REMEMBERING NIDA BLANCA AND ROD LAUREN. Popular actress Nida Blanca and her husband singer Rod Lauren were portrait of a happy couple since they got married in 1979 and up to the last time I saw them in 1993 in Los Angeles, California. Nida and Rod, as well as Kaye Torres (Nida’s daughter) were regular habitués of dart pubs in the ‘80s. Rod and Kaye were good darters but the latter stopped playing when she became a regular cast in the popular sitcom Iskul Bukol in the mid ‘80s. Rod and I would frequent different dart venues in Metro Manila almost nightly and also travelled using Nida’s luxury van to Angeles City to play in a big dartfest. “Mao, bahala ka na sa asawa ko, ha,” Nida would tell me before leaving their house on Nathan St. in White Plains, Quezon City. It was in that beautiful house that sometimes Rod and I would play darts the whole day before going to a tournament in the evening. Actually, it was Rod who gave me my Matty master darts in 1983 when we were at the Hyatt Terraces in Baguio City. I still vividly remember that night when Rod told me, “Mao, you can have this set of darts if you can just hit one bullseye.” I hit the red bull on my second try, and that darts gave me countless of championship trophies and cash prizes. I left for the USA in 1986 and it was only in 1991 when Rod and I again met in Century City in LA with other dart players, Tombe Santos, the late Jojo Malana and Gi Santos. Rod and Nida then came back again in 1993 to do a live show with comedy king Dolphy in LA and Carson. Rod would pick me up at my residence in Carson and we would have a few drinks at Pinausukan restaurant, and I would order crispy pata (pasalubong ni Rod) for Nida, her favorite. I never met them again after that, then came the shocking news that Nida was murdered at the parking lot of the MTRCB offices in San Juan on Nov. 7, 2001. Rod returned to the US in 2002, shortly after he was linked to the murder of Nida. On July 11, 2007, Rod apparently committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of a motel where he was staying.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:27:09 +0000
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