It was 50 golden years ago today, on March 5, 1965, when one man, who started with the humblest of beginnings as a security guard, founded what would become one of the country’s most outstanding security providers.
That man was Jacinto Mariano Natividad Villarosa Mendez and that company is Centurion Security Agency, Inc.
Few companies reach 50 years. Few men were like Jack. He worked as a kargador. He’d ride a rickety boat with his father from Bohol to Cebu to transport wood. While in law school at USC, he borrowed books to study. After passing the bar, he survived the hardships of little money by wearing a blue uniform with a gun tucked in his side pocket.
He started as a guard. Then, years later and armed with that first-hand experience, he founded Centurion Security Agency, Inc. with a vow to transform the then-rugged and scary image of a “sikyo” into that of a true “security professional.”
He succeeded. From one guard, Centurion reached a peak of 1,500 security professionals. Today, it has a thousand. On numerous times, CSAI was awarded by the police as one of the nation’s top agencies.
Speaking of longevity, the company has established long relations not only with clients and companies but also with their dutiful and devoted employees. One guard has been with Centurion for over 34 years. There are several fathers-and-sons working for Centurion; a father would start as a guard in his early twenties, he’d got married, raise children — and one or two of those boys would go on to follow their dad, saluting customers and ensuring an establishment’s safety.
Today, fifty years since Centurion’s founding, is both a happy and sad day for the family I’ve come to call my own: the Mendez family — which includes my wife Jasmin, the second of four children.
Happy because fifty years, as explained by ace business writer Mia Aznar in her piece yesterday, is “half-century” old.
Fifty years is fifty years. That’s a long time ago. We weren’t even born that year when movies Dr. Zhivago and The Sound of Music were shown. Happy because when you look back at how the company has helped tens of thousands of people through the years, through employment or because establishments have become safer due to Centurion’s front-line security, you smile and feel fulfilled.
Today is also a somber day. It’s bittersweet for the Mendez family — which include my mother-in-law Malu and Jasmin’s siblings, Michelle, Jake and Monette — because the founder and CEO himself, the funnyman Jack Mendez whom everybody loved, passed away just eight months ago.
For years, he longed to see his baby turn 50. He had grand plans with Centurion joining a hundred-force squadron of Centurions, marching and saluting the crowd during the Sinulog. If only he’d be with us today… His sudden passing last July 15, on a beautiful morning that transformed into the darkest of evenings for the family that night, was painful.
Though he was already 82 and had lived the fullest of lives — from being Rotary president to being Ubay, Bohol’s benefactor to being a devout Catholic and a generous and caring dad to his four children — his passing stunned the family.
But today we celebrate as he wants us to celebrate. For Jack was a man who laughed. He laughed a lot. He made people laugh. And his legacy lives on with the company he founded whose motto reads, “The best of pay to the best of companies offering the best service — The best service wins!”
Dad, The Centurion, happy golden anniversary.
