Eddie Woolbright
Edgar Ray Woolbright (18 March 1920 - 6 August 1996) was an American entrepreneur who planned and developed the Beverly Hills subdivision of Lahug, Cebu City in the Philippines. Early years (1920–1941) Edgar Ray Woolbright was born in Boswell, Oklahoma on 18 March 1920, son of Ray Wiilbright and Nell Sanders of Oklahoma, United States. His father was a blacksmith. During the Great Depression he worked as a soda jerk, then in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He joined the United States Merchant Marine, and was in Caracas, Venezuela at the time of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II (1941–1945) During World War II (1939–1945) Woolbright continued in the Merchant Marine as a second mate. He sailed in a convoy to Russia in 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic, in which many of the ships were sunk by German aircraft. That winter the convoy was frozen in Archangel until being freed by a Russian icebreaker. After returning from Archangel he went to Australia to collect supplies to be delivered to Russia via Basra, Iraq. He served in the allied invasion of Sicily and in Naples. His ship was badly damaged in an Atlantic storm and he stayed in the Azores for several months while it was repaired. In October 1944 Woolbright sailed on a supply ship from New Guinea to join the American fleet in the invasion of Leyte. He participated in the Battle of Leyte with the forces of General Douglas MacArthur. He served with the US Coast Guard in Leyte. Leyte (1945–1949) After the war Woolbright returned to the United States, but soon returned to Leyte Gulf on a ship where he pretended to be sick and was discharged in Tacloban. As the son of a blacksmith and machinist, he saw huge potential in all the scrap metal on the island, left by the armed forces. He started a scrapyard in Palo, Leyte. At that time Tacloban was lawless, so he was always armed. He had several guards with machine guns at his scrapyard. In 1947 Woolbright was running a hardware and spare parts store, and founded the Airline Hotel and Coffee Shop beside it. He had his own generators, so was not affected by the erratic electricity supply in Tacloban, and could run ice cream machines. He used skills his father had taught him to build an air conditioner, and his was the first air-conditioned restaurant and hotel in Leyte. He came to know the teenaged Imelda Marcos at his restaurant in Tacloban. Imelda Romualdez, as she was then, would stop in on her way home from school. The balut dice game was invented at the hotel. Cebu City (1949–1996) Tacloban began to slow down as the surplus army machinery boom came to an end. In 1949 Woolbright moved to Cebu City, where he opened "Eddie's Log Cabin Coffee Shop" and "Eddie's Auto Supply". Eddie's Log Cabin was in downtown Cebu City near the wharf, and became a place were politicians and celebrities