Thank you, Julie

Conflict is a tough, dangerous and complex field to cover. Julie S. Alipala did it for some three decades.

- TONYO CRUZ

Julie passed away in the morning of April 3 due to complications from endometrial cancer. She was 58.

Those who follow the issues, and the journalists who cover them, would have known it immediately. The journalists of course swiftly broke the news of her passing, and have since been posting their tributes.

I am fortunate to have known her, and to have joined her in a Filipino journalists' delegation to snowy Oslo, Norway in December 2012.

In one of the chats we had after colleagues and friends mounted late last year a fundraiser here in Manila for her cancer fight, Julie told me stories of teachers and Badjaos in her home town reaching out to her, offering to help. She said they held garage sales, and sent her fresh Pampano.

Julie won honors for her work, including the Red Cross Award for Humanitarian Reporting, the Catholic Mass Media Award, journalism scholarships and fellowships.

But I guess the highest possible honors could come from those she worked alongside with, the powerful persons she covered, and the people whose concerns she sought to be better understood.