A father’s word is his bond. But a promise only becomes a legacy when it is kept through the years, and through every burden and test.
For Dante Arevalo Ang, DAA, that promise began with The Manila Times. It was made on Aug. 8, 2001, when he took over as publisher and chairman of the country’s oldest existing English-language newspaper, by then a 102-year-old institution that had lived through war, dictatorship, closure, rebirth and political upheaval.
It was not a stable acquisition, or a glittering prize waiting to be displayed. By the time DAA — as he was known across journalism and political circles — took over, the once-revered broadsheet had passed through turbulent years and shifting hands. The name still carried history, but The Manila Times itself needed saving.
DAA knew all that. He also knew that in those years, every change in media ownership was read against the politics of the day. His long association with then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — whose political ascent he helped shape as one of the country’s most formidable public relations minds — made his purchase of The Times easy to question from the outside. But those of us who saw him then knew that the promise he made mattered more than any speculation around him.
He was in it for the long run; he would keep the paper going, never miss a payroll, and bring The Manila Times back to its former glory.
For almost 25 years, until his death this week, that promise did not waver.
DAA died at Manila Doctors Hospital, surrounded by family and love. He was 83.
To the public, he was a publisher, journalist, public relations practitioner, educator, public servant and institution-builder. To his children, he was their beloved father. To those of us who spent our professional lives with The Manila Times, he became one too.
And like the best fathers, he was not a man of grand words alone. He kept his word in the only way that mattered. He stayed.
The paper he chose to save
DAA had never doubted the value of what he had taken on.
“The Manila Times is priceless — it is the keeper of our Filipino heritage, a perpetual time capsule in plain sight,” he once said of what he called his “prime property.” But heritage alone could not pay salaries, print newspapers or restore trust. In a lecture to journalism students at The Manila Times College (TMTC) — the institution he would later found to help train the next generation of media practitioners — DAA recalled that the paper he bought had accumulated huge debts, including unpaid workers’ salaries.
“My lawyer advised me to declare bankruptcy and close down the paper and revive it after two months just to avoid the payables,” he told the students.
Instead, DAA chose to face the people the paper owed.
“I talked to each employee and promised to pay each of them in installment,” he continued.
One employee, he recalled, had collectibles amounting to P500,000, which DAA paid after a few months. The supplier of ink and paper had a bill of P60 million. He paid that too.
Most important to him, the company never missed a payroll deadline under his management. For DAA, meeting payroll was never just about keeping a company running. He knew what a salary meant to the people who depended on it, because long before he became the man who could save The Times, he had known what it was to have very little.
A Las Piñas boy through and through, DAA often looked back on those early years without shame or self-pity.
“At 10 years old, I started to dream despite poverty,” he once said. “I went to school without shoes, but I did not feel bad, never jealous of other children. I lived with our parish priest in the convent. I was awake as early as 5:30 a.m. for the morning Mass, and at 8 p.m., my only study time, I was studying how to type.” He would leave the convent and become a salesman before finding his way to The Manila Chronicle and ABS-CBN, where he took on whatever work came his way — coffee server, clerk, drama talent, disc jockey, newscaster and advertising salesman. When martial law was declared, he found himself jobless and later returned to work as an account executive, earning P600 a month.
That discipline and that refusal to be defeated by circumstance never left him.
“TMT is a triumph of the human spirit,” he told journalism students. “I dreamed. Dreaming is the start of success.”
The making of a publisher
DAA’s fascination with newspapers began long before he owned one. As a young boy, he would visit an uncle who worked at La Vanguardia, the Spanish-language newspaper owned by the Roces clan. His family needed help from relatives then, and those visits, born of necessity, left an impression that would follow him for the rest of his life.
As his son Dante “Klink” Ang II, former Times chairman and president and now chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, would recall, after his father began a career in radio and developed a flair for writing, “It seemed natural that he would gravitate toward publishing when he saved up enough money to be an entrepreneur.” That road first took him through smaller publications: a monthly tennis magazine, weekly tabloids and eventually Kabayan, a nationally circulated Filipino-language broadsheet. Unlike the more sensational tabloids of the time, Kabayan carried straightforward, incisive reporting, with no salacious photographs and no tabloid shortcuts.
