The Calderons had amassed their fortune in the precious metal trade. Clemente's grandfather was the first mining engineer in the Philippines. Clemente's father José, who liked to be called Tata Pepe, was educated through donations from relatives. José vowed to give his children the good life he missed as a child. He was one of few lawyers who specialized in mining cases, paving the way for him to sit as director of two large mining corporations.
"I gave them the good life so they would work hard to maintain it," he said and promised to back his children in whatever course they chose. "Fortunes are never made on a salary basis," he advised. "Know when to quit working for someone else. When you've got the experience, contacts, prestige, cut the umbilical cord and go on your own." Today all his children are entrepreneurs.
José also wrangled with the country's top politicians. As a student he had been a classmate and friend of both dictator-to-be Ferdinand Marcos and the democratically inclined Benigno Aquino. But as an adult he disparaged the dictatorship and became Aquino's ally. He was jailed for nine months in 1972 for his anti-Marcos statements.
Ironically, five years later in 1977 Marcos named his oldest daughter Lilia as one of ten outstanding Filipinos. She still has the two feet tall trophy.
Marcos' ouster let José help Corazon Aquino set up a democracy and become a framer of the 1986 Constitution.
Clemente's mother Belen Farbos Calderon was no less accomplished. She taught psychology at the University of the Philippines, served as governor of the Nueva Viscaya province and became the first woman to hold a seat on the Manila Stock Exchange.
"My mother was a real role model," Lilia says. "I thought it was natural for women to go into business and politics."
The Calderon mansion hosted frequent gatherings of the elite of Philippine business, political and cultural circles, including the Aquinos who visited regularly. University intellectuals debated politics over Sunday afternoon cocktails while politicians pressed the flesh at summer garden parties.
José Clemente believed deeply in the educational value of travel. He regularly took the kids on business trips to Tokyo, Jakarta and Seoul. Lilia had seen most Asian capitals long before she entered college. In high school she regularly skipped classes and shunned homework, incurring the ire of the American nuns who ran what was known as the best school in the Philippines.
"I had a very checkered academic career," Clemente recalls. "My teachers must be wondering if I ever made anything of myself."
Her carefree spirit was tempered by a serious undercurrent. Clemente came to grasp the political instability of her nation and her parents' vulnerability as Marcos opponents. If they were imprisoned, the responsibility for the family estate and siblings would fall on their eldest daughter. That awareness sparked an interests in politics and finance. For her tenth birthday she told José she wanted to forego cake and presents in favor of stock. He obliged with shares in his mining company.
That set off a long fascination with precious metals. Lilia began taking an interest in the forces that controlled international gold, silver and copper prices. She would visit her father's mines and watch how ores were traded.
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Not that nonferrous metals dominated her life. Lilia dated and danced at balls for the Philippine elite. At 15 she met the boy who would follow her to America and become her husband. Today Leopoldo M. Clemente, Lilia's spouse of 30 years, serves as Clemente Capital's Chief Investment Officer.
After high school Lilia Clemente attended the University of the Philippines where she edited the college newspaper and protested with student activists. In 1960 Clemente graduated from the University of the Philippines with a business administration degree. The 19-year-old flew to San Francisco planning to study finance at the University of Chicago. But first she wanted to travel cross-country by bus to Miami to attend an international conference for Asian students. This trip provided her first taste of American racism.
The Greyhound rolled into Mississippi with Clemente as the only non-White aboard. The bus stopped at a diner. The passengers filed in and ordered. Soon everyone had been served but Clemente. Finally, as the other passengers began reboarding the bus, she complained that the hamburger and milk shake she ordered had never arrived. The waitress directed her outside to a sign above the entrance. It read "No Colored Allowed." Clemente stormed back in and demanded the manager.
"Do you realize I'm from the Philippines?" she said, showing him her passport. "We Filipinos died for you during the war. Remember McArthur? Remember, 'I shall return'?"
Sure, he'd heard of the Philippines, said the manager, but had never seen a Filipino. He still refused to serve her.
"I went back to the bus and started to cry," Clemente recalls. "But then I decided I wouldn't let this get to me. I thought I should feel sorry for these people because they don't even know where the Philippines is."
Minutes later the manager brought out her order with an apology.
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