her final weeks at home with her loved ones, enjoying her favorite games shows, Filipino soap operas, and Bay Area sports teams while penning what she called “The Story of My Life” on notebook paper.
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