Rosario Cammayo Tangonan

Rosario “Chit” Cammayo Tangonan, resident of San Diego, CA, formerly of Quezon City, Philippines passed away on January 1st, 2018. Born May 26th, 1952 in Metro Manila, Rose spent her school days in the city and the summers in her mother’s home town of San Pablo, Isabella. The third eldest child of Dioscoro Cammayo and Catalina Samus Cammayo, Rose had 5 brothers and 2 sisters (Fatima, Jose, Julian, Virgilio, Edmundo, Romeo and Florcita). Rose was a hardworking child with a passion for learning. She attended elementary school in Cubao, Quezon City. She would return to her parent’s province to attend High School at The Lyceum Cabagan, a private, catholic school founded and operated by her uncle, Most Reverend Florencio Samus, their Catholic Parish Priest. Encouraged by her uncle, she attended Saint Rita’s college where she earned her degree in Nursing (Class of 1972) and began her long career in healthcare working as a Registered Nurse first in Manila’s Capitol Medical Center then to Philippine Mental Hospital, where she worked as a Psych Nurse. It was her dream to immigrate to the United States, where better opportunities awaited her. She realized that dream in 1975, when she was selected to work at a hospital in Tampa Bay, Florida. She would later move to Tennessee, where Cesar Tangonan, her college sweetheart would reunite with her and the two would finally enjoy a formal, Catholic ceremony officiated by her beloved uncle, Father Samus in a Roman Catholic church in Cookville, Tennessee. The couple would then move on to California to start and raise their family. Rose and Cesar had two children: Catherine and Allancesar. Their first home was in Mission Hills, California where Rose worked as a Registered Nurse and Cesar as an Engineer. They moved to Pomona, California until an offer to work in Cesar’s field of Aerospace Engineering with General Dynamics, along with a position in the ICU ward at Kaiser Hospital for Rose, offered the young family a move to San Diego, California where they were happily reunited with some of Cesar’s siblings already settled in Rancho Bernardo. Unfortunately, by the early 1990s, General Dynamics began closing down their operations in San Diego. Realizing Cesar would soon be without a job, and unwilling to uproot the children from San Diego, Cesar and Rose decided to open a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly. The couple, along with Rose’s sister, Florcita “Apple” Razon, whom Rose helped migrate to United States from the Philippines, decided to open “Nightingale Health Services”. Rose continued to work at Kaiser Hospital while also working as the Administrator for their Assisted Living Care Facility. The successful business helped many elderly people and their families, it even afforded her parents and two brothers, Edmundo and Julian a pathway to immigrate to the United States along with their families. Rose’s children would go on to college, Catherine to Boston University in Boston, MA, and Allancesar to the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Catherine returned to San Diego, married in 2008 and a year later in 2009, Rose would be awarded her greatest and proudest title of “grandmother” to her only grandchild, Ava Rosalena Tangonan Paraiso. Rose Cammayo Tangonan was many things to many people: an obedient and loving daughter and sibling, a loving and dutiful wife, an attentive and meticulous mother, an astute and unwavering businesswoman, a compassionate and experienced Registered Nurse, a humorous and adventurous friend, a god-fearing and devoted Catholic and most of all a doting and ever-loving grandmother. She will be missed by all who had the privilege of working with her, knowing her, and most of all loving her.