It was already a clue to the kind of publisher he wanted to be.
When DAA later had to choose between sustaining Kabayan and The Manila Times, he chose The Times because he understood the weight of its name.
“I knew I cannot sustain two newspapers,” he said. “I wanted to continue with The Times because I am aware of its brand. It came to a point that I borrowed P100 million. I had the courage because I knew what I wanted to accomplish.” There was a full-circle quality to his return to Intramuros, too. In later years, DAA would acquire the building where The Times and TMTC shared space. Family recollection places it near the building tied to their patriarch’s early working years at the Chronicle and ABS-CBN, while others believe it is the very same one. Either way, the meaning is clear: he had come back to the old district not as the young man still finding his way, but as the publisher building something meant to last.
A window and a door
“A window on the past and a door to the future.” That was how DAA described The Manila Times, and it revealed the balance he wanted the paper to keep. He honored history, but he was never trapped by it. However distinguished its name, a newspaper still had to keep proving its reason to exist.
“Our mission, then, is to inform clearly and accurately, to reflect on great decisions and events, to arouse the intellect, to excite curiosity and wonder, to honor the past and pave the way to the future, but always with the aim of sharing with our readers and advertisers the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and the defeats that are the stuff of our daily lives,” he said.
For DAA, that mission began with truth.
“Journalism is about truthful information,” he once wrote. “Journalism informs. It aims to move people to come to an informed decision or perception of ideas or events. It contributes to societal good. It provokes public discussion on the relevant issues of the day.” He was just as clear about press freedom.
“Press freedom is the freedom to express one’s views or actions, either in agreement with or contrary to something,” he wrote. “Press freedom does not mean freedom to malign, freedom to write falsehoods, freedom to twist or bend the facts.” At The Times, he wanted enterprise-driven investigative stories, solid political and business reporting, and columns that did more than react to the news. He was especially proud of the paper’s Opinion pages, which he described as “ruminative and reflective,” going deeper into the meaning of the news and the motives of those who made it. He did not even mind when columnists locked horns with one another in print.
“Let them fight!” he would say laughing, so long as they gave readers not noise, but arguments worth thinking about.
His idea of the future also went beyond the daily paper. Through TMTC, he helped turn the newsroom into a training ground for young journalists. At one graduation, he said the college was founded on the belief that Journalism and Mass Communication could be taught through a modern, hands-on curriculum “in preparing students for the challenging profession of serving our countrymen.” His vision later moved into digital and broadcast. The Times strengthened its online platforms and eventually launched The Manila Times TV, a realization of a dream he had held since high school at St. Joseph’s Academy in Las Piñas. For a man who loved print and whose deep voice belonged naturally to radio, these were not departures from tradition. They were ways of carrying The Times beyond his own watch.
A life of service
Beyond The Times, DAA’s career moved through journalism, public relations, education, business and public service.
He held a Journalism degree from Lyceum of the Philippines, earned his MBA magna cum laude from Colegio de San Juan de Letran, received his Doctorate in Business Administration from Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, and completed a short course in English for Journalism at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
When public service called, DAA entrusted the day-to-day leadership of The Times first to his son, Klink and now to his daughter, Anna Marie Ang-Thompson, as chief executive officer. Through these transitions, DAA remained chairman emeritus, even as his work continued across media, education, business and public life.
Over the years, he also served as chairman of The Manila Times College, president and chief executive officer of Grande Realty Corp., and chairman and president of Dante A. Ang & Associates.
His government service included his work as senior presidential consultant on public relations, chairman of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas with Cabinet rank, Consul A.H. for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and special envoy of the President for international public relations.
His recognitions included the Presidential Award, “Order of Lakandula with a rank of Hero” by the Republic of the Philippines, the “Ulirang Ama” Award from the Ulirang Ama Foundation, Outstanding Alumnus of Colegio de San Juan de Letran and Outstanding Alumnus of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila.
Yet for a man who had achieved so much, DAA had long made clear that success could not be measured only by money, power or position.
