Cecilia L. Gaerlan, Founder and Executive Director of Bataan Legacy Historical Society
Cecilia I. Gaerlan was born in the Philippines and received a degree in Economics when she was 19. She moved to the United States at the age of 21 and worked in a variety of administrative positions at the United Nations in New York City and in several Bay Area companies before becoming the Founder and Executive Director of Bataan Legacy Historical Society (BLHS) in 2012.
As she envisioned, the BLHS was established to address the lack of information about Filipino soldiers during WWII in the Philippines. Since then, BLHS has worked successfully with the California Department of Education to include WWII in the Philippines in the Grade 11 U.S. History Curriculum Framework as part of Chapter 16 during the state’s most recent curriculum framework revision. This was approved by the State Board of Education on July 14, 2016, the first time that WWII in the Philippines is
mandated to be taught in high schools in the United States.
Cecilia is a founding board member of the USS Telesforo Trinidad Campaign (USSTTC), whose mission is to name the first U.S. Navy ship after a Filipino sailor who received the Medal of Honor in 1915. As part of the ship-naming process Cecilia has developed strategies for grassroots organizations, community engagement and legislator support as well as written information materials, articles and press releases about the campaign. As part of educating the public about WWII in the Philippines and the role of Filipinos in the U.S. Armed Forces, she has developed and organized exhibitions, presentations and written articles. Under her leadership for BLHS, annual commemorations of the Bataan Death March and a conference on WWII in the Philippines were established.
Cecilia is a playwright and a filmmaker, creating short films of WWII in the Philippines and written plays of historical events (WWII, the founding of the United Nations) and personalities (St. Francis of Assisi, Lorenzo de Medici, composer Joaquin Rodrigo). She also founded the Artis Mundi, a cross-cultural theater group and organizes bicycle trips in Europe and the U.S. She and her husband, Jeffrey Shuttleworth, a retired journalist, enjoy
traveling and cycling abroad. They live in Berkeley.
