One of the former members of ex-President Marcos' cabinet IS GERONIMO Z. VELASCO who entered La Salle as a first grader in 1934, and graduated from high school in 1946. He is the only son of the late Urbano Velasco, veteran reporter of the afternoon daily newspaper in Spanish, La Vanguardia. After high school at La Salle, Velasco took up mechanical engineering at the Mapua Institute of Technology. He worked with the Republic Glass Corporation in 1961 and later founded the Hawaiian subsidiary of Dole (pineapple) in the islands. He managed Stanvac, a branch of Standard Vacuum Oil Company of America. This company was bought out by the Philippine government and converted to Petrophil. He became the chairman and president of the Philippine National Oil Company, which imports billions of dollars' worth of crude oil needed by the country. When the Ministry of Energy was created in 1979 Velasco was the logical choice for the post. He tried to remedy the country's dependence on Arab oil and to lessen the huge expenditure of our dollars by establishing thermal power, and the use of other alternative souces of energy. In February 1986 he left the country after Marcos went into exile. Ronnie Velasco has gathered a fistful of honors. In 1960 local newsmen named him an "outstanding and distinguished contributor to business and industry." In 1962 he received the outstanding alumnus award of Mapua. In 1975 La Salle accorded him the same honor. In 1978, Mapua bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science, and La Salle followed in 1979 with a doctorate in industrial management and engineering, honoris causa. Philippine Women's University gave him a third honorary degree, doctor of laws, in 1981.