{"id":1279,"date":"2024-09-04T20:41:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T19:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2024-09-04T21:16:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T20:16:03","slug":"tribute-to-jovito-dias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/tribute-to-jovito-dias\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribute to Jovito Dias"},"content":{"rendered":"

My uncle Jovito Dias was born on February 15, 1931 in Goa, India.\u00a0 He was the seventh of eight children.\u00a0 He lost his Mum when he was only 2 or 3 years old and together with his siblings was raised by his older sisters, Maria Dias and Ludovina DeMello, my mum.\u00a0 Their Dad left Goa in the early 1940s to work in Kenya, East Africa.\u00a0 Jovito and his siblings were educated in Portuguese schools in Goa. <\/p>\n

At a young age a music teacher enrolled Jovito in the local church choir and encouraged him to take violin lessons.\u00a0 He would often remind the family of his very strict\u00a0violin teacher who would knock him on his hand with the violin bow during lessons.<\/p>\n

When they were in their teens, the siblings were taken to Kenya by their father.\u00a0 Jovito met his wife Lourdes in a church choir in Nairobi and had two children, Jeff and Anna.\u00a0 Sadly he lost Lourdes a few years ago.<\/p>\n

All the family moved to the UK in the late 1960s\/early 1970s and lived in\u00a0Welling.\u00a0 He joined the choir at St Stephen’s playing the organ.<\/p>\n

Jovito also used his musical talent and the talents of his nieces and nephews to form a family band as well as a local Goan choir to sing at various Goan socials.<\/p>\n

In his older years his health gradually failed and he was housebound for the last few years of his life.<\/p>\n

He sadly passed away on\u00a014 December, 2023.\u00a0 RIP Jovito.<\/p>\n

Philippa D’Mello<\/h4>\n\n\n
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\"Jo
Jo cutting his birthday cake at choir practice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some years ago, the 11.30 choir had grown very small and people no longer wanted to climb up to the organ loft with Jovito. I suggested we get a keyboard which could be used at ground level, and Jo was happy with this idea. Together we revived the choir, which grew and regularly practised on a weekday morning. As Jo aged, he showed me how his fingers would no longer allow him to play as he would like to do. So I gradually took over the playing, which allowed him to sing more until this also became too difficult for him.<\/p>\n

I went to see him a number of times when he was housebound and one of his first questions was always: \u201cHow\u2019s the choir?\u201d The choir always had a very special place in his heart, and I am glad I have managed to keep it going.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you, dear Jo, for inspiring me and realising that I could lead the choir when you could no longer do that. I would never have had the confidence otherwise. May you rest in perfect peace.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gwen Chiosso<\/h4>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My uncle Jovito Dias was born on February 15, 1931 in Goa, India.\u00a0 He was the seventh of eight children.\u00a0 He lost his Mum when he was only 2 or 3 years old and together with his siblings was raised by his older sisters, Maria Dias and Ludovina DeMello, my mum.\u00a0 Their Dad left Goa … Continue reading “Tribute to Jovito Dias”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1279"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1315,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions\/1315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.saintstephens.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}