An old lady in an electric wheelchair

Engineer at heart

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I was too young to remember what I wanted to be when I was five. Trying to look back, I just have scattered pieces of memory from that time. Some of the things that I remember, though… I remember helping my dad building our house with some construction workers that he brought from his firm. They would give me a piece of brick, or some tool, and tell me to give it to my dad. When my father received it, he thanked me and said that I was doing such a great job. I remember the workers saying that my dad was important at the firm, that he was an engineer. He built machines and invented things. It was clear that they genuinely admired him, and I got so proud. At that moment I guess I wanted to be an engineer at heart, like my father.

The lady who lived close to the office

There was a lady that lived close to my dad’s office. She was a wheelchair user. Those were the ’70s, and accessibility back then was much more difficult than it’s today. I believe that she was also an old lady and had some difficulty navigating the precarious sidewalks of their neighborhood. The people from the firm decided to help her. They collaborated to build a motorized wheelchair for her, and by all accounts, my dad was leading the effort.

A project worth executing

I don’t know if that was common in other parts of the world. But in Brazil, electric wheelchairs was something unheard of. Nevertheless, they pulled it off. They adapted the chair, installed a motor, probably used a common car battery attached to it. It would turn left, right and backwards, besides moving forward. I was too young, I wouldn’t know all the details, but that’s how I imagine it. Everyone said that the lady was incredibly happy with it. This improved her quality of life considerably. If memory serves me well, they even ran an article in the local newspaper about it.