page_title: Aurora Quezon
section_title: Political wife and First Lady
hierarchical_section_title: Aurora Quezon / Political wife and First Lady
caption_attribution_description: English: First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon in Malacañan Palace.
context_page_description: Aurora Antonia Quezon was the wife of Philippine President Manuel Luis Quezon and the First Lady of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. Although she is recognized as the second First Lady of the Philippines, she was actually the first spouse of a Philippine president to be addressed as such, the honorific being unknown in the Philippines prior to Manuel Quezon's presidency. Much beloved by Filipinos, Quezon was known for involvement with humanitarian activities and served as the first Chairperson of the Philippine National Red Cross.
  Five years after her husband's death, she and her daughter "Baby" were assassinated while they were en route to open a hospital dedicated to her husband. The province of Aurora was named in her memory.
context_section_description: Within the first seventeen years of the marriage, Manuel Quezon emerged as a dominant figure in Philippine politics. His career reached its apex in 1935, when he was elected President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. During her husband's political life, Aurora stayed in the background, involving herself with women's organizations such as the National Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was the honorary chairperson.
  Time described Aurora as "dignified and portly". The Quezons were the first presidential couple to reside in Malacañan Palace, but she spent as little time as possible there, preferring to stay in a "nipa house" in Malacañang Park or in her farm, Kaleidan, in Arayat, Pampanga. She nevertheless was an active First Lady, engaging herself in the campaign to give Filipino women the right of suffrage, which was achieved in 1937. She was particularly involved in managing the family's Arayat farm to demonstrate how social justice could be applied to landlord-tenant relationships in an agrarian setting. She was involved in the Girl Scouts of the Philippines and the Associación de Damas Filipinas, a noted orphanage in Manila. She was also the honorary president of another orphanage, the White Cross, located in San Juan.
  President Quezon was re-elected in November 1941, but his presidency was immediately beset with crisis when Japan invaded the Philippines in the following month. Aurora accompanied her husband to Corregidor in December 1941, where the President was sworn in by Chief Justice José Abad Santos for his second term on December 30, 1941. For the next two months, the Quezon family remained in Corregidor where, despite the difficult living conditions, Aurora was said to have maintained her poise and kept up with a daily mass. In February 1942, they began their long journey via Australia to escape the Japanese and establish the Government in exile of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, finally reaching the United States in June 1942.
  While in exile, Aurora devoted her time to the care of her ailing husband, who died in Saranac, New York from tuberculosis on August 1, 1944. She then moved to California to await their return to the Philippines. She and her daughters volunteered as nurses for the Red Cross.
caption: Aurora Quezon in Malacañan Palace
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