“Success is a sense of fulfillment, a feeling of happiness and satisfaction, that you have achieved something and that you have contributed something,” he once said.
By that measure, his life was full.
The family he built
For all the weight of his titles, DAA’s deepest identity remained that of a father.
He was “Papa” to seven children, and he had great faith in each of them.
That faith showed in the way he allowed each of his brood to find their place in the work he built — Klink and Anna Marie in leadership, Michael in the Honorary Consulate of Jordan in Manila, Monica in TMTC, Joanna in TMT Foods, Denise, who had also been part of The Times through marketing, and Claire, an aspiring engineer.
But DAA’s idea of family was never limited to bloodline. Those who worked with him long enough understood that The Times was not only an office to him, nor even just the paper he had rescued. It was a house he had fought to keep standing, and everyone inside it had a responsibility to help keep it worthy of its name.
That was why he could be both exacting and deeply kind. He expected accountability, especially from those entrusted with sections, stories and decisions. But those expectations did not come from distance. They came from a father’s way of forming people — firm when needed, generous when deserved and never careless with trust.
Many years ago, when this writer was still a much younger editor, a mistake appeared in the section she handled. It was not necessarily hers in the direct sense, but DAA made clear in a meeting what every editor has to learn sooner or later: the buck stops with you.
So she did what she knew he expected. She traced what had happened, wrote him a letter, owned the mistake all the same and apologized. She promised the section would do better.
As DAA often did, he returned the letter in his distinct fountain pen handwriting. At the top, he had written only this: “Thank you, Tessa, you are my family.” Things like these did not go unnoticed by DAA. A letter of accountability, a promise to do better, a gesture that showed the work mattered — he saw them. And when he wrote back, even with a single line, it meant more than he probably knew.
That was DAA. He could correct you without making you feel cast out. He expected accountability, but he did not withhold affection. He taught discipline without taking away dignity.
For this writer and for so many who worked under him, that was DAA: exacting, watchful, but never without heart. He made you understand the weight of the work, and then, in his own hand, reminded you that you still belonged to the family he had promised to keep.
A life to celebrate
DAA had told his children that when the time came, he did not want people to be sad. He wanted a celebration of life. He even said he wanted Elvis Presley Christmas songs played at his wake — a request so wonderfully DAA that those who knew him can almost hear his deep voice making it, with that mix of authority, mischief and warmth.
It is a beautiful final instruction from a man who loved laughter, music and family, and who knew how to make even goodbye carry his unmistakable spirit.
And so the family he loved, and the Times family he built, will gather to honor him.
His wake will be held today, Wednesday, May 6, from 10 a.m. onwards at Manila Memorial Park - Sucat, Dr. A. Santos Avenue, Barangay BF Homes, Parañaque City, Metro Manila.
The funeral Mass will be at 3 p.m. on Friday, May 8, 2026, at The Diocesan Shrine and Parish of Saint Joseph, also known as Bamboo Organ Church, in his hometown Las Piñas.
Besides his children, DAA is survived by his daughters-in-law, Neth, wife of Klink, and Jazzy, wife of Michael; his sons-in-law, Ken, husband of Anna Marie, Christopher, husband of Monica; his grandchildren, Jose and Dana, Tres, Mija and Mei-Mei, and Linus; and his siblings, Resty, Pablo, Lito, Nene and Mercedes. But there is another family he leaves behind, too — the one that still walks into The Times every day, continuing the work he fought so hard to keep alive.
He leaves behind a multimedia institution more committed than ever to uphold the principles he lived by, a school that still teaches, children who carry his work forward, and a promise that held to the very end.
That is Dante Arevalo Ang’s legacy. The Manila Times is still here and thriving.
Thank you, DAA. Rest now, knowing that your promise is in the hands of the family you built.
Sources: The Manila Times archives; Ang family; The Manila Times management; “Success is a sense of fulfilment,” Nov. 10, 2015; “To honor the past and pave the way to the future,” Oct. 10, 2016; “Visionary without pause,” Oct. 11, 2019; “Reaffirming The Manila Times legacy amid innovation,” Oct. 12, 2020; “Be good, analytical journalists, 22 TMTC grads challenged,” April 26, 2015.
