Mr. Rene Quiambao Lacsina's Obituary
Rene Quiambao Lacsina, age 79, passed away peacefully at home in Frederick, Maryland surrounded by his loving family on July 18, 2024 after a courageous two-year battle against prostate cancer following 17 years of remission. A devoted husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend, Rene’s life was a testament to Christian service, boundless optimism, abiding love, and hopeful faith.
Rene was born on March 8, 1945 to the late Reverend Nicanor Lacsina and Sarah Lacsina (née Quiambao) on the small island of Batang in Sasmuan, Pampanga in the Philippines and spent his childhood in the nearby town of Sapang Bato. He moved to Manila to attend Caloocan High School and graduated in 1968 from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños with a B.S. in Agriculture. In college, Rene served as a leader of the Fraternal Order of the Grange with his fraternity batch named “The Casanovans” who became his lifelong “brods” and friends.
Upon graduating from college, Rene began his career at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquartered in Los Baños, Philippines where he joined the generation of agricultural scientists who led the Green Revolution. In November of 1970, Rene met his future wife, Teresa Anden, a new research assistant in the IRRI Agricultural Economics department. Rene migrated to the United States in November 1974 and returned to the Philippines two months later to get married. Rene and Teresa were married in a joint Protestant-Catholic wedding at Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila on January 29, 1975. They settled in Ames, Iowa where Rene started his graduate studies in agriculture at Iowa State University. Continuing his fieldwork at IRRI for his graduate research, Rene received his Masters in 1977 and PhD in Crop Physiology and Production in 1980 from Iowa State University.
In 1980, Rene and Teresa moved to Westminster, Colorado near Denver, where Rene joined Ball Corporation, Agricultural Systems Division as a Senior Agronomist and Manager of Agricultural Technology to build agricultural partnerships at sites across the globe, including Navajo reservations, Guatemala, Columbia, Venezuela, Jamaica, Sierra Leone and Egypt. In July 1982, Rene and Teresa celebrated the birth of their son and only child, Joshua. In 1985, when the family moved to Michigan, Rene was appointed to lead a USAID-funded project in Nepal to strengthen the agricultural research capacity of the country by evaluating and modernizing remote agricultural research stations throughout the Himalayas.
In 1989, the family moved to their longtime home at Toro Park in Salinas, California. From 1989 to 1991, Rene worked at Dalgety to ensure the safe use of pesticides at vegetable fields in California and Mexico. From 1991 until his retirement in 2016, Rene served as an independent agribusiness consultant in the Philippines, India, and the Republic of Georgia through his business, PRIME, Ltd. Throughout his life, Rene’s work in agriculture was driven by a missionary call to serve Christ by feeding the poorest and most impoverished peoples in the world, especially the indigenous peoples of the Philippines.
Rene was renowned for being a great storyteller, often recounting adventures and sharing jokes with an incisive memory for detail. Even in his final days, his siblings and cousins marveled that Rene could remember childhood stories that even they had forgotten. His international work and his later tours of the Caribbean, China, the Mediterranean, Spain, The Holy Land and Jordan, reflected how much he loved learning about world cultures, history, and politics, and building relationships with peoples from all walks of life across the globe.
Rene was a devout parishioner at St. Philip’s Presbyterian Church in Salinas and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Spreckels and served as Chairman of the Monterey County chapter of the National Filipino American Council. Rene was an avid fan of collegiate sports at Duke (Josh’s alma mater) and Iowa State (Rene’s alma mater) and also Bay Area sports teams, especially the Golden State Warriors.
For leisure, Rene’s delight and pride was his expansive garden at their house in Toro Park. Rene’s garden was perennially adorned with numerous varieties of flowers – especially his prized dahlias, cannas, and bamboo – along with fruit trees bearing oranges, apricots, and apples, and a variety of Asian vegetables. For one month each year for over twenty years, he volunteered with Teresa in decorating St. Joseph’s Church in Spreckels with fresh flowers from their garden. He gave many of his garden plants to friends and neighbors, who now grow plants in their home gardens that were originally gifted by Rene and are now part of his lasting legacy in Salinas.
In June 2014, Rene and Teresa celebrated the wedding of their son Josh and their beloved daughter-in-law Odessa (née Marks), and in June 2015 they welcomed the birth of their granddaughter and only grandchild Ishara in Seattle, Washington. From when Ishara was a baby, Rene would proudly proclaim and joyfully greet her as his “Little Empress!”
Ishara became Rene’s touchstone and inspiration after he battled back from a tumor that was discovered in his spinal cord in the fall of 2022. After major spinal neurosurgery at UC San Francisco, Rene was initially told by his rehab team that he may never walk again. Undeterred and with his wife Teresa always at his side, caring for him through months of grueling inpatient, home, and outpatient rehab, Rene learned to walk again by the healing grace of his faith in God and daily prayer, all while holding a precious personal wooden cross from the Holy Land (a gift from his niece, Wendy). In March 2023, Rene and Teresa departed their beloved home of thirty-four years in Salinas and moved to Frederick, Maryland to live near Josh, Odessa, and Ishara. In the final year of his life, Rene enjoyed many precious moments and holidays with his family in Maryland, cheering on in person from the sidelines at Ishara’s figure skating competitions and standing up with Ishara at the altar after she celebrated her First Communion in April 2024.
Rene is survived by his beloved wife of 49 and a half years, Teresa – whom he affectionately called “my one and only” – his son and daughter-in-law Joshua (called “Pogi”) and Odessa Lacsina, his precious granddaughter and “Little Empress” Ishara Lacsina, his brothers
Emmanuel Lacsina and Samuel Lacsina and sister Evelyn Zurbano, and many loving cousins, nephews, and nieces around the world. He is preceded in death by his parents, the Reverend Nicanor Lacsina and Sarah Lacsina, his brother Hector Lacsina, his sister Helen Lacsina, his brother-in-law Renato Zurbano, his sister-in-law Marisa Lacsina, and his niece, Kay Lacsina.
The family expresses their heartfelt thanks to all the doctors, therapists, nurses, and other medical staff both in California and Maryland who cared for Rene and gave us the gift of these precious final years with him.
The funeral mass for Rene will be held at St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Ijamsville, Maryland on August 12, 2024. Visitation at the church by family and friends will be from 10:00 to 11:00 AM EDT. The funeral mass will start at 11:00 AM and will also be available via livestream on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/live/-pt89tBvgpM?feature=share
Following the mass, there will be a car procession to Resthaven Memorial Gardens for a nicheside inurnment ceremony. The ceremony will be followed by a reception on site at the Resthaven Reception Hall.
In lieu of flowers and in accord with Rene’s final wishes, the family is accepting donations to fund scholarships benefiting the indigenous peoples of the Philippines and the Fraternal Order of the Grange, University of the Philippines. All donations will be made in memory of Rene.
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