Ethel Timbol, the formidable former lifestyle editor of Manila Bulletin, died Sept. 6 at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig after a lingering illness. She was 80 years old.
Ivy Lisa Mendoza, a colleague of Timbol at Manila Bulletin who used to be her assistant said, “If she liked you, she really liked you.” Lifestyle contributing editor Alya Honasan remembers a memorable trip with Timbol that showed how “spontaneous and unfiltered” she could be. Honasan shared another anecdote: “First time I met her as a young, freelance writer, I sat beside her during a dinner. I asked her, ‘What do you do?’ She blew smoke in the air and said, without looking at me, ‘I edit the Lifestyle section of Bulletin.’ Simple lang. When we would laugh about it years later, she would say, ‘Pasalamat ka I didn’t blow the smoke in your face!’”